[Preston] Laptop recommendations...

[Mark Wickens]

Hi Neil,

I've just joined up and look forward to attending a meeting at some point. I'm 
a contract software consultant with too many years in the business to be 
sane.

I know you'll get plenty of negative opinions about Dells, but my Dell 
Inspiron 7500 which is eight years old is still going strong and running SuSE 
10.2, and its' replacement an XPS Gen 2 is running 10.2 beautifully, 
including fancy compiz window manager. Sound, graphics, wireless, bluetooth, 
card reader, burner are all supported out of the box. Compiz requires the 
nvidia binary driver. I use it everyday, it has a 1900x1200 17" screen which 
is totally wasted on Windows XP (because there is little support for true 
font scaling across the operating system) but is fantasic under SuSE because 
you can simply change the x-config dpi setting and *everything* gets scaled. 
Viewing PDF documentation is fantastic.

You could grab a 6400 or 9400 which are basically the same off ebay for a 
steal, or get one from Dell with 3 years warranty. My experience in that 
department was also favourable - the 7500 had a screen hinge go out of 
warranty, it cost me 50 quid including collection and delivery and at the 
same time they fixed the screen-close switch and upgraded the bios.

Other people's milage will vary of course, but linux support is good for most 
of the built in stuff.

Your idea of a VIM meeting is a good one - I use it everyday but wish I had a 
photographic memory as I feel sure I'm using about 5% of available 
functionality.

Other stuff: I'm into old DIGITAL kit (DEC) including Alphas and VAXen running 
Unix and VMS - if anyone fancies 'chewing the cud' please feel free to 
contact me off list.

Regards,

Mark.