[TriLUG] WTB linux laptop

Tom Roche Tom_Roche at pobox.com
Sat Mar 22 15:44:34 EDT 2008


summary: I wanna get a laptop (probably also a second, as backup) for
school/development use. If you've got one you wanna sell, or you
would care to recommend one, please lemme know either via this list or
directly.

details:

I lost my ThinkPad last week. I did the police report, but am pretty
sure it's not coming back :-( OTOH I'd been meaning to put a linux on
it (I got it to be my backup laptop when I was working at a place that
only supported win32, but I only used open software, more below) so
now I don't need to to that :-)

I need to get a replacement pretty quickly (preferably this week), and
possibly 2 (it'd be nice to have backup hardware).  I'd like to get a
laptop with {linux preinstalled, hardware working under linux}, and
used equipment is fine with me. I'm currently trawling through
linux-laptop.net, but would appreciate advice.  Basically I'm looking
for a box (or 2) to get me through grad school, during which I'll
probably be doing a lotta modeling (e.g.  land use, atmospheric
chemistry), software development, and paper-writing.

My TP had a 2 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB 5400 rpm disk, and 14" screen
running 1280x768. I'm looking for something similar, but could
probably sacrifice some graphics resolution (1024x768 should be fine
with a real window manager) and CPU speed since I don't game or watch
DVDs on the box (or at least didn't do that on the TP).

hardware support desired:

* wireless networking. My TP could use a variety of consumer-grade
   802.11b/g routers as well as the public networking @ UNC, Duke,
   Weaver Street Market, et al. I want to retain that capability now,
   and I'll want to use the authenticated networking @ UNC once I start
   grad school in the fall.

* audio. I didn't play much music via my TP, but I played a lotta
   spoken-word streams. (When available I usually download via USB to a
   cheap MP3 player, but there's still a lotta content that's only
   available via Real Audio et al.) Must minimally be able to connect
   to externally-powered speakers.

* print. My TP connected wirelessly to my housemate's HP Photosmart
   C7280, and I'd like to continue to do that if possible. (Worst case
   scenario I could probably samba to a shared drive on his PC and
   print that way, though.) I also have an ancient HP Laserjet 4P to
   which the TP could print via USB/parallel cable.

* backup. Alas my current backups are 3 months old :-( mostly because
   life has been hectic recently, backups from the TP to DVD were
   pretty slow, and I am a moron. I got an external HD which connects
   via USB, but I'd also like a box that backed up to DVD more quickly.

* camera. I have a Canon Powershot A620 which of course comes with a
   lotta win32 software, but I mostly just connected it to the TP via
   USB and copied files that way.

software support desired: I was using mostly open apps on the TP,
notably development tools (apache, emacs java, mysql, perl, python)
via Cygwin plus Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Dia, and GIMP, so
I'm assuming that'll be no problem.

If you've got a laptop to sell, or advice regarding what to buy or
where, please lemme know, either via this list or directly.

TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>



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