[Discuss] Yet Another Laptop Recommendation Thread

[Jerry Feldman]

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