Changes at my day job (we have a big merger being finalized), has me in
the market for a new laptop.
They may require me to only run the approved XP build on the system they
provide.
I do not know if they will fund another unit for me or not, so I am
looking to go cheap. Here is what I am looking for:
Runs Centos (duh!)
Supports Suspend to memory as well as to disk.
Bootable from USB devices, e.g. USB CDdrive, SD card, etc.
12" LCD, ie. a small unit that can be used on a plane!
Good battery life, 2nd battery an option (min 4hr battery time, perfer 8hr).
Swappable drives (preferably not requing a screw driver as my old
Portege or a non-findable drive carrier as my HP nc4010).
Built in Ethernet, and 2 USB 2.0 ports
miniPCI wireless (external antenna options would be nice!)
Eraser-head mouse pointer (IBM thinkpad-style), optional addtional
touchpad (I hate touchpads for D&D.
Bluetooth would be nice, but own many Bluetooth USB tokens.
Don't need weight, power-draw of a CD/DVD drive, got a USB one when needed.
Did I say light? I will be having to drag at least 2 laptops on planes
all the time now.
I dislike Dells, am OK with IBM (but it's not IBM any more!), Toshiba
Porteges are old friends, and HP Compaq nc4000s....
So who has what working?????
> Changes at my day job (we have a big merger being finalized), has me in > the market for a new laptop.I use and enjoy an older HP nc8000. Solid laptop IMHO, but doesn't quite meet your requirements. :) I'm curious if you found anything though? Ray
Ray Van Dolson wrote:>> Changes at my day job (we have a big merger being finalized), has me in >> the market for a new laptop. >> > > I use and enjoy an older HP nc8000. Solid laptop IMHO, but doesn't > quite meet your requirements. :) > > I'm curious if you found anything though?Thursday, I am swinging by Corporate (my last visit there was 4 years ago) and they are going to give me a second machine for corporate use. Don't know what it will be, but I am not suppose to swap its drives out and I continue to use this HP Compaq nc4010 as my Linux workhorse. But I am keeping my eyes out to see what might be available.
Johnny Tan wrote:> Robert Moskowitz wrote: >> Don't know what it will be, but I am not suppose to swap its drives >> out and I continue to use this HP Compaq nc4010 as my Linux workhorse. > > Robert: I'm also looking for an ultralight notebook to bring to > datacenters with me. The nc4010 sounds pretty good (just looked it up > now, had not heard of it before). What is it that you don't like about > it?I pretty much love my nc4010. I got it May, '05. It has the 'most recent' bios on it... I have used it in plane seats that were very cramp. Things I do not like: The drive has to go into a drive carrier. I could only find ONE company in the US selling it and it cost $50. This way I could swap easily between 2 drives. Taking off the screws from a carrier and switching drives, putting screws back in, is not something you want to do on an airplane.. Battery life could be better. With the external battery, I get 4 - 6 hours depending on what I am doing. Cooling is a problem (but this is common with notebooks). I had Linux shut down this noon do to overheating: Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 kernel: ACPI: Critical trip point Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 kernel: Critical temperature reached (113 C), shutting down. Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 kernel: Critical temperature reached (45 C), shutting down. Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 shutdown[5636]: shutting down for system halt Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 shutdown[5637]: shutting down for system halt Ouch. Oh, I use a piece of toe molding as a notebook 'stand'. It provides just the right angle for the keyboard, allows for some airflow under the unit for cooling, and was CHEAP (had it in my junk wood barrel from a home improvement project). Don't need it when I have the external battery atttached. No CD/DVD. OK, I lug along a USB CD/DVD for when I need one. Only one miniPCI. What do you want there: 802.11 or Bluetooth (thus I have a USB dongle for bluetooth). No external antenna option. Wonder how this will work with an 802.11n miniPCI; going to have to ask this at the 802 meeting come July.... The 2 USB connectors are so close that you can't plug a typical dongle in directly. Oh and Linux reports finding 3 USB hubs, a 3 port, a 2 port, and a 5 port. Huh? I have not gotten the internal SD card reader working in Linux. Yesterday, I saw some comments about a card reader on an IBM thinkpad wrt getting it working again after coming out of suspend, so maybe there is hope. Have not gotten the internal Modem working. I had tried the WinModem stuff, I did get some tips, I need to revisit this. Suspend to memory does not work 'out of the box' Don't click on the System>Suspend option... I am still struggling with Suspend2. I built a nice large swap partition to Hibernate to the drive to make drive swapping easier.... So it is an older box. When I started with Linux there was not anything out there about putting Linux on this unit. I need to start a page with what works here.... If I can find something newer and better and cheap, I will grab it. Otherwise, this dog hunts.
Just spoke with one of my colleagues about IBM. x31 is a steal and everything 'works' He is running Gentoo on his x31. Don't touch the x41. Of course x60, "It's a F*****G IBM". Well he's an old army NCO... Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:> On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 at 12:01pm, Johnny Tan wrote > >> I've been seriously considering the Thinkpad X60s series as my top >> choice. The specs look great, but I'm trying to find more detailed >> reviews from an actual user (like you did for the nc4010). > > I've got a Z61t, which is somewhat similar (I believe), and love it. > I'm running FC6 on it, and just about everything works. Video (intel) > worked out of the box (including the stupid 3D desktop effects). The > ipw3945 wireless required some tweaking (not much), but works up to > and including WPA2. Suspend/resume worked out of the box, but sucked > a lot more power than it should -- changing the scripts to unload the > USB modules before suspending fixed that. And the SD card reader > worked briefly with some kernel versions, but has stopped working > again (and I haven't bothered looking into it). Oh, and the > integrated webcam has never worked. The fingerprint reader can be > made to work, but, again, I haven't bothered. > >> From a hardware standpoint, the Thinkpads feel very solid. I have a >> user > with an X60 (running XP), and she loves it. The thing is definitely > tiny and light. >