[vox] Looking at Laptops

[Kevin Hooke]

Richard - I just bought I new laptop last week. I was sort of going down the
same road, I started with a 2500 budget, and started looking at IBM's, then
Dell's, then Compaq/HP's... but you know for the same money I decided to go
with a relatively unknown brand (unknown to me anyway) called Sager
(www.sagernotebook.com), because for the same price as a relatively ok IBM
or Dell I got a notebook which is completely loaded.

I got a P4 2.4Ghz (this is a desktop P4 - not a P4-M), 1Gb DDR ram, 60gb
5400rpm hdd, ATI Radeon 9000 64mb graphics, dvd/cd-rw drive, floppy, crystal
clear 15" display running at 1600x1200 :-)

The out the door price for this was 2300. I wanted a desktop relacement that
I could use for my software development, so I need to run db server and app
servers on the same box, as well as my development IDE, so I was looking for
a desktop replacement that will supplement my desktop at home when I'm at
home, but be able to take with me easily when I'm travelling on consulting
projects (plus be beefy enough for some occaisonal gaming :-)

So far I am *VERY* impressed... this is the fastest PC I have seen or used
in a long time - I am very pleased! It weighs a bit on the heavy side at
10lb, but for only occaisonal travel this is fine with me.

I have PowerQuest Bootmagic on there so I can dual boot between XP Pro and
SuSe Linux (I haven't installed linux yet - although I can let you know how
I get on if you're interested.)

Theres some forums at http://sagerforums.com/forums/ with linux install and
support info if you're interested.

This laptop as far as I can make out is manufactured by a company in Taiwan
called Clevo, and is resold in the US by several companies (Sager being
one - they give lifetime tech support BTW). Other places you can look for
the same laptop: www.powernotebooks.com, www.pctorque.com, www.prostar.com,
Alienware also sell one model in rather fetching colors :-)

As others have mentioned you could get a lower spec laptop to run linux and
be just fine, but I just wanted to mention another option - I certainly
hadn;'t heard of Sager before I started searching around, and I am more than
pleased with them so far :-)

Hope that helps,
Kevin


>I'm now pondering a new laptop, and need some advice.  The basic
>requirement, of course, is that it needs to be dual-bootable -- I'm facing
>the reality that much of what I'm going to need for school is going to
>only be available in Windows, but I want Linux because it's better.
>Whatever flavor of Linux I go with on my laptop (I'm familiar with Red
>Hat, but more than willing to explore other distros at this point as
>well), the laptop will need to talk happily with my Red Hat desktop
>computer.

>Does anyone have any suggestions?  Any good stories?  Horror stories?
>Brands/models I ought to avoid, or that I ought to give serious
>consideration too?  Price is a consideration, of course -- if I can spend
>less than $2500, I'll be happy.

>--
>Slainte,
>Richard S. Crawford
>AIM: Buffalo2K / Y!: rscrawford / ICQ: 11640404
>http://www.mossroot.com http://www.stonegoose.com
>"It is only with our heart that we can see clearly.  What is essential is
>invisible to the eye."  --Antoine de Saint Exupery