On Sun, 13 Nov 2016 00:10:21 -0600 Doug <dmcgarr...@optonline.net> wrote:
> > > I don't know what these Chromebooks sell for, and of course you know > that they are diskless > (which is maybe what you want) but there are frequently sales of > refurbished used Dell laptops > in the $120 to $160 price range, and they are 14" or 15" with at > least 256 GiB drives and 4 GiB ram. > Try and get one with something other than Broadcom wifi--it's a real > challenge to make it work, > unless you want to run Windows. > The size is an issue, at least for me. I have an HP 15" laptop, which cost maybe $250 brand new, as I need a Windows laptop to run various odd peripherals. But it travels with me by car, there's no way I would carry that beast around on a strap. I also have an Acer Aspire One netbook, which I carry around when I need a portable computer for anything other than work. It weighs a fraction of what the big laptop weighs. It has a small, slow SSD, so I also carry a (genuinely) pocket-sized USB hard drive for more demanding jobs, probably the smallest ever made and, of course, unobtainable now. Almost every [x86-based] computer I've ever tried boots from this, and both netbook and drive run Debian unstable. Both are more than five years old, which is not a bad life for portable stuff. I've been looking for replacements for some time, but tablets and netbook-sized stuff all seem unable to run Linux (the Acer came with Linpus, based on Fedora). Sorry, I don't count it as 'running' if only half of the hardware works. Time seems to be running out, modern hardware no longer has an Ethernet port and has only one or two USB ports. I want a *computer*, if I wanted a toy I'd get a smartphone. -- Joe
