economical laptop

[jabr at blu.org (John Abreau)]

On Wed, 2004-07-07 at 09:05, Kalyan Vaidyanathan wrote:

> Hi,
>   I'm trying to figure out the most economical way to get a functional 
> laptop.
> 
>   I've never done anything like this before, but am willing to learn.  I 
> would like to know if building one from parts is cheaper than getting a 
> regular laptop that I can upgrade over time (more RAM, bigger harddisk 
> etc.).  If building from parts, are there any recommendations of where I 
> should start from?
>   Ideally I'd like about 60GB harddisk, 512MB ram, >2GHz processor.  The key 
> requirement is a wireless network card so that I can use the laptop anywhere 
> at home.  Software, I plan to stay with linux.  I've only worked with RH9.

Laptops are almost entirely made from custom parts; I doubt it would 
be feasible to build one from scratch. If you did, I believe you'd 
end up paying a lot more and ending up with something barely usable. 

I bought a nice Thinkpad on eBay last year; with shipping, I paid about 
$200 for it. I then paid about $60 at pcmall.com for a 40gb 2.5-inch 
hard drive to replace the tiny one the Thinkpad came with. Wireless 
network cards are fairly cheap, too. 

I've used a variety of laptops over the years, and I must say the IBM 
Thinkpads are my favorite, with the older Sony Vaio Picturebook a close 
second. 

-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
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