[Nottingham] Buying a Laptop

[Michael Leuty]

On 11/10/05, Edgar <lists at edgar.org.uk> wrote:
> I looking to buy a laptop. Looking at spending 600 to 900 pounds. Does anyone
> have any recommendations as to where to buy one?  I have very little
> experience with laptops. Does anyone know where I could get one without an OS
> at a discount?

It seems a pretty competitive market, and I don't think there are any
great bargains available only to the cognoscenti. I recently bought a
low-end-of-range Toshiba from Currys (not a cool source), which had
512Mb RAM and built-in wireless for £600. This seemed good value to
me.

Assuming that you want to run GNU/Linux, the main problem will be
getting the built-in wireless to work. I loaded SUSE on the Toshiba,
and found instructions on the Novell site to load ndiswrapper to use
the Windows driver, which works well. Or you could try taking along
the latest Ubuntu live CD to test the laptop in the showroom (a tip I
picked up on this mailing list, can't remember who, sorry).

As far as not paying the Windows tax is concerned, at present it seems
difficult to save any money this way. I think there is/was a laptop
available preloaded with Mandriva, but only in France. Things may
change over the next year or so, but that doesn't help you if you want
to buy one now.

--
Michael Leuty
Nottingham, UK