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On 09/29/2012 10:38 PM, David Kramer wrote: > Either the backlight or the inverter died in my 5-year-old Dell D820 > laptop. Fixing it doesn't make financial sense, though I may throw it > on my rack and hook it up to my KVM for "something", as I've figured out > how to tell X to disable the internal monitor and use the external > monitor as the primary. > > I've decided I want to go with a desktop machine for my main computer, > so I can use a better keyboard and bigger monitor, but I still need > something portable, too. I'm looking for a laptop that doesn't have to > be a desk-melting screamer, but it also doesn't make sense to put money > in anything *too* wimpy. I plan on splitting the hard drive to > Windows/Kubuntu 12.04LTS, so I need a supported video card. > > Really the only reason I want to get a laptop NOW is that I don't want > Windows 8, otherwise I would put it off. I find Windows 7 relatively > stable and inoffensive. > > Through work I can get significant discounts on Lenovo and HP laptops, > so I'm focusing on them. I just priced out a ThinkPad T530, and > it was over $900 with the discount, and I picked the slowest i5 > processor they have and 4GB RAM (though the better video card). That > seems a bit much. Maybe I should look at i3 processors. Many of the > models had ~14" screens, and I want at least 15". > > Any comparisons of HP vs Lenovo, or specific models that have worked or > not worked with Linux would be great. > I have a Lenovo T420 for work. It is an Intel I5. Works find. I sometimes load Red Hat Enterprise in VirtualBox and have no performance issues. However, a number of coworkers have the smaller laptops for portability, and they complain about the performance, so stick with at least an I5. I think I have 8GB. I have had a number of HP/Compaq laptops in the past and all were good and supported Linux. My ancient HP/Compaq NX6125 laptop that I bring to the installfest is still going strong after either 6 or 7 years. I reported a while back that Ubuntu 12.04LTS would not install on it, but Ubuntu 12.04.1 installed fine. No problems. On the other end, for portability I have an Asus Aspire One netbook that is running Fedora 17. It has an Atom N455 with 1GB, and I have vbox installed with Windows XP. I was able to demonstrate that at the last Virtual Deep Dive day and at a recent BLU meeting. IMHO, netbooks are really portable, and I used to use it at work to reprogram the old Linksys routers. It is also great for trips, but useless for real computing. You might check prices at eCost. I bought my HP laptop while I was either at HP, and it was cheaper than I could get with an employee discount. I also can get an employee discount at IBM where they have a number of refurbs including Macs and iPads. My desktop computer is a Penguin with and AMD Opteron quad core that I bought in 2008. The only issue is that I replaced the power supply. The one really nice thing about this is its servicability. It comes with a lot of extra screws, and almost everything slides out. It has 4 hot swap eSATA slots. When I go on vacation, I pull all the drives and lock them up. -- Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:3BC1EB90 PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
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