laptop recommendations

[Jerry Feldman]

On Wednesday 02 November 2005 12:09 pm, Kalyan Vaidyanathan wrote:
> Hi,
>   I am looking to buy a laptop that can be reasonably used as a dev
> machine. I'm thinking atleast 1GB RAM and 80 GB hard disk.  Now
> questions: 1. Any recommended brands that are better and more resilient
> for dev use and longer lasting battery life
I would probably recommend Thinkpad, HP/Compaq Presario, or some of the HP 
Pavilion laptops. HP does certify some of their laptops for Linux. I do not 
recommend Gateway. Some Dell laptops run fine with Linux. 
Bottom line is Thinkpad or HP or Dell - look at price/performance/support. 
My personal experience is that phone support from all of the above vendors 
suck, and you are likely to get offshore support. Note that in many cases, 
some of the local computer stores have some sales w/rebates that beat 
online process. (Note that I have a lot of good experience with some HP 
laptops. My boss seems to need to get a new one every year). My 5-year old 
Presario generally goes to Linux meetings, is used for presentations at 
Northeastern, on trips, at work, and has fallen off tables. The only 
problem is that when it fell of a table it was plugged into the AC adaptor 
so I now use a rubber band. 
> 2. Any preferences for Intel vs AMD chips.
AMD 64-bit chips are faster than the Intel EM64T chips today and probably 
will maintain that lead for about a year, maybe longer. 

I can probably get you a list of HP laptop model numbers that are certified 
for Linux. 

Note that for development, you get many more tools for free on Linux than on 
other systems. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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