[Gllug] London laptop recommendations

[James Roberts]

We sell laptops to our clients (not general retail - this is not an 
offer! Our prices are not competitive with the big boys). That means we 
have dealt with a lot of returns. So my view of laptops is coloured by 
our experience of the service side.

So:

- we avoid Acer and Asus. The machines are good. Our experience of the 
service however is that it is appalling (and we're dealers!). We no 
longer sell either of these notebook ranges.

- HP had *used* to be the best service anywhere until two years ago. We 
are no longer selling HP except by customer demand.

- IBM is now Lenovo but the service has not so far changed - it is 
excellent.

- Toshiba service is good but not as good as IBM

- have not tried Sony service yet (but only 4 machines sold).

We do not have experience of selling other makes of Notebooks.

IBMs are built like the proverbial brick house of relief, and have 
consistently the best keyboards for typing IMHO. Sony are cleverest 
fastest lightest and expensive-ist.

Now, to Linux on laptops:

I run Debian but have also tested with various Ubuntus and SuSE

Re: Debians

- I have found that IBM and Sony end up with more working out-of-the 
install than the rest. This is on about 5 sets of installs on different 
machines (2xSony). I.E. extra keys for brightness/volume lamp etc 
working without config on Etch

- I have built up two quite different Toshibas with both Sarge and Etch 
with no problems except have not bothered sorting or testing hardware 
hibernate to disk

- Various HP notebooks have worked well enough with Sarge and Etch 
(again can't speak to suspend of any sort).

I have found that any K/Ubuntu works about as well as Etch - better than 
Sarge - (until I change anything in the configuration whereupon it 
breaks, I sigh reformat and install Etch).

Almost exactly the same applies with SuSE: it tends to support most 
things out of the box but be rather fragile. It may of course be me, as 
with Ubuntu...

The models you mention are built on OEM chassis. They have various OEM 
bits added depending on what they could get cheap that day. This does 
not mean that there is anything wrong with them - they may run *nix well 
(or not). But it is possible to find 5 machines all with the same part 
number and spec but different parts. So Linux support is undefined.

Your kilometrage may vary.

JR

Peter Childs wrote:
> 
> 
> On 04/06/07, *Mike Brodbelt* <mike at coruscant.demon.co.uk 
> <mailto:mike at coruscant.demon.co.uk>> wrote:
> 
>     Nik Clayton wrote:
>      > Hi all
>      >
>      > [ not subscribed, I'd appreciate a cc: on replies ]
>      >
>      > Can anyone recommend a laptop for running Kubuntu that'll be easy to
>      > obtain in London, *or*, a store in London that'll be happy if I
>     turn up
>      > with a Kubuntu live CD and try and use it on their display models?
>      >
>      > I'm after a laptop with:
>      >
>      > * A display resolution of at least 1024x768
>      > * Battery life > 3 hours
>      > * Working suspend to RAM
>      > * Suspend to disk would be nice
>      > * Processor speed of 1.7GHz or greater
>      > * Not much heavier than 2.5Kg (5.7lbs)
>      > * Bonus points if it supports a docking station, so I'm not
>      >    repeatedly plugging/unplugging power cables every morning
>      > * Trackpad (I don't get on with nipple mice)
> 
>     Thinkpad X60/X61 should cover all those except the trackpad, I think. My
>       X40 certainly does, and I'm pretty sure the X60/X61 has support
>     that's
>     as good. They also have Intel graphics and Intel wireless if you get the
>     right model, so no messing around with binary only drivers.
> 
> 
> I've been looking at Laptops too, I've been looking at Novatech, Revo 
> Max, does anyone have any experience of if and how well this works with 
> Linux, I've been recommended it by someone who uses windows. I've also 
> never done wifi under linux so I guess I'm going to need to find the how 
> to... I've also had quite good experiences of Novatech in the past.
> 
> http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/nbrange.html?RVM
> 
> Peter.
> 
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