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

[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.