good laptop?

[threadhead]

hi!

i want to buy a laptop.
my problem is that there are many good vendors out there that sell their laptops. i dont know whichone i should pick.
maybe one of you already has a laptop and/or knows what a good one is for my needs.


it should have the following things:

15" screen
40GB HDD or bigger
about 2 GHz of processor speed
512 MB RAM
disk drive/cdrom & dvddrive and burner
1024x768 minimum
integrated 56K modem/ethernet connection
PCMCIA slots

thank you!

[pilotgi]

From the specs you listed, I can see you aren't considering a Mac laptop, even though your avatar is "unix" which is what OSX is based on. Why not?

You didn't say whether you were going to install Linux on this laptop. If you are, check with the distro of your choice about laptop compatiblity.

[scinerd]

I have a dell c640 and it works fine with redhat 9. I think it meets all the specs you wanted. Most of the Dell laptops that I have had have worked fine with redhat.

[Chadduss]

If you are looking to install Linux on the laptop I've heard IBM's laptop's have the best support for Linux

[ricstr]

Have a look at these asus laptops:
http://xtops.de/xtops_asus.html

[Kairo]

I have a Toshiba 1955-S805, and so far I don't have a complaint about it. The only trouble I have had, has been from Nvidia's drivers. Running Mandrake 9.1 on it atm, and so far so good. You can check out toshiba's comps at http://www.shoptoshiba.com Good hunting.

[moojuece]

i have a ibm thinkpad a22m.....never had a single problem with *nix compatablility run slack 9 and freebsd5.1 and everything works....except the winmodem but i have never even tried on that so dont know how it would work....

[threadhead]

thanks for your views on that.

ive heard about the centrino feature of the new intel processors and that is has WLAN "built in" or something.
is it worth buying a laptop with centrino techonology?

[psychomin]

well, actually i just purchased mine at circuitcity,
they were having 300 rebate. it's around 900 bucks after rebate.
i got hp ze4420us, which has
athlon xp-m 2200+ 256 ram and ati 64mb shared
40gb hard drive, combo drive,
which is pretty fast, i dont know if it runs linux yet.
but this labtop doesn't have neither usb2.0 or firewire, which is a bit dissapoinment. but it still has 2 usb 1.1 ports.
i think i'ts great for a labtop that's under a grand... you should check this out.

oh yeah. i forgot to mention, it has everything that u want as you posted above. but only 256 ram. for the ram, i think it's better for you to upgrade to 512 or more later by urself, you will save money that way. it uses one 256 ram, so there's an extra slot left, so... you know...

[threadhead]

you can check out if your laptop is linux compatible on http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/

[joelc]

not bad specs for the new machine psychomin, except for one thing. 256 is an okay amount of ram, but do you realize you really only have 192 on that machine? 64mb of your ram is allocated to the video card. Otherwise, very nice.

[psychomin]

yup, i do... but it still runs fast... not as fast as my desktop though...
anyways... i plan to add 512 mb later

[andycrofts]

..if you're gonna run Linux on it, I think your spec's rather too good!
I run Red Hat 9 on an IBM T20, 256Mb ram, gawd knows how fast (fast enough for me!), and one thing I particularly like is the fact I can change the CD player for a second battery. Awesome, gives me about 4 hours' use.
In fact, I was using it a lot, and I just close the lid to put it in Standby mode. Travelled from Finland to Philadelphia to meet some folks from Cingular. Showed them it, then for fun did an 'uptime' - something like 20 days...
Sound, standby mode just worked 'out of the can'. DVD's fine.
Love it to bits - I'm using it right now. If I lost it, I'd just go find another..
Save ya money, get a used one!
(but get the hard drive and hardware passwords!!!)

[Radar]

Dell inspiron 8500 is good. 15" WUXGA 1900X1200 default screen res. 60G hd etc etc. I hear their good running Linux too. I run linux only on servers ATM (sild my desktop)

[Arcane_Disciple]

I have a Dell Inspiron 2650c and it works fine for me. Mine has a 1.6 processor and only 256 Mb of ram, but for all I use it for it works fine. I downgraded the processor when I bought it to save money. I pretty much use this one only for programming and homework.

Over the 7 months its been in use, Mandrake 9.1, Slackware 8.0, Red Hat 8.0 thru 9.0 have been on it and no problems.

[threadhead]

so dell has obviously good linux support. ;)

[Sepero]

I don't recommend Macintosh:
reason: If they could have became a monopoly first... they would have (The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend)

I was planning on getting a laptop from rjtech.com myself, but now I think I'm gonna get a Sharp Zarus(handheld) instead.

vvvv-Check the links in my sig-vvvv

[alan79]

I would agree go for the zaurus instead... I looked at lappys for ages until I found out about the z and bought one two weeks later. It does everything I wanted from a lappy and costed a 1/4 going on holiday with the money saved.:)

what abot the z tablet model?

[threadhead]

do you know of any other good laptop manufacturers?

i first wanted to buy a toshiba but then read some reviews about the series i wanted to buy. and they were obviously NOT good.
thnx