[ltp] Purchasing New Laptop

[Derek A. Rogillio]

On Wed, 2003-07-02 at 14:48, 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.

Well, you're probably going to get a biased answer on this list ...

I have a personal T40p and a work-issued D800.  Both of them run Linux
fine once you iron out all of the drivers.  They both have very new
hardware and will force you to go to the bleeding edge for kernels and
drivers.

With that said, I think the T40 is a much nicer laptop.  Overall build
quality is better and I prefer the size of the IBM.  It's deeper but
thinner than the Dell.  The keyboard on the IBM also has much better
tactile response.  There are a lot of little things, but all of them
added up make me happy that I spent my money on another IBM rather than
go the Dell route.

There are only two things I really wish I had in/on my T40: a Windows
key, and a video card from Nvidia.  The ATI card is good, but I've found
the drivers to be flaky when really stressing them (read: games).

-- 
Derek Rogillio
dereklist (at) rogillio (dot) net