[Gloucs] Laptop Suggestions

[Barbie]

Firstly, many thanks for all your suggestions. I have a plenty of
browsing to do over the next few days :)

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 09:50:54AM -0000, Anthony Edward Cooper wrote:
> 
> I have, so far, been very please with the results etc... But with the drop
> in prices recently I suspect you may be better off buying new...

I've noticed this. Even on eBay second-hand are going for more than new!
But then again that's eBay all over. An R61 similar to what I was after,
but with less HDD capacity and slower CPU was attempting to be sold for
more than £600. 

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:18:45AM +0000, John Kilgour wrote:
> Try looking at www.dabs.com. This has quite a good search facility and shows 
> the Toshiba L300 series ticks all your boxes. 

Never thought to try Dabs, I've usually only bought parts from them.
Thanks for the tip :)

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:26:15AM +0000, Andrew Oakley wrote:
> 
> Dell, despite being a faceless mega-corp, ...

Dell were one of the first I looked at as they usually have quite a nice
selection of upgrades. My other half has the Inspiron 1501, and while
not a bad laptop, the graphics card can't handle a large resolution and
as you note they use the Broadcom wireless. The latter I would never
touch with a bargepole ever again. Broadcom is possibly the worse
chipset I've ever had to deal with. It continually drops the connection
(even on Windows too), and despite buying a second internal card, we're
still getting the same problems.

> On the downside, they come with Broadcom wireless (both WiFi and
> Bluetooth are Broadcom, IIRC). Handling this in Ubuntu is a simple
> case of enabling restricted drivers, done in two clicks and an "are
> you sure".

If only it was that easy :) I might bring my missus laptop along
tomorrow and see whether I've missed something complete obvious though
:)

> I hate to support large corporations over the small guys, but Dell
> seem to be doing all the right things.

Generally I would agree, but until they ditch Broadcom from their
products, I'm not eager to jump through even more hoops.

Cheers,
Barbie.
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