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Which Laptop to buy?


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Well now it`s time to look around till my birthday,I got few months to go and I`m asking your gentlemen which laptop is the best for any Linux OS with all the bell`s like one comes with DvD driver....

 

Thanx for helping me

 

Mandriva-user :banana::help::banana:

 

EDIT: I've pinned this topic as the official place to discuss Linux laptops. If you are looking for a Linux laptop, please post you requirements here. And checkout this post first. Any "which laptop should I buy thread" posted seperately will be merged here. -SoulSe (Forum Moderator)

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It all depends on your budget ;)

 

You can have Acers starting of 800€ and it can go up 'till 4000 - 5000€ for some Ibm's or Alienware machines.

 

If you look at the 2 lappy's in my sig, the Ferrari Acer cost me +/- 2800€ and the Travelmate 1300€.

 

Most lappy's will come with a DVD burner but watch out for the following things:

 

1. You want battery life then go with Centrino or A64, stay away from P4

2. You want a nice screen, then don't get anything below XVGA (1400x1050), and remember, the bigger the screen (17") the less battery you'll have.

3. Watch out for the hard drive, you have 3 options, 4200RPM, 5400RPM and 7200RPM, I have the latest and I must say that today I would prefer the bigger disk of my wife's laptop although it's 5400RPM which I don't even notice. So don't go for the fastest, you won't notice, ofc if you ain't a benchmark freak ;)

4. Look at the weight, I just installed a Toshiba Quosimo for a friend and man, that thing is HEAVY, I wouldn't like to carry it around.

5. Maybe try to get one with the Nvidia Geforce 6600 GO instead of the ATI cards, they seem to be better altough I'm very happy with both my ATI cards.

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What about AMD64 3200 to 3600+ if is out there,not pentium what ever so.

So what you think about battery life on AMD64 3200 to 3600+.

Of course I`m looking smaller screen 14-15" screen in the future I have 19-21 HDTV for my laptop computer.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just browse to http://www.newegg.com and saw an Acer Turion 64 (basically mobile Athlon 64 with lower speed grade) for under US$1000. I will be surprised if it is not Linux compatible since Acer releases several laptop models with Linux preinstalled in Indonesia.

 

Dammit, this laptop makes me miss the US more and more.

 

Here is the link

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16834115303

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I just browse to http://www.newegg.com and saw an Acer Turion 64 (basically mobile Athlon 64 with lower speed grade) for under US$1000. I will be surprised if it is not Linux compatible since Acer releases several laptop models with Linux preinstalled in Indonesia.

 

Dammit, this laptop makes me miss the US more and more.

 

Here is the link 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16834115303

 

 

Well which one is the question acer or asus :unsure:

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to throw my two cents in....

 

my wife has a dell inspiron with a p4. we both do math and so the heavy computation makes the p4 with the ht wonderful. it has 1 GB of ram and the XVGA screen which is sharp and clear. but the battery life sucks almost immediately. the dell warranty is for a 4-hr battery life....right. this is her second battery and it's barely getting more than 2 hours.

 

hers has an nvidia gefroce fx5200 card i believe. wonderful card, graphics are beautiful. older mandrake versions weren't happy installing a generic driver for this card. so we had to the do the vesa driver and go from there to get the nvidia driver.

 

it gets ridiculously hot. i've actually broken a sweat sitting with the vent facing me. further it's heavy. with power supply weight tops 10 pounds. that doesn't sound like much until you've got alot of other stuff with you.

 

while the dell is a wonderful machine, unless you go for one of the smaller ones, i'm not sure i'd recommend it.

 

i've got a buddy with one of the centrinos. he's impressed and so am i. it runs fast and seems to do everything he needs it to do plus some. he's in math too so the processor strain is hard for him too.

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Well I gona get Acer® Aspire™ 5020,can I upgrade cpu,ram.....? B)

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've an ASUS 2K Athlon64 3200 Ati9700 (Z81 in US I think) works pretty well managed to get everything working except suspend in 2005LE 32b. While in 64bit 2005LE managed to get every thing working accept suspend and 3d Accel. Nice and fast and well built. I get 2.5-3h Battery with the standard 6cell.

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Laptops have traditionally, and still carry on that

tradition, have an extremely high problem rate.

Consumer Reports has indicated that regardless of

brand they saw a 20%+ failure rate new and right out

of the box among laptops. Another consumer reporting

agency indicated that all, 100%, of laptops will

require service in its expected 3 year life. If you

own one, or are anticipating owning one, the extended

warranties are highly recommended.

 

Aside from the high failure rates laptop manufactures

take great liberties on what's inside the can. The

fact that a laptop is branded Gateway or Dell or

whatever they are not the manufacturer. The real

manufacture is any number of nameless Far East

manufacturers contracted to produce this or that

laptop with this or that feature(s).

 

Recently Gateway enjoyed a plague of CD/DVD drive

failures. A fellow employee was the victim of

this plague. Although the Gateway laptop had

the same name and model the original manufacturer

decided to change drive supplier mid stream picking

one that proved to exhibit a near 100% failure rate.

 

Apple Computer is presently experiencing a 20% plus

hard drive failure rate in it's laptop computers.

I was told by one unfortunate owner of one of these

machines that replacement drives are backed up

for months.

 

1st Rule. Don't buy a laptop and expect to

get a reliable computer.

 

2nd Rule. If you insist on buying one of these

things purchase the extended warranty.

 

3rd Rule. Do not count on your laptop to be

your primary computer. It's a portable device

and not to be counted on when needed.

 

4th Rule. Don't expect a laptop from Brand Name

XYX, Model Number MD-234A, Serial Number 123943

to be the same internally as laptop Brand Name

XYZ, Model Number MD-234A, Serial Number 123944

to be identical internally with its siblings.

 

So, bottom line, suggestions on this or that

Laptops is likely to be based on experience

with a single machine with little or no knowledge

of the entire deployed base.

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Laptops have traditionally, and still carry on that

tradition, have an extremely high problem rate.

...

While you make some true (although obvious to most of us) points in your post, your statements surrounding reliability stopped being true in the late 90s. I had a laptop that ran Mandrake 9.2 and was not only my main machine, but my only machine for over a year. Not only was it super stable, but everything worked too. This was three years ago now.

 

My iBook, while not running Linux, has also become more than just my main machine, but the centre of my very existence (iPhoto for my kid, iTunes for my music and livelihood, Neooffice for productivity, etc.). Laptops are not the future, they're the now. More and more people are ditching desktop machines in favour of a portable solution.

 

And Linux has become only slightly more difficult to configure (and with some distros not at all).

 

Your post would've held some truth ten years ago, but certainly not now.

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Actually, while the 20% rating is a bit too high, I actually somewhat agree with what wilcal said. Some laptops (like IBMs) are built like a brick so failure rates is less than 5%. Other brands seems to have 50% failure rates (in my experience it is usually Toshibas). It seems that every laptop is built in China with unreliable Chinese components, so only the brands that actually have high specifications have better than average failure rates.

 

Also remember that laptops, by nature, are portable. But the components inside may not be as strong to be carried around. I have my filll of seeing things like bad LCDs, non-working ports, broken HDs, broken CD-RWs, broken keyboards, batteries that doesn't hold their charge, etc, etc. My rule of thumb is that a laptop bought after year 2000 will last probably 3 years at most, while a laptop bought before year 2000 can last for 5 or even more.

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