New Laptop Recommendations

Hey, so I think my home laptop is very close to flipping its last bit. The screen is almost gone (I'm using an external LCD), I've had some issues with the hard drive in the past, and this morning, it had a misboot. It's kind of like a miscarriage, except more serious, cause it's my laptop. (yeah yeah I'm a horrible person I know)

Anyway, I was thinking of shopping around for a laptop, but I figure I should speed up the process, so that I can do all the backups I need before it's too late. I'm not gonna pay for data recovery if it comes to it, and I don't want to waste CDs when I should be using DVDs.

I haven't looked around in a long time for laptops, so I'm slightly out of the loop on what's out there. I was hoping someone here could give me some tips on what's good these days. It doesn't need to be super high performance, and it doesn't need to be incredibly slim (it mostly won't leave the house, actually).

What I DO need is for it to solidly handle running Ubuntu Gutsy. IIRC, HP is the correct answer when looking at Linux compatibility. I'll be asking this question in some more tech-oriented forums, but I know there are a couple of people here who can help on this.

I was looking at this one: http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...rodid=11263004 but I have no idea how it compares to others. This particular model is interesting, but there are some red flags, like...

Its slightly more expensive brother, http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...rodid=11262971 has twice the L2 cache and a faster bus, which makes it slightly more appealing. Also, while it looks like 160GB is pretty normal for a laptop HD today, I kinda wish it were 7200rpm. Also, I'm not sure I'm liking the fact that the graphics accelerator is shared. Sure, I don't plan on using it for a whole lot of high-end gaming, but still, I'm a compiz fusion cube fan, and that will affect performance (and with game programming as a hobby, it might get in the way, even though it'll force me to worry more about performance, which I guess is okay). Thoughts? Recommendations on better models that you know are very happy running Linux? How do you guys think the price compares for those models?

The great thing about linux is that it can run with effects still working and stable in really, really old computers. It might lag up sometimes but nothing serious. And about "linux compatibility..." well, anything can run ubuntu, I believe. my brother has it on his mac... it "works" on any computer (though you might mean how stable and quick it is on certain systems?). My brother can run the compiz fusion cube fine on his 2.2 ghz 1gb mem mac.

Um... both those computers have Vista on them, not Linux. As far as I know IBM and Dell are the only companies that sell computers with Ubuntu on them, but of course you can install it on any machine. Do you use any other OS, ie. will you be dual booting XP? (I assume you'll downgrade if you're stuck with Vista.)

You mentioned that you do game programming so you should be sure that your graphics card is OpenGL 3.0 compatible. That's hard to find in PCs because Windows doesn't have an updated OpenGL (and probably never will.) Therefore, the PC manufacturers don't use cards for the 3.0 only stuff. Only computers that specifically use 3.0 (Linux and OSX) have them. That's why I would recommend an IBM machine.

Hard drive spin speed isn't really that important (not for desktop usage)
what is important is power consumption - and a slower spinning disk will use less power
I doubt you'd notice any difference between a 5400 & 7200 sata drive
maybe wrong, but I think battery life for a laptop is more important

Shared memory for the graphics,
while nice to have an independant card, it's not essential
and it certainly won't affect 3D accelerated desktops (on this machine right now, compiz is using 30mb of memory - piss all nothing, really)
Games maybe a different story, however, and an independant card will probably give you noticably better performance.

As for hardware in general,
you may want to consider Dell (and others who offer pre-built linux systems)

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/s....aspx/linux_3x

this at least gives you peace of mind in regards to hardware compatibility (particularly wireless - while wireless support has gotten better 10-fold over the last 5 years, sometimes you hit snags - there's one or two wireless chipset makers who refuse to release adequate specs for driver writers, and arsing about with ndiswrapper is not that funny...)

My brother just recently (last night) bought a Dell Inspiron 1525/1526 Laptop, and he loves it. I would consider getting one if you need a new laptop.

my link doesn't seem to work anymore
try this http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ninja9578

Um... both those computers have Vista on them, not Linux. As far as I know IBM and Dell are the only companies that sell computers with Ubuntu on them, but of course you can install it on any machine. Do you use any other OS, ie. will you be dual booting XP? (I assume you'll downgrade if you're stuck with Vista.)

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At $700, I was assuming it didn't include the OS. Either way, I was going to install Ubuntu off the DVD. My current laptop that's almost dead is a fully-loaded Dell Inspiron 5150, and has been great for the 6+ years I've owned it (minus the fact that the fan/cooling sucks, but nothing a bit of compressed air in a can won't fix).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ynot

As for hardware in general,
you may want to consider Dell (and others who offer pre-built linux systems)

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/s....aspx/linux_3x

this at least gives you peace of mind in regards to hardware compatibility (particularly wireless - while wireless support has gotten better 10-fold over the last 5 years, sometimes you hit snags - there's one or two wireless chipset makers who refuse to release adequate specs for driver writers, and arsing about with ndiswrapper is not that funny...)

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Indeed, Wireless is the biggie. Your link is broken, but I looked at some of their open-source laptops. The starting price is nice, but if I were to update it a bit (2GB ram, ect.), it comes up way pricier than the HP's I mentioned.

Thanks for the other tips. You're definitely right about the power consumption.

EDIT: just saw your other post, thanks. I tab-browse the site, so between opening a thread and replying, lots of time might elapse :)

as long as you find out the exact wireless chipset used in any laptop (worst comes to worst, ask a shop assistant to pull up the Windows device manager on a display model)
then a quick google should tell you whether wireless is supported natively in Linux

if not, a further half hour on google should give you a decent howto for using the windows wireless drivers via ndiswrapper in Linux

I'm on an Acer Aspire 9410-4933 I picked up on sale at Staples a few months ago, and while it's nothing too special, it was a steal at the $650 I paid. 160GB HDD, Intel Core Duo T2450 (2.0Ghz), 1GB RAM. The sound card is rather crappy, though, it seems, and it's got integrated graphics, 945GM I think. All the same, it has no compatibility issues with Ubuntu, and it's all I need.

The 19" widescreen is a big plus, too. It's big, and the battery life is a bit on the low side, but if you're not going to be taking it out of the house much as you say, then that's no big deal. RAM is pretty affordable these days, as well. I think the next one up in the Aspire line has a better graphics card, as well. Of course, it's a bit more pricey.

Just thought I'd throw that out there, good luck in finding your computer!

Both me and my flatmate had an Acer PC and they both broke within eight months and the company's tech support refused to help us. I ripped mine apart and fixed it, then installed Ubuntu, it's now my side computer (my ibook is my main on.) Her problem was a little worse and I couldn't fix it for her, she had to buy a whole new computer.

A lot of people I know have HP laptops (dv2000 and dv6000), and they love them. I bought an HP laptop and I love it as well.

I also have a Dell XPS laptop, which is a nice computer but is very pricey... and heavy.