[TriLUG] your favorite lowish cost thin laptop

[Jim]

I didn't buy it myself so I'm not sure about cost, though I'm pretty 
sure it's well over $500, but I absolutely loved my Levovo X200s.  Super 
thin and light, 8 hour battery, solidly built- outstanding in every way.


On 01/17/2011 07:55 AM, Mark Kempster wrote:
> I'm looking to replace my aging dell latitude d620 in the next 6
> months, and am starting to scan the field for a replacement. I'd love
> something I could actually call 'thin', but that's got enough guts to
> display hd to my tv. I normally run the following tasks, in addition
> to the regular browser / email / music business.
>
> 1. java development with eclipse
> 2. squirrelsql
> 3. jboss
> I use this machine in large part to work on java web applications, and
> typically run items 1, 2, 3 together, along with pandora and dropbox.
> 4. Oracle / postgres (this is less of a concern)
> 5. mythtv frontend
>
> While I'd like to run oracle (xe) along with the development tools,
> it's not really working today.
>
> Current hardware: cpuinfo tells me "Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU
> T7200  @ 2.00GHz" with a MHz of '1000.000'. Meminfo reports 2GB. Came
> from dellfinancialservices as a refurb - similar hardware sells there
> for $300 or so.
>
> I'd like to keep the price under $500, which makes this more of an
> interesting challenge. Screen size isn't a big deal, presuming I can
> plug an external monitor. My current machine is a 14" widescreen,
> which is perfect. Much bigger and it gets more difficult to lug
> around, much smaller and, well, it's smaller.
>
> I ran across a dell 'vostro v130' which seems like a fairly reasonable
> option ($430, ships with ubuntu) but I'm not sure about the single
> cpu. I'd prefer to purchase either a no-os or a linux distro (to avoid
> paying for a windows license that I won't use), but System76 is a bit
> beyond my price point. I'm happy to consider refurb gear, and can
> handle a minor hardware upgrade (mem, disk, keyboard, etc. No
> motherboard replacements for me.)
>
> If you have a thin laptop that you love or hate, would you mind
> telling me a little about it?
> Anything you'd stay away from?
>
> Thanks for your advice.
> Mark