[TriLUG] Purchasing a new laptop (slightly OT)

[Chris Hedemark]

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On Friday, May 23, 2003, at 07:59 PM, Greg Brown wrote:

> My wife has a 15" PowerBook with the G4 processor and a DVD-R drive 
> and you do see some performance gains with the G4, but not a huge 
> amount.  Not enough to justify the cost, IMHO.  The one thing that the 
> powerbook has that I wish my laptop had is a PCMCIA  slot (which the 
> powerbook has one).

I've found I don't need it (the PC Card slot, that is).  Between 
firewire & USB, not to mention all the stuff BUILT IN to this box (also 
a 15" TiBook), I haven't had a need for it.  When I come home, I can 
plug in a single USB cable that has a keyboard, mouse and jog wheel 
(sometimes a barcode scanner too).  I plug in a single firewire cable 
that gives me another 120GB hard disk, a DVD-R/RW and a Mini-DV deck.  
I can plug into my 21" monitor *and* the S-Video jack of my TV set at 
the same time, and manage each display as a different screen.  Wireless 
is built in.  Gigabit ethernet is built in.

The only sort of PC Card I've been tempted to get is 802.11b because 
the range on the TiBook is as bad as you've heard.  Then again, I might 
just put a nice omnidirectional antenna on my WAP to keep my TiBook 
tidy.

Oh, and I had considered putting in a USB GPS and a USB 802.11b adapter 
(with trunk-mounted antenna) in my car so that if I want to wardrive I 
just plug in a USB cable & go.

> X11 works great on my iBook so I'm able to X around to Linux and UNIX 
> boxes with ease using ssh -X.

Yep.  Earlier versions of X11 were kinda bad but it has gotten much 
better.  Small plug for RangerRick here... fink rocks on OS X and you 
can even run KDE there.  This being a Linux list, I'll stop praising OS 
X for a bit (but feel free to join the hardcider mailing list and we 
can talk at length there).

> If you're set on a non-apple laptop I'd suggest the IBM as well.  IBMs 
> are put together nearly as well as Apples with attention to detail 
> like rubber grommet mounted HDs (standard on iBooks and I think IBMs 
> as well).  Personally, if you are going the Intel route, I'd suggest a 
> mobile class Pentium.  I think the regular pentiums get WAY too hot in 
> laptops.

FWIW, my TiBook is the only real "laptop" computer I've seen in awhile 
(meaning you can work comfortably with it in your lap).  In fact, I'm 
in my living room right now with my TiBook sitting on my lap.  The CPU 
is sitting on my left leg.  It's only slightly warm.  It gets a bit 
toastier on the top side, in the upper left hand corner if you're 
looking down on the keyboard from above.  The thing is DEAD SILENT, 
too, unless you're doing some seriously CPU intensive work for a long 
time and the fan kicks on (which is still not offensive).  I've been 
known to hack away on my TiBook with my daughter sleeping right next to 
me, with the slight sound of the keyboard being the only audible sound 
you can detect.

The IBM's are about the best PC platform laptops I've had the pleasure 
of working with.  My experience with PC laptops is mostly with Toshiba, 
Winbook, Dell & IBM.  Dell & Winbook were by far some of the worst made 
garbage I've had to work with.  The Toshibas were really nice but I 
don't have any experience with them in the last 4 years.  I've 
supported a number of IBM's (several different models) and toted a T21 
around for awhile myself.  Nice machines.  Very solid.

- --

Chris Hedemark
UNIX / Linux / BSD / Mac OS X / Windows consulting available.  No job 
too small!
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