[ltp] Purchasing New Laptop

[Joel Ebel]

Sukhjeet Batth wrote:

> I am interested in purchasing a new laptop.  I'm considering an IBM
> Thinkpad T40, Dell Inspiron 8500, and Dell Latitude D800.  Does anybody
> know if one of the ones I'm considering is significantly better than the
> others for running Linux?  I plan to throw on Redhat 9 and may try
> Slackware eventually.  Thanks in advance for the information.
> 
> Sukhjeet
> 


I considered all the ones you mention, and I settled on the T40, as 
evidenced by me being on this list.  Most of the hardware in both will 
be fine.  The Dell 8500 is not pentium-M based, and so the chipset 
hardware is currently better supported, but mainstream support for the 
pentium-M stuff is on it's way.  If you want the best 3D support, then 
the Dells with the Nvidia graphics are better.  If you want to use 
internal wireless at all, you should get the IBM.  The Dells use 
chipsets unsupported by linux.  The T40 will work wirelessly with either 
the cisco card, or soon, the IBM dual band card.  Not really a linux 
issue, but the T40 is, in my opinion, a much nicer feeling laptop.  It's 
smaller, thinner, and lighter.

Joel