[Gllug] Seeking some laptop advice

[lesleyb at herlug.org.uk]

On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 06:21:45PM +0000, James Hawtin wrote:
> 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.
> > > 
<snippety snip>
> > 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
> 
which, I believe, is okay if you're actually on a 'nix platform at the time.
The Seagate stuff works from XP, is free and I am just happy 'it worked'.
Now I have XP there if I need it - I can mount that partition under Debian if I need to 
retrieve data and I am happy with the results.  I also a rather pretty looking entirely
portable USB/E-SATA HDD.  Am sure that will be useful one day.

Regards

L.
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