Amazing Ubuntu Laptop!

[kiv]

I just managed to get a great bargain!

I have been looking for a laptop for sometime now. i was planning to keep my Ubuntu box and buy a cheap laptop to install Ubuntu on also. I trawled the net looking for the ideal laptop.. and I nearly settled on a cheap dell or acer; either used or new.

Then I found the refurbished section of www.currys.co.uk. I was looking through not expecting to find much and then i found a "Philips X58":

Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 gb ram, 120gb hdd and an intel 950 chipset.

Costing only £399.99.

I searched the web for its proper price and found that pc world are selling that laptop for £650.

Then the hunt for the promo codes began! I found a £30 off £400 promo code - http://www.hotukdeals.com/vouchers-static.html
So i added a laptop bag and usb drive to the basket and got these for free!

I cannot wait to drag vista out on its ar$e and install ubuntu!

[Paul820]

Not a bad price at all, nice find. I never knew currys had a refurbished section and i bet bargains like that don't come up very often.

[Canis familiaris]

What a bargain! :guitar:

[kiv]

Yeah it's great.. actually there are quite a few good laptops in there.. they still have more Philips X58s too.

Just go to the homepage and click "refurbished" under the pic of the laptop.

Each laptop comes with new packaging.. all accessories and a 12 month warranty!

Can't ask for more than that!

[jgrabham]

I searched the web for its proper price and found that pc world are selling that laptop for £650.


PC world? The proper price? Try the proper price +30% :]

[kiv]

PC world? The proper price? Try the proper price +30% :]

haha yeah.. but still .. a bargain!

[aysiu]

Isn't your title a little misleading? The laptop is a Vista laptop that you're going to install Ubuntu on, right? Not really a Ubuntu laptop.

[DoctorMO]

Yes I was looking forward to reading about how curries had started selling ubuntu laptops... but then again curries and pc world are the same company (Dixons Group)

[kiv]

Well its not too hard to wipe vista .. my point was that its a laptop worth £650 for £400 that is entirely suited for ubuntu.

Perhaps it was slightly misleading.. I did not mean to confuse!

[weatherman]

are you sure that's the price? seems to be £649.98 now :confused:

[kiv]

I'm positive that was the price ... I received the laptop yesterday :D

Look in the refurb computer section of www.currys.co.uk

[kiv]

It looks like they are out of stock of the Philips X86 now.

Look out for more bargains there though!

[kiv]

As I mentioned my laptop arrived yesterday!

I was at work and received a phone call form my dad telling me that my laptop was waiting for me at my local DHS courier. I raced up after work and collected the HUGE box, which I struggled to get out of the door with!
I got to my car and it would not fit..so i had to unpack the large box; inside which was a smaller box, a laptop bag and a usb drive.

After this I raced home and unpacked my Philips X58. I connected it to the mains and pressed the power button. A mass of lovely blue lights came on and Vista appeared asking me for a user name and location.

Then my desktop appeared and I recoiled at its non-ubuntuness! However I'm used to using vista as I was a beta tester & TBED engineer for M$.. but I have been going clean for 6 months - single booting ubuntu on my pc. *yummy*

SO as it stands.. I have Ubuntu Studio on my PC and Vista on my laptop. I'm liking the laptops newness & I thought having both OS's might be a good idea.. as I will be using the laptop to do alot of windows object orientated coding when I study Computing at uni in September.

So yeah basically I dunno what to do and need convincing!

Either way I'm chuffed with my Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM, 120gb hard drive laptop for £370 :D

[bonzodog]

I got myself an Acer Travelmate 4200WLMi, with all intel chipsets including wireless and graphics.
It's an Intel core single (centrino), it said on the box that it came with an 80GB HDD, but on looking at the disk partitioner on it, I found it to be 120GB (!???!!).

It has 512MB of RAM, and they had put Vista Home Premium on it, but I used an Acer backup tool to back up the factory default image, then just left a restore partition on the drive of 6GB. This was for the 'hardware warranty'.
Vista ran like a dog on it, and it took ages to do anything -- apparently, this is default behaviour for systems with less then 1GB of RAM. So, it had to go -- it had taken it 3 HOURS to merely complete the set-up and install of Vista and the Acer toolkit.

So, I decided to scrap Vista altogether, and put feisty on it, which is really fast on it, and the wireless card actually works better under Feisty than it did in Vista (it has a better signal strength.)

*Everything* worked out of the box in Feisty -- that was one of the reasons I went for an all intel laptop, as Linux is good with Intel gear. That included the Synaptics touchpad and Widescreen 1280x800 display. Even the function-key brightness settings work for the monitor.

[Dimitriid]

Ive had a hard time finding a laptop I like: ATI is out of the question, and I also do not want an Intel graphics solutions cause:

a) I intend to do some gaming
b) Intel processors are not for me, I want AMD based.

So it needs to be AMD+ Nvidia which normally is getting increasingly uncommon. I could compromise and get an intel processor but intel or ATI graphics is out of the question, it must be Nvidia.

So ive been looking and looking and there is some nice options but not for the right price ( I want something on the 600-800 range ). Wireless compatibility is not an issue ( id just get an USB adapter if I really cannot get the integrated one to work, for what 20 or 30 extra bucks? ) but just a nice processor ram and graphics combo.

Ill guess Ill keep searching but if anybody knows something like that let me know.