[sclug] Recommendation for Laptop for Linux

[Ian Park]

On 11/12/14 23:17, alan c wrote:
> On 07/12/14 15:41, Neil Haughton wrote:
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: Keith Edmunds <kae at midnighthax.com>
>>> To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
>>> Cc:
>>> Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2014 20:13:13 +0000
>>> Subject: Re: [sclug] Recommendation for Laptop for Linux
>>> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 19:55:51 +0000, olivier.lauret at googlemail.com said:
>>>
>>>> Linux Emporium website doesn't seem to work anymore. I cannot see any
>>>> items.
>>> The Linux Emporium is one of the sad stories of Linux in the UK. They
>>> *used* to be really, really good. Then the original owner, a guy called
>>> John Winters, sold the business. No criticism of him for doing so (quite
>>> the opposite: well done), but it went rapidly and continuously downhill
>>> from that point. I stopped buying from them soon after John sold up (around
>>> 2004 or so, I think).
>>>
>> That's a shame. You wonder why someone would buy a viable business and then
>> let it go downhill. Maybe it was 'really good' for the customer but not
>> profitable.
> I used them for friends a few times and they were *excellent*, though
> as you suggest, I thought their excellence, and the time spent for
> customers was probably not probably being covered profitably.
>
>> FWIW I have had good experiences with Zoomstorm. I bought a Zoomstorm
>> machine sans OS for work as a server and installed W7 on it, and it just
>> sits there and works 24x7. I have an OS-free desktop machine from them at
>> home which came with 8GB memory and a 1TB near-silent hard drive and I have
>> installed an SSD and several successive Mint versions (17 now) on that, and
>> it "just works" too. Fast, too - boot to logged-in in a few tens of
>> seconds. My only complaint is that I can't 'see' various cell phones,
>> cameras or non-Linux music players connected directly via USB. Flash
>> drives, memory cards and other USB devices such as external hard drives
>> have no problem though. That's probably a general Linux problem, not the
>> hardware itself, I'm guessing.
>> Neil.
> Desktop PCs are no problem to get , many places. However, laptops,
> with the components being less standardised, are a serious problem, if
> avoidance of a pre installed Windows OS is really a factor. It is for
> me. System76 is USA based, and is tempting, being kept well in mind.
> Dell and HP - both are slated variously to be approved and sell Ubuntu
> pre installed, but I never seem to have much real retail availability.
> The EBuyer HP laptop was good, a friend bought one, though it was a
> low priced, low end machine.
I've done reasonably well with a high-end (when I bought it - 2.6GHz 
dual core Intel processor, 4GB RAM, 512MB nvidia graphics driving 1920 x 
1200 screen, 200GB HDD, ...) laptop from PC Specialist. I run Linux Mint 
(currently on 17); the only problem I've had is that with the latest 
nvidia driver (340.8) it freezes about half a minute after logon; I had 
to boot with a live DVD, chroot into the installed system and remove the 
version 340 nvidia driver. Probably worth having a look at PC Specialist 
and configuring what you want to see how much they ask for it...

Ian