[Wlug] Laptop recommendations anyone?

[Jared Greenwald]

I've had some problems in the past with wifi hardware.  I had one
laptop (Compaq Evo N600c) where the wifi driver worked, but is not
maintained and only available from svn (orinoco_usb).  My newest
laptop that I got last week (Dell D620) is too new for the driver to
have been well tested (ipw3945) and I'm only getting about 20K/sec
throughput (vs my normal 180K/sec).  Its a good laptop other than this
one issue - and since the driver is maintained by Intel directly I
imagine that it won't be too long before this is fixed.

Needless to say, one thing I would recommend is finding a laptop with
wireless hardware that has a driver that's well tested and well
supported.

You might be better off just buying from a place that pre-installs
Linux.  http://www.pcsforeveryone.com has a Thinkmate Z33A that they
will install Fedora Core 5 or Suse 10 on for no extra charge.  Also
http://linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html has some custom built
Linux notebooks and offer a variety of distro choices.

-Jared

On 8/11/06, Stephen C. Daukas <scd at daukas.com> wrote:
> I forgot to bring this up at the cookout last night...
>
> I have decided to purchase a new laptop (a first for me - always used
> older equipment) and was wondering if anyone had recommendations for a
> model that plays well with Linux.  I'm not interested in a laptop with
> the latest whiz-bang features, just the basics of wireless networking,
> ability to play/burn CDs/DVDs, enough horsepower & disk to run
> forecasting models, GIS, database, etc., and a battery that will last
> for several hours.  (My guess is any laptop these days would be
> sufficient.)  I want to avoid having to add drivers or other support for
> some whiz-bang hardware when something "vanilla" would work just as well
> for me, and I would prefer a distro that supports the various standard
> laptop features (e.g., power management) and typical peripherals like
> DVDs/movies, Burning CDs, etc., "out of the box".  Again, this is
> probably a non-issue, but there could be a laptop using hardware known
> to be problematic (remember "winmodems"?)...
>
> I use several apps that only run on windows (probably forever), so
> another first for me will be dual-boot. I have done this before on
> others' systems, but I mention this just in case there is a awareness of
> issues with certain laptop models.
>
> Anyway, thanks in advance for your help!
>
> Steve
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