[Gllug] Seeking some laptop advice

[James Hawtin]

On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 07:44:05PM +0100, lesleyb at herlug.org.uk wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 02:01:36PM +0100, Phil Reynolds wrote:
> > I am on the verge of getting personal laptops for both members of the  
> > household. I am mainly waiting on my partner deciding whether he would  
> > like a laptop proper or a netbook, and have a reasonable shortlist of  
> > models.
> > 
> > He would be wanting Windows on his, more than likely, and I will want  
> > Debian on mine. I would like them to be identical, hardware-wise, in  
> > the interest of troubleshooting.
> > 
> > Wired and wireless connectivity is essential, and built-in 3G,  
> > Bluetooth and webcam would be nice but not essential. To have them in  
> > different colours would also be nice. Looking at a minimum of 160GB  
> > storage on each machine.
> > 
> > I have looked at various retailers and direct suppliers. Dell seem to  
> > have everything we want at a reasonable price apart from putting  
> > Windows on almost everything, or I could get EeePCs. There are other  
> > nice models around but not much information as regards how well they  
> > might work with Debian. I have checked John Lewis, PC World and Scan,  
> > mainly for ideas.
> > 
> > Are there any readily-available machines that I might have overlooked?  
> > The sort of thing available directly or by going to a retailer  
> > (anywhere in the London area or a little beyond) would be better than  
> > something I might have to wait for. If there is a chance of a discount  
> > for buying two machines, that would be good too.
> > 
> > I am looking to buy the machines early in September, so of course  
> > things could have changed by then. However, if I get my new work  
> > laptop before the beginning of August, it will be more urgent.
> I second the Dell option.  My Precision M65 is at the end of its three year 
> warranty period but I have successfully changed the keyboard after an argument 
> with the dog, upgraded the hard drive and the RAM.  All you need 
> is the right screwdriver.  I have the 9-cell battery which gives me good battery 
> life.  I had to replace the original Dell battery pack after two and half years.
> I got a generic part at about ??55 against the Dell offering at ??133 and there
> doesn't seem to be any problem with it.  I don't expect it to last two and half 
> years though but of course will be pleased if it does.
> 
> If I had there spare dosh there are a few Dell offerings I wouldn't mind ..
> one of their netbooks does have Ubuntu installed ... which is so tempting against
> lugging this 15.4" monster about.  I had an old school L400 before this beasty 
> which ran Debian fine.
> 
> If you ask nicely they may well dual install or at least partition up for a 
> dual install.
> 
> If you are happy to do it - go for the lower spec RAM and disk and then upgrade to
> larger disk size and memory buying cheaper outside of Dell.  
> I simply bought a USB portable drive enclosure - bought the larger
> Seagate disk - partitioned that to match the original disk and then used freely 
> available Seagate software to copy the old disk to the new partition.  Then swapped the
> two hard drives over and dual installed Debian.  Worked a dream with plenty of space free
> for a second Debian testing/unstable install.
> 

So Long as the new disk is bigger than the old disk you the freely available
dd command to copy the whole disk, boot block partition and at all. All
drives these days use LBA modes whcih mean they have the same geometry
(externally).

#dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sda bs=1024k

James 
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