Subject: Re: buying a laptop
From: William Bouterse (bill@bouterse.com)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 23:08:51 AKST
On Thu, 7 Mar 2002 15:56:48 -0900 (AKST)
"Peter Q. Olsson" <olsson@koyukuk.at.uaa.alaska.edu> wrote:
>
> Hello all-
>
> I am thinking of buying a new laptop to replace an aging model. At work I have a
> Dell Inspiron 8000 dual boot setup. Great video and all that, but 1) a little
> heavy, and 2) it came with an onboard "win" modem that I have never been able to
> get to work. ( $#%^* win stuff!)
>
> Any suggestions out there on laptops that are easy to load linux onto and do not
> have "win" problems? I would like to hear from happy linux laptop owners.
>
Have you checked out these folks...They have been very supportive
of Linux machines in the past and I continue to hear positive things
about them.....I do not own one of their notebooks but would like
to give them a try myself in the near future....
http://www.qlilinux.com/products/laptops/index.html
The winmodems are easily bypassed by a good pccard modem anyway
at least on the notebooks I have used, so that should be less of an issue.
USB has worked for the later IBM and Dell machines I have seen but
I am using kernel 2.4x from Mandrake which seems to give excellant
USB support....The sony's do work well for some but it is very dependant
on the paticular model #..Some drivers proprietary some not......
for example; some have excelant firewire usage others no go...
Actually HP is beginning to be an excellant buy and other than the
winmodem on most is beginning to be very workable with Linux.....
Power management seems to be another bugaboo, yet some work quite well.
For instance on an older IBM 600X I have been using lately, I installed
Mandrake 8.2 betas with amazing success, everything installed and was
recognized, even the USB SmartMedia RW and the linmodem web site did have
drivers for the modem but I don't like"fake-modems" and used a pccard one
instead...Power Management "almost" worked perfectly... All the basic
functions worked fine except one peculiar glitch whereby you could not
reboot only shutdown.......(but that could be a Mandrake hiccup?)
Good Luck and let us know how it works out
-- William Bouterse Talkeetna, Ak.
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