[PLUG] Looking for new laptop vendor

AthlonRob athlonrob at axpr.net
Sat Oct 8 14:38:04 UTC 2005


Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I am looking for a new source of laptops.

I know they have any iffy reputation lately, but I still really like my
Dells and wouldn't hazard to purchase another one from them.

If you look at where they're failing, it's in "customer service" - they
don't spend hours on the phone with a technophobe explaining how to
remove viruses and stuff from their systems.  I had to call tech support
with a recent laptop and although I had to wait on hold for 20 minutes,
once I was through I didn't have any issues getting the information I
needed from the tech.

> I desire three things from a laptop vendor:
> 
> 1)  Demonstrated excellent repair service.

If you pay for it, I think Dell is about the best out there.  I didn't
pay for anything extra and had my keyboard flake out on me about six
months after purchase.  I contacted Dell and FedEx dropped off a box the
next morning.  I convinced the FedEx driver to come back in 20 minutes
and off the laptop went.  Three days later the laptop was back here in
fine working order.

That's with the cheapest warranty they had.  If you pay for the nicer
warranties, the service you get is significantly better - and I
considered my service quite nice.

> 2)  Mostly Linux compatable.

The only thing I haven't gotten working on my (2.5 year old) laptop is
advanced ACPI support for things like suspending it to memory and such.
 Their new laptops tend to have decent Linux support in every area
except for Wifi - and that may have changed recently.  It used to be to
use the built-in wifi cards, you had to use that ndiswrapper driver.

However, you said wifi didn't interest you.  :-)

Dell has reached out a bit to the Linux community.  They had somebody in
contact with the linux-dell-laptops mailing list a few years back and
set up a website and such with information on it, including laptop
information.  I don't know that they've invested *money* in Linux, but
they have spent at least a little bit of time to appease the community.

> 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've never heard of "IBM-style trackpoints" - Dell used to ship with
dual touchpad/pointingstick setups, but it seems they've dropped the
pointing sticks in favor of touchpads within the last two years.  Too
bad, I really liked the pointing sticks.  My touchpad does just fine for
me, though, and is quite adjustable in Linux.  If I drop the speed, etc,
down, it works fine in "jittery" environments.  What is the trackpoint
like, exactly?

> I want compute speed (2GHz), don't care too much about graphics
> speed, don't care at all about audio, games, etc.

A 1.5GHz Pentium M is likely going to outperform a 2GHz Pentium 4, FWIW.
 Don't get sucked in to the MHz Myth!  If your CPU speed isn't for
graphics or audio, what *is* it for?  Are you sure you need the CPU
power you think you need?

Rob



More information about the PLUG mailing list