[PLUG] Looking for new laptop vendor

[Rich Shepard]

On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> 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.

> Any suggestions?

Keith,

   I had excellent experiences with the Toshiba Libretto and Portege; still
have the latter and it's being upgraded to Slackware-10.2 (from 8.x or 9.x)
today. My Sony Vaio PCG-V505BC is also a good mahine, but it has the large
touch plate rather than the pencil eraser for a pointy thing. My one
experience with a Gateway portable (in 1992, a 486DX/25 machine) was so bad
that I vowed to never consider them again for anything. And I haven't.

   My specific recommendation is to call Emperor Linux on Monday and ask for
their experiences with different vendors and models. They sell -- and support
-- a range of portables each with linux pre-installed for us users. I know
there are other vendors, but I've had experience with only Emperor Linux.

   For physical, hardware repair I've used Northwest Computer Support in SW
Beaverton. They've done well for me.

Good luck!

Rich

-- 
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President     |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM) |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517         Fax: 503-667-8863