[NTLUG:Discuss] Notebook Suggestions

[Kevin Brannen]

Josh wrote:
> 
> Looking at buying a laptop for basic everyday office and telecommuting
> use. Plan on running Redhat. Prefer to have a port replicator. Don't
> mind usng PCMCIA modem and NIC if I have to. Just looking for some good
> suggestions based on your personal experiences.

I've got a [ProStar?] clone that I've been pretty happy with.  It's a little
on the heavy side too, but that's probably because it has the CD built in,
plus I've installed a 2nd HD in the modular bay (where you can do that, a
floppy, or a second battery).  I've got a 13" screen which is pretty nice, but
you can also get a 14" or 15" model too.  With a single Li battery, I get
about 1.5 - 2 hours, but that's probably because of my 2nd HD.  One very nice
feature though is that if you want to upgrade the memory, you just left the
keyboard and there are 2 memory slots, like DIMMS (special DIMMS I'm sure),
but that easier to upgrade than the Toshibas where there is only 1 memory card
slot (or at least that is how it used to be on the last Toshiba I bought). 
And the clone is about half the price of a similiar Toshiba.  You can check
them out at http://www.bsicomputer.com/ .  I think the CPU fan is about to go,
it sometimes makes strange noises, but it is 3 years old and did lots of
traveling for its first year.

I'd avoid Toshibas, they usually have very special graphic chips which no one
else uses; which makes runing X on them hard (I could only do the VGA16
server--blech!).  Or so it was on my 1910CS.

You really must check out the Linux Laptop page: 
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ .  It gives good info to
perspective buyers & current owners.

I use SuSE on mine, but I think any distro would work.

HTH,
Kevin