On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 07:23:57PM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: > > Does it have to be new? > > The best deal might be to get a used laptop. Then it doesn't matter > what it originally shipped with, all you care about is whether it's on > the FreeBSD hardware compatibility list. > > Along these lines, I've seen many people recommending used ThinkPads. > Might not be powerful enough for the latest Windows, but more than > capable for running a BSD.
Be very careful buying used laptops. There are a lot of refurbishers who are very shady, and a lot of private sellers online that are trying to make a fast buck off broken hardware. In fact, I wrote some code for a shady refurbisher last year to clean infections of their laptops -- infections that had worked its way into the images they used to clone drives for refurbished computers. I think thousands of their systems probably went out infected before they had me automate the virus-cleaning process for them. The short version is simply that I've seen how shady refurbishers work, up close and personal. Let the buyer beware. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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