[Novalug] Laptops

Subba Rao castellan2004-novalug@yahoo.com
Sat Mar 24 11:38:53 EDT 2007


Ken,

Thanks for all this advice!  I am searching for laptop which will have 2 seperate HDs or swappable  Hard Disks.  Please let me know if you know of any vendors who make such laptops.

Thank you once again for the advice.

Regards,

Subbarao


Ken Kauffman <kkauffman@headfog.com> wrote: Some thoughts (some your likely aware of)...

I have an older HP ze4430us laptop. Here are my thoughts on laptops
because I've been shopping lately as well.

1) try to get a laptop that doesn't have integrated video.  It will help
if you want to play with eye candy like Beryl. Nvidia has greater support
for 3d and accelerated graphics.

2) try to get a 7200 RPM drive. I replaced the stock 4200 with a 7200 and
it made a night and day difference.  Then I got a USB 2.0 enclosure for
the stock drive I pulled out.

3) 512 worked great with Linux, I upgraded to 1Gb because I wanted to play
with VM on the laptop.  I found it difficult finding affordable memory for
the laptop.  So consider getting more RAM up front.

4) Broadcomm wireless will likely result in needing to run NDISWRAPPER.  I
have to run it but have WPA working just fine now.

5) Get USB 2.0 built in which should be standard on newer laptops.  I use
a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card.  The enclosure (mentioned above) uses a USB bypass
connector for power.  The PCMCIA card does not provide enough power for
the drive.  I end up plugging the "power" portion directly into the laptop
and the "transfer" portion into the USB 2.0 card for it to work correctly.

6) 15.4" screen is a good compromise between real estate and weight.  17"
are heavy and 14" screens never seem to have enough room.

7) Gloss screens look great for multimedia, but the glare you can get in
an office setting is annoying as all h*ll.

8) Buy a notebook wireless mouse if you don't have one yet.  It really
makes a difference.  I use the (non laser) MS Notebook Optical 3000. Not
sure if the "laser" one is worth it on a laptop.

9) If you do development, get a Core 2 Duo (not Core Duo).  Lower power
consumption CPU with multicore capability.  Really helps during
compilations for dev projects. Also nice for multitasking.

* The biggest headache I had was the internal wireless and a few odd media
keys that I used Xmodmap to fix.

Good luck!

Ken

On Fri, March 23, 2007 11:32, Dan Arico wrote:
> The fatefull moment has arrived. I'm going to get a laptop.
>
> I'm thinking about a used Thinkpad running OpenSUSE 10.2. I'm not
> particularly interested in wireless. I won't be running TOOS (That Other
> OS).
>
> Does that sound like a a good choice? Any suggestions, pitfalls?
>
> Dan Arico
>
> --
> One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
> One OS to bring them all, and in the Darkness bind them,
> In the land of Redmond, where the Sales Reps lie.
> _______________________________________________
> Novalug mailing list
> Novalug@calypso.tux.org
> http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/novalug
>


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