[PLUG] Laptop recomendations

[Anthony Schlemmer]

Alan wrote:

>I am looking at (finally) getting another laptop to replace my dead
>Vaio.
>
>I have an idea of what I want, but I am interested in the general
>opinions out there.
>
>Here are my general thoughts:
>
>IBM - These are long lasting, but I have concerns about the video
>chipsets used.  (Intel Extreme Graphics or shared memory ATI in most
>cases.)  They also lack the speed of some other vendors, as well as
>hyperthread on the P4 chipsets.
>
>Dell - Looks good. They use nVIDIA chipsets for the model I am looking
>at, have hyperthread, and have a good warranty.  Not certain if I want
>to deal with Dell support.
>
>HP - They have Athlon 64 laptops.  They have very fast Intel laptops. 
>The prices are cheap.  Not certain if I trust HP though since the
>merger.  The video chipsets are nVIDIA and go up to 128 megs.  (Dell
>only goes to 64megs.)  Concerned about quality and support of the
>hardware.
>
>Compaq - Same as HP.
>
>Toshiba - Videochips on these such bad. Not even in the running.
>
>Sony - They soak you for everything they can.  I don't really want to do
>that again.
>
>Any other comments? Ideas? Rants?
>
>  
>
For the developers in the company I work for we got Dell Inspiron 5150's 
with 3.06GhZ Mobile Pentium 4 w/hyperthreading, 1GB memory, 7200 RPM 
hardrive, and 64MB nVIDIA GeForce 5200. They are very fast and all 
devices expect the Dell TrueMobile 1300 WIFI card was supported under 
Linux. I'm using the LinuxAnt Driver loader with the Broadcom Windows 
drivers for the WIFI card. The systems are great when they work but 
we've had nearly a 100% failure rate with this particular model of Dell 
laptops. I guess I don't care so much myself since it wasn't my money 
that paid for these systems. I'm considering getting my own laptop for 
my own uses and I have no plans to even consider Dell for a laptop when 
my own money is being used.

Our IT director at the office is not allowing anymore Dells into our 
company outside of the ones we already have and everyone outside of the 
developers are getting IBM laptops.  This is just my opinion of course.

I did see that HP was going to be offing an nx5000 laptop with Linux. 
There were some notes about the Intel Centrino chipset (2200BG) and the 
DVD/CD-RW drive not being supported in the multi-bay if Linux was used. 
I guess that's why HP recommends WinXP for that laptop.  The LinuxAnt 
driver loader supports the 2200BG chipset but I'm not sure about the 
lack of  multi-bay support. I have no experience with HP laptops and so 
I don't know if that makes the laptop useless or not. Certainly  I do 
consider WIFI essential in a laptop for myself. I also see on 
SourceForge.net that Intel has a communitiy project going for the 2200BG 
chipset and so there may be native drivers for the WIFI. I have no 
experience with HP and so I'm unsure about their laptop quality. 

YMMV,

Tony


-- 
Anthony Schlemmer
aschlemm at comcast.net