On Tuesday 23 December 2008 06:15:31 Mihai Popescu B.S. wrote: > Hello, > > I will open another well known topic for misc list: laptop > acquisition. I did some research on the list's emails but I'm not > fully satisfied. > I want to buy a laptop (second hand is my first choice). I want some > strong point on it, reliability - I want to use it for a long time > (excluding battery) so I don't need broken hdd, excessive heat, noise, > etc. > I don't need performance, I will use it only for some pdf read and > browsing. Maybe some programming, but not much and not heavy compile > actions for sure. So a P4 1.6 - 2GHz cpu is fine, 512MB of ram and > maybe 40GB hdd. No fancy video card is necessary. Ethernet cooper > interface is mandatory. Good OpenBSD compatibility will be nice. The > screen should be around 15", 17" as a suggestion only. > From what I saw, Lenovo/IBM X and T models are the first choice. I am > also moved to DELL suite, but I don't have some experience with them. > > Please send some suggestion here, in order of preferences. Remember, I > need mostly reliability, I don't see myself bidding on ebay for parts > to repair. > > Thank you for your time.
IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads are the best choice, and have been for a long time. I am very tired of dealing with friends Dell/HP/Sony/Toshiba laptops, and especially dealing with getting replacement parts for them. I've been using OpenBSD on ThinkPads since 1999. A cheap unit for you would be an A31p, available for $200 - $400. These are heavy, and do run a little hot owing to the power hogging P4, but they're very reliable: I have a 5 year old A31p still running. OpenBSD support is complete on them save for Firewire and the idiot winmodem. Most if not all T series are good choices. Newer and faster, but cost more. A 1.6G P mobile can be had for $400 - $500; possibly less these days. The T43 can be a little weird with disks, coming up with a bios error message at boot time for certain disks, but otherwise works. The T60p is a great machine, and has complete support (minus winmodem) The new W500 is great. The SD slot is supported, too. These are $2K machines so not cheap. There is excellent user support on the thinkpads mailing list at http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad and a thinkpad forum at www.thinkpads.com. --STeve Andre'
