Laptop recomendations

[alan]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu wrote:

> On Sat, 2007-03-10 at 16:17 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> Also, know that Dell provides NO HELP to the linux community, in
>> contrast to HP. At least, as far as PDA's go. I'm sorry that I
>> purchased a x50v and swore that it would be the last of my Dell
>> hardware. But I was stupid and gave them my money for this lappy. I'd
>> suggest pressuring Dell by NOT buying their equipment.
>
> I have a Dell Latitude D800.  It works quite well, except for a few
> buttons.  But, then I don't need them anyway, so no loss.  The only
> thing I don't like is the 1920x1200 res LCD.  I thought it would be
> nice, but the resolution is too high for the 15.4" LCD.

I have a 1920x1200 display on my HP.  Its main purpose is to make people 
drool.  I actually like having the resolution that tiny.  I just wish that 
they would have put more video ram in ti.  As for the buttons, there is a 
mapping utility in X that I used to map them to applications in Gnome. 
Worked pretty well.  (Still don't use them, but I could map them.)

> Though my Dell laptop experience has been good, I'm going to be getting
> a business grade HP or Lenovo laptop next time.  I'm leaning heavily
> towards HP at the moment.

The thing that convinced me to buy an HP was their 3 year warrenty.  They 
will fix any damage to the laptop during that period.  I have had to use 
it only twice, but it was well worth it.  (Once for a dead power brick. 
Once when I got the PCMCIA ejector button caught on my laptop bag and 
ripped it out.)  I would recommend buying an extra hard drive as well.  HP 
will reformat and reinstall Windows on your machine every time it goes in 
for warrenty.  (And not even an updated and patched copy, but the 
original disk image!)

As for device support...  I have gotten pretty much everything working on 
my HP.  The Winmodem is an unknown, since I do not use it. (As well as 
having a very good PCMCIA modem back when they made such things.)  There 
is also a memory adapter that I just need firmware for.  Of course, I 
bought it two and a half years ago, so it has had time for the drivers to 
catch up with it...

-- 
"Invoking the supernatural can explain anything, and hence explains nothing."
                   - University of Utah bioengineering professor Gregory Clark