[PLUG] Looking for new laptop vendor

[Keith Lofstrom]

I *used to* be quite a fan of IBM Thinkpads, because they *used to*
have quick and excellent repair service.  However, the sale of the
Thinkpad division to Levono has pretty much completed the destruction
of their quality and their reputation, so I am looking for a new
source of laptops.

I desire three things from a laptop vendor:

1)  Demonstrated excellent repair service.  Laptops are subject to
a lot of stress, and *will fail* - I want my next laptop to come 
from a company with a demonstrated history of quick repairs with no
nonsense.  As I said, that used to be IBM.  Who does it now?  Has
anyone here got any positive factory service stories to share?

2)  Mostly Linux compatable.  I want the display and the ethernet
and the mouse-surrogate to work.  I don't need working built-in
wifi.  For software compatability reasons, I need Intel architecture.

3)  I strongly prefer the IBM-style trackpoint to touchpads (Easier
to do precision work in jittery environments).  If there are other
stable pointing devices that work adequately, I would like to hear
about those, too.

I want compute speed (2GHz), don't care too much about graphics
speed, don't care at all about audio, games, etc.  While high 
reliability would be nice, it is impossible to evaluate, as the
machines with reliability track records are all obsolete, and the
various brandname sources all use the same manufacturers anyway.

Any suggestions?

Keith

PS:  My rant about IBM/Levono/Solectron's lousy performance can
be found at http://www.keithl.com/ibm.html .  I won't inflict it
on the mailing list.

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs