Laptops: What do you have/want?

[Skia_42]

I have been thinking about spending some money on a laptop, my budget is under $1000 and it would be great if I didn't have to spend that much. I was wondering if you would mind sharing if you have a laptop and if so, what it is. Do you like it? I would install Ubuntu on it so I am pretty flexible as to what architecture I use, although I want to avoid from PPC. Thanks in advance...

[slimdog360]

I have an IBM thinkpad R50e. It works perfectly with Ubuntu and only cost me $530 Australian.
Id recommend a thinkpad if your going to get one.

[aysiu]

Oops... saw the want in the title and voted before I saw the poll was asking a different question.

[Skia_42]

Okay, thanks. I am personally a sucker for apple design but I'm a little dissapointed with apple. They don't give you as much flexibility in the components that they use. I really like System 76 because they are Linux based. But then there is the issue of money, or lack therof. That is the main reason that brands such as IBM, Dell and so on appeal.

[Luggy]

I want to get a Dell so that it will explode on my lap.

[teet]

Whatever happened to those HP laptops that came preinstalled with Ubuntu? I know you couldn't buy them in the US, but it would lead me to believe that Ubuntu might work "out-of-the-box" if you got an HP laptop? Just a thought.

-teet

[Titus A Duxass]

I have a sweet little JVC MP-XP 3210DE running Dapper Beta with wireless.
Got it off ebay for a song, complete with external CD, long range battery and leather case.

[xmastree]

I like Toshibas. Some of their new one are gorgeous:
http://computer.zive.cz/files/obrazky/2005/9/qosmio/DSC05952.jpg (http://computer.zive.cz/h/computerTestcentrum/AR.asp?ARI=125891)


mmmmmm,

As for what I curently have, well it's a humble Toshiba Satellite 320.
P233/96MB/4GB running puppy linux. I tried ubuntu but it was just too slow. Five minutes just to boot, and that's not including loading the desktop, that's just to the login screen.

[TheMono]

Dell Inspiron 1150! Not a great computer, but incredible hardware support. Graphics card, an integrated Intel, works perfect with AIGLX + Compiz. Sound worked, everything just worked. Plus the PCMCIA wifi card I got worked perfectly as well, I installed Network Manager and immediately connected to my WPA home wireless network. My Palmtop setup was easier than in windows through Gpilot. I'm kinda off topic now, but I'm really a model story of Ubuntu hardware support...

[kigina]

Oops... saw the want in the title and voted before I saw the poll was asking a different question.

same

[RAV TUX]

I have been thinking about spending some money on a laptop, my budget is under $1000 and it would be great if I didn't have to spend that much. I was wondering if you would mind sharing if you have a laptop and if so, what it is. Do you like it? I would install Ubuntu on it so I am pretty flexible as to what architecture I use, although I want to avoid from PPC. Thanks in advance...

I really like the Fujitsu LifeBook T4210 Convertible Computer my wife just bought:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=213899&highlight=fujitsu



http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/5873/t4210anglecdoutstylus8odzw1.jpg



http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/7923/t4210rightangle8unjy7.jpg



http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/8348/t4210handusingtablet28rbet8.jpg


Here are the specs:

12.1" XGA TFT indoor/outdoor display with greater than 160° viewing angles

Intel® CoreTM Duo Processor T2500 (2 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)

2 GB DDR2 667 MHz SDRAM memory (1 GB x 2)

NoteL S-ATA 150, 5400 rpm shock-mounted 120 GB Hard Drive

Modular Dual-Layer Multi-Format DVD Writer

Internal modem, 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN, and Atheros Super AG® (802.11a/b/g) wireless LAN

Max. Battery Life: 6.5 hours with main battery. 11 hours with main and bay battery

Fujitsu Extended Service Plans, 3 years on all 3 below:

International Limited Warranty Extension
This plan extends the support and service offered during the original warranty period, including technical support. This plan begins immediately after your original warranty expires. (Not applicable for those products covered under a three-year warranty period, only available in the USA and Canada.)

Executive Mobile Service Plan¹
Designed specifically for on-the-go mobile professionals or those needing an extra measure of coverage, our Executive Mobile Service is an available upgrade providing on-location repair service within the contiguous United States. After a telephone call, to determine if a dispatch is necessary, a trained technician will be sent directly to your location, providing added convenience, increased system availability and quick repair.

Screen Damage Protection Plan
Accidental damage to a screen is not covered under our International Limited Warranty and the cost to replace a screen could surpass your entire purchase price. Screen Damage Protection offers you the "peace of mind" that screens may be replaced, up to twice during a one-year period. (USA and Canada only)


http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/5800/t4210fingerprintsensorho3.jpg

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/4495/t4210frontph4.jpg

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/5954/t4210functionbuttonsue0.jpg

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/6248/t4210tabletpartlyopennn9.jpg

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/7958/t4210tabletstylusedgexw5.jpg

[Stew2]

I've got an old IBM Thinkpad 600X. I got it on ebay over a year ago, great little websurfing/email machine, I use it more than my desktops :D

Regards,
Stew2

[Hanj]

I have an ECS G553:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/images/products/large/g553l.jpg
It was fairly cheap and is pretty easy to carry around. On Dapper, everything works perfectly, even the wlan card works out of the box. Only problem I have is suspend-to-ram, which worked before, but was broken by some upgrade. Now it only works 50% of the time :(

[Dinerty]

Dell Inspiron 9300 very nice lappy indeed

[cstudent]

I have an Acer Aspire 3500. It has worked very well with Breezy and now Dapper.

http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/images/inner_main_as3000.gif

http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/as3500.htm

[djsroknrol]

I have a IBM Thinkpad T21..800Mhz 128MB ram..running Breezy for the moment...getting ready to dist-upgrade to Dapper on it. I understand that the recomendation is 256MB, but I've also heard that it's because of the CD install...sorry, but a quick question for anyone with minimal RAM experience..could it be done?...otherwise, I'm hunting another 128MB simm...

[Thanol]

@djsroknrol I have an IBM Thinkpad a22e, which is almost exactly like a T21. How cool.

My cousin gave it to us after the hard-drive broke for the second time. It's a solid thing, except the battery lasts only 10 minutes.

[djsroknrol]

@djsroknrol I have an IBM Thinkpad a22e, which is almost exactly like a T21. How cool.

My cousin gave it to us after the hard-drive broke for the second time. It's a solid thing, except the battery lasts only 10 minutes.

Thanol..

I did some work for a gal on her laptop (Dell Inspiron) she wanted her usb wireless installed on it (I couldn't figure out why she couldn't do it herself until I saw the laptop...no cd-rom..haha)...5 minutes later, I installed the goodie thru another cd-rom on our intranet, and she paid me with the T21...:)

[fuscia]

i've got a system76 pangolin and i continue to be thrilled with it.

[BigDave708]

Not another Dell after reading this thread:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=225222

I do have a Dell laptop myself, but never use it because I burn myself when I put it on my lap after it's been on an hour! (seriously . . .)

[kadymae]

Okay, thanks. I am personally a sucker for apple design but I'm a little dissapointed with apple. They don't give you as much flexibility in the components that they use. I really like System 76 because they are Linux based. But then there is the issue of money, or lack therof. That is the main reason that brands such as IBM, Dell and so on appeal.

Dell starts out cheaper, but if you want a core-duo processor, I found out that almost always System76 is the cheaper way to go.

And I did my price comparisions through Dell's Education website.

[beercz]

I currently have an Acer 3201XCi. I am about to get a new one, probably an HP Compaq one - not sure yet though.

[mostwanted]

I have an ASUS V6J which is a very Linux friendly laptop. Bluetooth, wifi, 3D acceleration, card reader, scalable core duo, all things except suspend work great. And it looks great, has an aluminium finish with a brownish tint on the inside.

And it's very, very thin :)

http://www.agearnotebooks.com/images/15LCD/AsusV6V_Photos/ASUS_V6V-Right-top-600x335.jpg
http://www.agearnotebooks.com/images/15LCD/AsusV6V_Photos/ASUS_V6V-454x532.jpg

[K.Mandla]

I have a bunch of Dells, I've worked with some HPs and Compaqs, and an occasional oddball machine, like a CTX.

For what I've seen, the guts of the laptop are more important than the brand. (No snottiness intended. :) )

[Skia_42]

Thanks for all the responses, I regret my choice of words in the thread name but that's fine. Now I have sort of an idea of what people have and want.

[Johnsie]

I have an HP Ze4400. It's a few years old now and has a broken screen but it does the job when hooked up to a monitor ;-)

It has a big neon-orange Anarchy sign spraypainted on it. I'm not an anarchist, I just let my punk friend spray it on because we were bored one day. Ubuntu works out of the box with it in all areas, including the generic pcmia wlan adapter I put in it. That machine will never have windows on it again unless I install vmware server on it.

I have to say... apart from the screen cracking (my fault) HP computers seem to be very reliable.I try to make all my webservers HP based because I trust them to stay on.

I would like exactly the same computer with a fixed screen and maybe a few extra mhz :-)

[prizrak]

Got an Acer TravelMate C310
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834115216
Dapper works quite well out of the box. The only thing that required setting up was the tablet part aside from that even suspend and hibernate work ;)

[PingunZ]

Hp pavilion zd8000 :: 1 GB ram, 3.6 Ghz, 100 Gb hdd, x600 ati, widescreen ...

[John.Michael.Kane]

Linux friendly averatec 6100 amd64 15.4 screen 512mem 40gig drive sitting in closet. Hopefully to be converted to a firewall.

[dusu]

I'm running Breezy on an IBM X31. It's pure pleasure. Everything (everything :D ) is working perfectly. I'll upgrade to Dapper once I've made a backup !

P.S. Thanks to the Ubuntu team for making such a great distro.

[Danni]

Thinkpad T23. Everything just works with Dapper. All I need now is a wireless card for it and I'll be very happy.

[ahaslam]

I'm using a Packard Bell E6100 (http://support.packardbell.com/uk/item/?sn=251205530230&g=1400)
It was cheap and that was the only reason why I bought it. I knew nothing about computers 2 years ago and just wanted something to burn DVD's & browse the web. While it was capable of playing games that were a year or two old, the graphics drivers constantly let it down. Via took their sweet time making some decent MS drivers. Now that I'm on Linux, I'm I've got that problem again. 3D screensavers & games often crash the system due to buggy 3D support :(

I would like to have anything with 1g ram, 2g cpu & dedicated nvidia graphics.

Tony.

[jimrz]

ThinkPad T42...great running breezy and now quite noticably even better running dapper :D

[Skia_42]

I've noticed alot of people have tablet PC's, what are the advantages of Tablet PC's over normal laptops?

[bierpullen]

I have an Acer Aspire 1522 WLMi. It has worked very well with Warty, Breezy and now Dapper.





----------------------------------------
Acer laptop 1522, 528mb, AMD 64 3000, 64mb Nvidia.
http://www.antarctica-rbak.nl/ubuntu/acer_aspire.php

[mips]

I've noticed alot of people have tablet PC's, what are the advantages of Tablet PC's over normal laptops?

You can interact with a pen/stylus directly on the screen is one I can think of.

[mips]

My next laptop will be a IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad. Gonna cost a bit more but I don't think there are any better laptops out there at this time.

[jISh]

Dell Latitude CPx.
Works fine with Xubuntu!

[kadymae]

I have:

PowerBook "Pismo" g3/500/512

What do I want in a laptop?

I want a laptop that runs as cool as my Pismo, has a keyboard as good, and has a 6 hour battery life with wireless, 9-12 hours if you're using ethernet.

Hey, a girl can dream. :rolleyes:

[RAV TUX]

I've noticed alot of people have tablet PC's, what are the advantages of Tablet PC's over normal laptops?

Once you go Tablet or Convertible you realize that a normal laptop is old technology.

When my wife bought hers, she could have cared less for the pen/tablet function but after recieving it she loves the pen/tablet function and uses the Convertible in Tablet mode about 98% of the time.

I am in the market for a notebook computer but I may buy up to a Convertible. I have done a lot of research and it appears Fujitsu has the top of the line models out in dependablity and technology.

With that said, they are not cheap by any means.

when I think of Mac for instance I would be buying down if I went with them. They have a great OS but I don't think I would like the restrictions on my freedom they bring. They have yet to produce a Convertible Computer that would even come close to Fujitsu.

The Fujitsu Convertible are completely compatible with Ubuntu, a little tweaking to get the pen/tablet function working 100% without flaw but Ubuntu and Fujitsu are great together.

[Compucore]

I just got a laptop use last week myself its a IBM thinkpad I series Celery 500MHZ, 128megs of ram and a 6 gig hard drive. With networking card that I had from a previous laptop. Works nicely even though the battery is not that good. But it does the job anyways. And I can bring it anywhere else that I need to go with it. The only thing that I don't really like about it is thebuilt in 56k modems. Its one of those Winmodems which I depise so much over here.

Compucore

[augied]

I have an IBM certified used Thinkpad T21. The pre-lenovo thinkpads are just about the best you can get (from what I've heard, the lenovo ones are crap.) You can get a used T4x from IBM for about $700.

[Compucore]

The one that I had mentioned the specs from is a thinkpad I series 1161-250 Bought it for about $100 Canadian. And it was at a used computer store not too far away from me. There is a small crack where the back of the TFT is. But I can easily fix that with something and reinforce it as well.

Compucore


I have an IBM certified used Thinkpad T21. The pre-lenovo thinkpads are just about the best you can get (from what I've heard, the lenovo ones are crap.) You can get a used T4x from IBM for about $700.

[beercz]

I currently have an Acer 3201XCi. I am about to get a new one, probably an HP Compaq one - not sure yet though.

Got my new laptop now:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF06b/21675-283229-283229-283229-12434650-12397724-75317639.html?jumpid=oc_R1002_UKENC-001_HP%20Compaq%20nx7400%20Notebook%20PC&lang=en&cc=uk

Removed Windows XP and installed dapper on it - went without a hitch - everything works right out of the box. :-)

[Sandlst]

Running an Alienware MX7700 here, the hardrives(or maybe the hardrive controller?) is not very linux friendly, the only distrobutions that detect them at all are Ubuntu, Gentoo, and BSD-varients. I bought it last summer, and the price was a bit much ($2,800) and to my discontent, I see very comparable laptops today going for <$1000 easily, but oh well. The specs/hardware for my laptop are:
Processor: 3.00 Gigahertz Pentium4 Hyperthreading
RAM: 1 Gig
Graphics Card: 256mb Nvidia GeforceGo6800
Soundcard: Realtek ALC 880
Razer Copperhead Mouse
Belkin 54g Wireless PCMCIA Network Card

[Linuturk]

I have a Toshiba R15-S822.

A quick install of wacom-tools got my pen working (without right click or the eraser)

I'm disappointed in the lack of support for tablet pc features.

[eriqk]

Have: Toshiba Tecra 8000.
Want: Something with a little bit more oomph. Not much, just enough.

Groet, Erik

[Bragador]

No options for Thinkpads ? pff

I have Ubuntu running on my Thinkpad R31 and it works almost flawlessly.

The ONLY thing that happens rarely is my mouse cursor going crazy when I use the little red joystick on my keyboard. I now use a usb mouse and everything works fine now.

So if people were wondering, the answer is "yes". You can go ahead and safely install Ubuntu on thinkpads.

Go!

Do it !

[Brunellus]

I'm going to post about the laptop I want:

It would be small--one Kg or less, thin, and of reasonable size (13inches/ 330mm). It would have no built-in optical drive, but could boot from USB.

It would boot from solid-state media. Ideally, a 20GB flash drive...but since Ubuntu can be made to run on much less space, 15 or even 12 GB would be acceptable.

It would use low power components that need no active cooling fans. Ideally, I'd go for a transmeta crusoe or efficeon.

It would have a mini-pci wireless adaptor with a decent antenna. The chipset would of course be one well-supported by Linux.

It would be big enough to carry, by default, a large battery, enough to run the machine for six honest hours.

extra bonus if the BIOS/firmware/whatever allowed it to be mounted as a USB mass storage device when it's powered down.

The laptop I'm describing is possible with components that exist today---it would be reasonably affordable, reasonably capable, extremely portable/usable, and have almost a full working day's battery life. It's just a shame that the marketplace has begun to treat laptops more as desktop-replacements rather than as proper portables.

People expect too much out of their portable devices; they get all the 'power' they want, provided they're tied closely to an electrical power source. Wasn't the whole point of the laptop to be disconnected and productive everywhere?