[Novalug] favorite new laptops?

[Paul W. Frields]

If you're going to buy a new laptop, why not (gasp) reward the vendors
who make Linux-compatible devices with truly free driver support?  :-)
I just got a Dell XPS M1330 and chose the all-Intel stuff (965 graphics,
Intel 3945 wireless).  Everything works out of the box, including the
cool IR remote for doing presentations or media.  When I received it, I
took it out of the box, wiped the disk, put Linux on it, haven't looked
back.

Now admittedly this wasn't the cheapest way to go.  But no matter what
price range, you can usually find a unit from one of the major makers
that uses Intel stuff.  ATI's been too little, too late to this
particular party IMHO, although I look forward to their increased
participation in FOSS... and nVidia?  Pfft.

On Sat, 2007-11-03 at 23:09 -0400, Anthony Soucek wrote:
> I should mention that the proprietary wireless driver was a
> no-brainer, you just have to give ubuntu the permission to install the
> proprietary software through the gui, and it did it all automatically
> (as if I were a stupid windows user- (Whew, thank goodness that not
> true, well not completely).
> 
> On 11/3/07, Anthony Soucek <monkeywrenchit at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If you want to go cheap, I got an Acer 3860 and it runs great with
> > Ubuntu, you need a proprietary driver for the wireless card and there
> > is a minor config tweak to get the speakers  turned on, but I was
> > amazed how easy it was to install ubuntu 7.10 (<$400) 512 MB ram and a
> > 70GB HD, Beautiful screen (the highly reflective kind) but short
> > battery life.
> >
> > On 11/1/07, Beartooth <karhunhammas at lserv.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, 31 Oct 2007, Dan Arico wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Wednesday 31 October 2007 23:29, Julia Christianson wrote:
> > > >> Has anyone bought a laptop lately that "just works"?  I need
> > > >> to buy something to send to my sister in Oklahoma ... she's
> > > >> never run Linux for any period of time, but she knows she
> > > >> doesn't want Windows ;-). I'll probably put CentOS on it even
> > > >> though I know ubuntu would probably be better because (a) I'll
> > > >> be her sole support and I don't know ubuntu and (b) I know
> > > >> CentOS will be supported for some reasonable period of time.
> > > >
> > > > I bought a used Thinkpad T-30 and installed OpenSUSE.
> > > > Everything worked just fine, including wireless. The only
> > > > problem was a mostly used up battery, but I got a replacement
> > > > from Laptops for Less that works just fine.
> > >
> > >         I bought a reconditioned T-30 from IBM, which has run F7
> > > fine; but I have been wondering where to get a spare battery.
> > > Thanks for that tip!