[Scottish] Linux Laptop

[William Anderson]

John¹ wrote:
> My Daughter has moved into a cottage of her own, tomorrow the phone will be 
> connected, and as last Thursday was her birthday I have offered to buy her 
> a laptop and router, (this latter dependent on broadband being available 
> in her village outside Inverness.

I'd get the following, based on actual usage of the kit:

Dell Inspiron 1525 (let your daughter pick the colour and design of the 
lid, there are a few to pick!)
Zyxel 660HW-T1 ADSL2+ Router

I'd recommend installing Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on the Dell as this 
will provide an excellent hardware compatibility base, and also the best 
user experience, especially with regard to keeping the distro up to date 
- I assume it would be your daughter tasked with this, not you!

I recommend a Zyxel wifi router as a) Zyxel make some of the best 
routers to deal with long or noisy lines, which I suspect you may have 
problems with outside Inverness; with that brand and model of router, 
you'll have a better chance of connecting over a noisy line than with 
most others ... and b) because there's no point in getting something 
without wifi now and then perhaps down the line deciding to get wifi and 
having to graft on an access point as well as the router.  The router 
comes with a 4-port Ethernet switch and WPA2 wifi encryption.  The 
laptop above has wifi built in.

However, before buying a router, pick your ISP first; they may provide a 
usable router with the package.  Again, don't discount wifi for the sake 
of it.  All ADSL routers with wifi will permit you to disable the wifi 
completely if you don't want to use it now, and you're not closing the 
door on future wifi use.

The total shouldn't be more than £450 depending on where you buy from. 
I'd recommend getting the laptop from Dell directly unless you want to 
pick it up immediately from Currys, PC World or Tesco.  For that router, 
www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk have plenty in stock[1], and deliver quickly 
and cheaply.

Hope all that helps.

-n

[1] http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=2214