[TriLUG] Shopping for new laptop...

[David Brain]

On 7/12/07, Tom Eisenmenger <teisenmenger at charter.net> wrote:
> Thanks to all for your suggestions and comments - I'm slowly
> digesting it all.  From what I can tell, the general thinking is that
> the proc doesn't really matter as long as it's fast enough for my
> purposes, that I should look for something other than Broadcom
> wireless if possible, that ATI is the least preferred graphics proc
> (although I'll admit it's been fine on my current Dell when running
> the "Radeon" driver), and that 2 gigs ram is the way to go.  Sadly,
> I've discovered that most machines sport 1 gig and they use both
> slots to achieve dual-channel.
>

One thing with the wifi is that at least in theory you can always
replace the card if it doesn't work correctly.  I did that with my
laptop, which had some off brand card that worked OK with ndiswrapper,
but only OK (some flakeness at random times) and no low level access
(think Kismet).  Ended up replacing it with a one of the intel a/b/g
cards,  which has in kernel drivers, it wasn't all that expensive to
do.

There were some stories a while back about laptop manufacturers
restricting in the bios what wifi cards could be used, hopefully
they've given up on that now, mine worked fine, but that is one risk.

David.