Laptop

[nice_like_rice]

Was going to post this in the hardware support section, but I'm more interested in peoples' opinions on this. Anyone have any good experiences with laptops with linux preinstalled, or with no OS but still fully compatible? My main concerns are portability, so lightweight/small and long battery life, something along the lines of the asus eee pc. Is this the best of its class, or are their other alternatives?

Thanks for any opinions on this, from my experience with laptops I have found it is very easy to buy a laptop with good specifications only to find there was something not mentioned/overlooked which makes it a much worse deal.

david

[stwschool]

Asus eeePC. One of our teachers bought one and asked them to put XP on it as he was a bit scared of linux. He's our resident breaker of all things technical, and can break a photocopier just by looking at it. Needless to say XP wasn't just slow, it was bloody painful. You could make a cup of tea in the time it took to load Firefox. Google Chrome sped things up a little but it was still slow. Even the start menu was taking ages to load.
So, I loaded up a memory stick with Ubuntu UNR and tweaked the install a little (added a few things I knew he'd use like Skype, Chromium, vlc, codecs etc). The end result? All his hardware worked straight-away for starters. Performance was lightning fast. 30 seconds to boot up excluding typing the password. 2 seconds to load Chromium. Even Firefox is quick. OpenOffice is rapid, Inkscape flies. The thing's now something of a speed-demon to be honest and while it's not going to be on Compiz any time soon it's now a very usable computer rather than an expensive paperweight.

So, eee pc with linux is great, as long as you don't mind tiny keys (I really can't type on the bloody thing, I got so pissed with that I installed SSH on it when I came to install properly and did all the post-install configuration over ssh through my terminal on my laptop).

[nice_like_rice]

Thanks :) sounds good, just the sort of advice I was looking for. I had feared the eeePC would be slow (I have only tried it at a shop with windows on it...), but if it's that much faster with ubuntu, I'll certainly be getting one of those.

david

[richg]

A few months ago, I picked up a Wireless Acer Aspire 5515 full size laptop. DVD dual layer burner, 160gb drive, 3gb RAM. $325.00. It comes with Vista Basic but I installed Mint on it because I did not want to mess with the lack of some codecs in Ubuntu. With Mint, everything worked right out of the box. If you want to keep the Vista drive, a replacement identical drive can be had for $49.00, free shipping. That is what I did. Two screws to remove and install. Maybe I might sell the PC in the future but more and more doubt it. Still gives me an backup drive.
Ubuntu should work just fine.

I am not a techie type and I had no problems installing Linux.

I have a EEE PC with Xandros but sometimes I like to use a larger PC.

Rich

[nice_like_rice]

Wow thats a good price for a laptop like that, I paid quite a bit more for my toshiba, although that was 2 years ago. Maybe I'll look into some of acer's other products aswell, they seem to be worth it, although that must be quite a heavy laptop. I found my 3ghz 3gb ram laptop was too heavy to carry around, so I just kept it in the same place, for that reason it was just like a desktop.

I'll look into mint, I've never used it before and it seems to be growing in popularity :)

thanks,

david

[Redache]

I'd look at Dell's as well. You can pick up some Decent Laptops for a reasonable price in the Vostro Line. Even though they are sold to small businesses Dell do allow you to use your own name as the Business name and voila, shiny, cheap but decent laptop.

[stwschool]

Thanks :) sounds good, just the sort of advice I was looking for. I had feared the eeePC would be slow (I have only tried it at a shop with windows on it...), but if it's that much faster with ubuntu, I'll certainly be getting one of those.

david
To be honest even I was a bit surprised by the speed difference, but it looks like the tweaks the Ubuntu guys made were something a bit special. Video playback is good, responsiveness is generally instant, just don't try to put Windows on it, it's a really stupid thing to do!