[Wylug-help] Laptop Suggestions

[Smylers]

Aaron Crane writes:

> Smylers writes:
> 
> > I'm buying a new laptop.  Here are my criteria:
> > 
> > * The laptop it'll be replacing (a Dell Latitude X300) is just
> >   1.4 kg, which has been really convenient.  I'm not interested in
> >   anything significantly heavier.
> 
> that's the most restrictive constraint, assuming that you want the new
> laptop to be powerful enough to serve as your main machine.

Yes, though oomph doesn't bother me that much -- if it hadn't acquired
other injuries, I expect my Dell X300 would've sufficed for a while
longer.

> Any of the following might be reasonable starting points:
> 
>   - MacBook Air, 1.36 kg, £1200+ (but no DVD or Ethernet)
>     http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookair/

Does it make sense to buy a Mac just to run Linux?  How different is the
keyboard layout?  Anything else I should be aware of?

No DVD on the laptop itself is something I'm happy to live with to get
the weight down, but I'd want an external drive.  Ethernet I hadn't
considered -- I could _probably_ live without it, but if possible I'd
rather have it 'just in case'.

>   - Sony Vaio SZ series, 1.7 kg, £1600+

My Dell X300 was less than £1200 (inc vat) 4 years ago.  I'm finding it
hard to believe I now have to pay _more_ in order to get something
similar.

>   - Lenovo ThinkPad X300, 1.4 kg, £2000+
>     http://xrl.us/biad9

Eeek -- that's a bit pricey!  (And kudos to Lenovo for using that
particular model number, so that in this e-mail I have to disamiguate
whose X300 I'm referring to!)

Also, the above page lists the all the X series as having a TrackPoint,
but the 'More info' page for the ThinkPad X300 claims it has 'UltraNav',
(which I think means TrackPoint plus touch-pad), and inconveniently
doesn't have a photo.  Anybody know which it has?

I see the ThinkPad X61s are only 1.3 kg (somewhat intriguingly described
as 'Weight: 1.33Kg' and 'Travel weight: 1,32Kgs' -- meaning there's a
part weighing 10g which should be removed when it's travelling, or
what?) and £1200, but they are consistently described only as having a
TrackPoint.  I'm very adept with the touch-pad on my Dell X300 and have
no desire to go back to a TrackPoint.

>   - Toshiba Portégé R500, 1 kg, £1200+ (or 800 g but £1800 with
>     solid-state storage)
>     http://xrl.us/biad7

  "We have closed your current session on our web pages because there
  was no activity for 30 minutes. ... Revisit the site by clicking here"

Of course.  Because it isn't in Toshiba's interests for you to be able
to mail me a direct link to a specific product?

Anyway, the R500s look nice and light.  The £1200 ones have an upper ram
expandability of 1.5 Gb, which is lower than I'm comfortable with for a
computer I'd hope to get several years' use out of, so I'm looking at
£1350.

>   - Asus U series (several models, 1.0 to 1.6 kg, £1000 to £1300)
>     http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=5&l2=75
>     http://www.asuslaptop.co.uk/products.php?cat=59 (reseller; has prices)

Thanks for those.  The U6SG-2P013E is 1.6 kg, slightly more than my
current Dell X300, and is only £1000 (when paying by credit card and
increasing the warranty to 3 years).

The 14E is £1400 and so far as I can tell the only differs from the 13E
in its processor: 2.5 GHz rather than 2.0 GHz.  As somebody who has
trouble getting my head round the various numbers relating to CPUs, that
sounds like a lot of money for something so intangiable (compared with,
say, weight, or screen size, which I can immediately understand), so I
wouldn't go for it.

The U1F-1P038E is £1250 and only 1 kg.  Compared with te 13E that's a
premium I'd consider paying to save 600 g, but its max memory of only
1.5 Gb is concerning.

> For all I know Dell may offer a laptop of roughly the same weight as
> your current one, but their site seems even worse than the Lenovo/IBM
> one -- I can't see a weight indication more precise than "under 2 kg"
> on any of their laptops.

The trick is to claim you're a small business rather than a home user --
Dell have a long-standing aversion to selling lightweight laptops to
home users!

A possible advantage of Dell is that I already own a couple of spare
power supplies for them, and an external powered USB DVD drive (if they
haven't changed their connectors in the past few years).

The D430 is 1.4 kg and only £800, though that's with the 4-cell 28 Wh;
it doesn't say how much the 6-cell 42 Wh alternative (for the same
price) adds to the weight.

> > * I want it to work with a protector (arbitrary projectors,
> >   belonging to other people) when running Ubuntu.  By "work" I mean
> >   that it's possible to get output on both the projector and the
> >   laptop's screen.  Ideally I'd like the possibility of _different_
> >   output on each, but I'd settle for identical output -- just so
> >   long as it doesn't wriggle around the screen, or only work the
> >   first time then distort the next time I cycle to the external
> >   display.
> 
> I can't offer any guarantees for the current hardware revision, but my
> Vaio doesn't seem to have any problems there, at least for showing the
> same data on both screens.  I fear you won't be able to be completely
> sure on that question unless you can find a success report from
> someone using the exact laptop model that you propose to get.

Yeah, I'd be much happier buying something recommended by a satisfied
user.

> >   I note that many current laptops have 'widescreen' aspect ratios,
> >   whereas projectors do not.  What happens when plugging a
> >   widescreen laptop into a projector?
> 
> What I'd like is to be able to plug an external display in and have X
> suddenly spread itself over both screens, and the reverse when I
> unplug the external display.
> 
> What actually happens is that you shut down all your apps, run the
> Gnome "Screen and Graphics" preferences app, set the resolution to
> 1024×768, and restart X.

Ugg.  That sounds like lots of hassle, enough to make me really prefer a
non-widescreen laptop (except there hardly seem to be any).

What happens on the laptop's wide screen when you have the display set
to 1024 x 768 -- do you just get unused black areas on either side?

> _Then_ you plug the external display in, and that seems to work.

Does this give you duplicate output, or can you have different things on
each display?  Thanks.

Smylers