Re: need a recommendation on a good laptop

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 12:05:41AM -0700, samuel yibabie wrote:
> which laptop brand do u recommend me and why? i need your usual
> helpful recommendations.

Brand is mostly irrelevant.  The chipsets in the laptop are what
matter most.

Your best bet is going to be pretty much any Centrino notebook.  The
wireless is going to work right out of the box on most Linux
distributions (if not today, then in a few months).  The video works
with open-source drivers.  Everything else should just work too.

Celeron-based notebooks are a *bad* idea.  The performance is
horrible, they suck *way* too much power, and they run too hot.  P4
notebooks aren't much better.

The AMD Sempron and Athlon64/Turion64 notebooks are all great if Linux
compatibility isn't a concern.  Since it is a concern, you have to be
a little careful.  At worst, you'll end up with VESA-only (completely
non-accelerated) video and wireless that only works with ndiswrapper.
Unfortunately, I think best case right now is going to be video that
works with a non-open-source driver and wireless that can easily be
replaced with a $35 (at our store) Intel IPW2200 mini-PCI card.

I'd love to get into the business of selling Linux-friendly 64-bit
notebooks, but I haven't found one that I like all that well yet...  :-/

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-3000             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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