On 4 March 2010 12:48, Hugo Mills <h...@carfax.org.uk> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 11:51:40AM +0000, Lisi wrote: >> I have been asked to recommend a laptop to replace a 3 year old and ailing HP >> running XP, and to fit the following brief: >> >> Must be durable >> Must not run Windows (specifically mentioned as acceptable were MAC OS and >> Linux) >> Budget c. £800/£900 (that is based on the cost of a suitable MAC) > > What degree of "durable" do you need? > > If it's "the owner will be dropping it off a table onto a quarry > tile floor on a daily basis", then I'd suggest that the budget isn't > quite up to it, and you need something like the Toughbook. > > If it's "the build quality is pretty good, and it'll survive being > stuffed into a bag with light padding, hoofed around all over the > place, and fumbled occasionally", then in the past I've been happy > with a Dell Latitude. Dell also occasionally sell machines with Linux
I have had a couple of Panasonic ToughBooks, bought used from eBay. I love the CF-T2 that has been my only laptop for several years. It's "semi-rugged", i.e. not one of those you can drop and leave sitting running in a puddle (though a colleague has one of those and swears by it), but it has been up and down the M3 in a backpack on a motorbike many times and I've never had a hardware problem with it. Panasonics are certainly expensive if you get them new, and probably outside your budget, but if a used machine was acceptable (*) then I'd say go for one of them. (*) and bear in mind that on older machines the CPU / memory may not be up to the 'requirements' of some of today's applications. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
