Another Linux Laptop?
I purchased my main laptop (I have both a laptop and a desktop at the moment) almost 12 months ago from Sams Club, where I walked away with a demo HP Pavilion 6008cl model for around $700. I thought I got a bargain but then spent almost a week attempting to get linux to run on it in the manner that I needed it to.
The machine’s ATI graphics card was not yet supported under Linux and other issues led me to reinstall Windows XP on it, and use it as a regular laptop, and not a development machine. I am back on the prowl for a new machine which can serve as a replacement for my desktop (speed and power) and a replacement for my laptop (lighter, portable).
My goals for a new Linux laptop are nearly unreachable, but it appears that Dell happens to have most of what I am looking for at the moment. I started looking about a week ago, hitting up the vendors that I have used in the past. This includes Sony, IBM (now selling under Lenovo), HP, and Sager (through PowerNotebooks).
Sony laptops always have wonderful screens, but I’m looking for something that will outperform my desktop (an AMD X2 3800 with 2GB of RAM), with a decent wide-screen display (more than 1200x800), and an nVidia chipset …. all supported with minimal tweaking under linux. Most of the Sony laptops I’ve looked at have no linux support, and no one claiming that they’ve actually gotten it working under linux.
IBM (Lenovo) is much more linux friendly, and has machines that will meet or beat my specifications, but at a significant cost. I can easily spend $3,000 on a decent Lenovo laptop. I’m hoping to stay as close to $1500 as possible.
Having used HP for a year, I’m going to stay away from them. The machine that I have is very consumer-grade, and it is heavy, hot, and the battery life is not great. I will admit that I haven’t done a great job looking at their business-laptop products, so I intend to spend some time today doing this.
Sager laptops are wonderful, if what I need is a bulky laptop replacement. The last one that I had contained four fans underneath it, and when I turned it on, my wife thought that a jet had landed. They have very few products that weigh less than ten (10 lbs) pounds, and I would like something that will not break me while I head through the airport.
I’ll post back later as I narrow down the search even further, but it would appear that Dell happens to have some of the best supported linux laptops around, and their pricing is hard to beat. Right now, I’m looking at the Inspiron 6400 / E1505, the 520, the 820, and potentially the 640m models.
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