[PLUG] Need laptop recomendations

[Alan Olsen]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 11:35 AM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 01:07:38PM +0200, Michael Dexter wrote:
> > >So you say you need a laptop or PC? Check this out:
> >
> > No. He said that he needs a system with specific requirements:
> >
> > "What I am looking for is something that has a good warranty, is light,
> has
> > an AMD dual core processor, a fast video card with lots of ram and is
> not
> > over $2000."
>
> Thanks for bringing this back on track.  The good warranty is key;
> laptops are tradeoffs, between cost, capability, and reliability.
> ( "cheap, fast, good - pick two" ).  Alan's price range suggests
> that he is willing to pay extra for "fast, good", which shows some
> intelligence IMHO.


Cheap laptops die faster.

I have found that a warranty that fixes problems "no questions asked" is
worth the extra money.  (And if you don't buy it, you are punished by the
gods with a smashed laptop.)


>
>
> I am typing this on a 6 year old IBM T30; it has been repaired three
> times but works fine with very heavy use.  The only real problem is
> that it is beginning to fall off the back of the Linux driver support
> curve - all the drivers work with the 1 year old distro I am using,
> but I expect there will be upgrade issues when they stop supporting
> this distro 3 years from now. I paid about $1800 for it, and another
> $300 for warranty extensions, and that is a much better bargain than
> $800 for a junker every 18 months.  Unless filling Chinese landfills
> with production debris is part of the attraction of new ...
>
> One of the problems with Linux is that it sometimes takes a while for
> the drivers to show up, unless you are really careful to check out
> chipset support before purchase ( see http://www.linux-laptop.net/
> and http://www.thinkwiki.org/ among others ).  So the sweet spot for
> drivers is approximately between 6 months and 5 years after the
> appearance of a new laptop.  The junker-every-18-months approach
> actually means about 30% of the time you are chasing drivers and
> upgrades.  If you gotta, you gotta, but that isn't something I try for.
>
> Alan wants to run AMD - not my choice, and not as popular, but he is
> invested in AMD already and I am glad there is someone smart like Alan
> supporting that portion of the community.  Since AMD is usually the
> "cheaper" choice, it may be harder to find a high-support good-warranty
> laptop with that processor family.  I hope he succeeds, because without
> AMD to compete with them, Intel will slack off and abuse customers.
> Hooray for the "loyal opposition"!
>
> The bottom line may be that Alan will end up doing his own hardware
> maintenance after an inadequate warranty expires.  There are a lot
> of part sources out there for repairing laptops ( for example,
> www.acsparts.com , and broken laptops on Ebay ) , and there are
> communities of users that do so.  Laptops are more difficult to work
> on than desktops, and the parts are more specialized and expensive,
> but skilled user maintenance is possible.  Alan's particular problem
> (a CPU that overheats) is possibly a problem with the cooling fan,
> and sometimes a simple cleaning is enough to get those working again.
>

The fans do not appear to be clogged.  I think that the heatsinks are
lifting off the CPU.  (It only started doing this after the motherboard was
replaced and has gotten worse over time.)

I plan on getting a new one and the old one will get recycled into an MP3
player/streaming media box for the living room.