Help me buy a laptop!

[ciphergoth]

My work now say I should just choose a laptop, they'll check out and approve the purchase, then I should buy it! I don't suppose they'll want to spend a lot of money though - I don't think I can really justify spending over GBP 1000 or so.

So, advice, what should I buy? What features should I be looking for?

Important things:

• It'll mostly be a Linux machine. So the built-in Winmodem might be cute, but unless it's a Linmodem it's not much good to me. Ditto XFree86 support for the frame buffer, preferably with an open source (not binary-only) driver.
  
• I have to fly with it a lot. So the sort of laptop that puts the CD-ROM drive and floppy drive as separate accessories sounds tempting; I can just put those in hold luggage, making my hand luggage lighter. Hand luggage is usually limited to 5 kilos; it's annoying when the laptop takes three of those!
  
• Currently my laptop is my main Widnows machine as well as my work Linux machine. I do use Widnows from time to time. However I'm really not that pushed about bundled software, and cute features that only work under Windows are of very marginal interest to me.
  
• I think I'm more pushed about weight, ruggedness and reliability than performance. Battery life is somewhere inbetween.
  

I look forward to hearing ideas...

Comments

[babysimon]

I'm no expert, but re hardware I'd suggest you look more closely at the modem issue and less at the display issue; I don't know of any display chipset which has serious won't-work-at-all issues under X whereas winmodems are everywhere in the laptop market. Re binary-only drivers, my home machine has an Nvidia chipset for which I use the non-GPL binary driver happily under Debian (there is a GPL driver too, but it has poor 3D performance).

It may be worth working out which laptop has the best specs and then if that has a winmodem, buying a PCMCIA modem - I think even cheap PCMCIA modems are real.

Oh, and don't buy a cheap no-name laptop. Mine fell to bits quickly.

[babysimon]

Oh, and even Linmodems are a massive PITA. Try very very hard to get a hardware modem.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

At the end of the day, you're probably going to find that most laptops have Winmodems - though ISTR that Toshiba have true mini-pci devices. I'd look at some of the Satellites - they seem reasonable, and my Satellite Pro is a decent enough beast.

Of course you could just go for an iBook or a TiBook, or even the 12" AlBook. And a copy of Virtual PC.

[skx.livejournal.com]

True .. I've never considered it a problem as I can pop in a PCMIA combined NIC/Modem

Re:

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Which was the comment I was going to make before I got carried away in Switcher mode...

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

My work buys Dells with 1GB RAM for about £1500. Some points:

• They are quite large. Keyoboards seem good.
• The screen is 16 inches or so and 1600x1200 pixels. You, with your elvish eyesight, might like that. I find the pixels too small.
• They tend to have either ATi or nVidia chipsets. I use a nVidia card with the binary nVidia kernel module on my Debian desktop with no problems. Don't know about ATi - they're known to have poor OpenGL support under windows.
• The Xircom modem/ether double-height PC-cards are great, under Windows at least, but costly.
• Buy a miniature optical mouse and forget about the on-board nodding-in-a-general-direction device.

I'd also suggest investing in a good laptop back-pack. I got one from Jansport at about £80 and never regretted a pound of it! That's probably the best value. A company called Tubis, or something like that, make more stylish and much less practical ones for only £150-£250 :-) The trick is to wear your backpack confidently during check-in and pretend it weighs only 5kg. If you take it off your back and put it down, they'll probably think of weighing it.

Pavlos

[aegidian]

Quality, rugged and light-weight and long battery life, no problems running X11, BSD core.

Buy a Tiny Book.

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

And if actual Linux is important, you can run Linux on it.

Go Stylishly into the sky...

[ducklofty.livejournal.com]

Try the new 17" Powerbook 3.1kgs, 4.5 hours battery, DVD-R/CD-RW, 1GB Ethernet, Bluetooth, 802.11g (not 802.11b - although backwardsly compatible) WLAN, Firewire 2 (800 Mbs), Unix Terminal etc., 1" thick, more stylish than anything else on the market. £2000 + VAT
It also runs X11 programs using X11 for Mac OSX.

Too big?

[aegidian]

I think even Paul might blanch at having to accomodate 17"!

Re: Too big?

[ducklofty.livejournal.com]

Tee hee hee

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem worth being too modest about price, since I assume they'll tell you if they can't afford what you ask for. I'd suggest giving them a more expensive option first, since you're not going to get it replaced for a long time, and it might actually work out better value for money...

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

I'd recommend a Toshiba because they're pretty well built and they do neat things like built-in wireless. Sony are nice when they work but their service and support sucks goats through a straw. Dell are OK, ish, but they change spec and components often and they're not amazingly reliable. IBM ThinkPads are good, reliable, have few frills and aren't that lightweight.

I spent a week looking at notebooks last summer and for weight, battery life and performance I got a Portege 2000. It's only a 12" screen and there is no floppy or CD at all; that does make it very light and very thin. 14.9/19.1mm deep and just 1.19kg. I do all disk IO over the built-in wireless when I'm at my desk, but the new Portege 2010 (http://www.computers.toshiba.co.uk/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/product_page.jsp?z=84&PRODUCT_ID=42020) has a port replicator and external optical drives, and it's got a bigger hard drive and faster processor now! With the extra battery I get 6-7 hours work from mine and it hardly adds any weight at all. I took it to the max RAM and it's a spiffy little machine, and very portable.

[mistdog.livejournal.com]

I have the two previous generations of Portege (4000 from work, 7010 personal property, bought second-hand reconditioned) and they're excellent for both weight and battery life. They're also very robust compared to all the previous laptops we've had. I think you can justify spending well over 1000 quid based on robustness. Machines at that price point will be falling apart in a year if you travel with them.

Porteges do have windmodems though. Buy a PCMCIA modem and avoid the hassle with this and all your future laptops. But the builtin 802.11 wireless gets much better reception than PCMCIA wireless cards do, we've found. I think the aerial must go up inside the screen part.

Always check linux support on wwww.linux-on-laptops.com before buying. There are a few machines out there which xf86 doesn't support.

[conflux.livejournal.com]

My work provided me with a Toshiba 8100 there will be a newer version by now. I dual boot either Redhat 6.2 Linux or Windows 2000. The modem works in both cases, it has a plug in DVD or floppy drive with the other on a cable if you want them both. 15" TFT screen at 1024x768 is very good. The battery life is only approx. 2.5 hours though (with no power saving options on) and I wouldn't want anything heavier.

Weight

[gingiber.livejournal.com]

Sorry this is a bit late, but I have noticed when I have been flying recently, laptop weight is not usually included in hand luggage weight, much the same as handbags. My laptop bag with a couple of 18Gb SCSI drives added for ballast was coming in between 8 and 9Kg and no-one ever batted an eye.
This goes across companys, as I use easyjet, go and BMI.