Re: [PLUG] Recommedations for laptop

One reason to stay with Thinkpads is the excellent trackpoint. I personally can't stand/use any trackpad.

You can get a used Thinkpad x230 tablet for about $250 right now on Ebay.

Non-gloss multi-touch touch screen, i7, quad core, 2.9GHz.

I bought one a few years ago, and moved my 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD over from a previous

Thinkpad , and maxed the RAM out to 16GB and got new batteries.

Each battery runs about 4H, so two will run you most of a day.

Most everything on the X230, including touchscreen and screen rotation, WiFi, BT, audio, works out of the box on Ubuntu 16.04,

so I'm happy with it.

Lee

From: "Tone Montone" <tonemontone@gmail.com>
To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 8, 2017 12:13:34 AM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Recommedations for laptop

Ron,
Thank you for your reply.

I actually have two IBM Thinkpad SL410s. One runs Windows 10, which I use regularly. And the other runs Centos with VMs via KVM; I liked the laptop so much I bought a used one from Amazon for $100, thqen maxed out the ram. The first I purchased new when it came out.

The only bad thing is the SL410s are heavy by today's standards, and their battery life is probably 2-3 hours. I was looking for a light-weight laptop that I could take with me on the run, would last a long time. I went to bestbuy and physically checked some out, but did not make any decisions.

I was looking for a 15" screen, i5-quad core processor, light-weight, long battery life. I don't like gloss screens, but it seems to be the norm. I also don't like number pads on keyboard, which make the keyboard quite large.

I liked the Dell XPS 15, but it looks so expensive I might as well by a Mac!.

I really don't need a laptop, just wanted something to take with me for remote locations, sit and code, etc. I may reduce my processor requirements and see what rises to the surface. It will just run linux, and some light-weight programming tools.

Thanks,

Mike

On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 10:19 PM, Ron Guilmet <ronald.guilmet@phillydatasolutions.com> wrote:
Mike,

Running Linux on a laptop, in my experience, runs the gamut of people having little to no issues, to people having loads of issues. I had a couple of Dell laptops over the years that worked with Linux. My mother and my Wife both run Fedora (24 I think) on Dell laptops which are probably 6 years old at least. They never complain to me about anything, granted they are just using it for email, facebook.

The latest two laptops I have purchased were economical to say the least. They are both Windows 10 laptops from Best Buy. They ran about $450 to $550 or so in price. One laptop is an HP - 17.3" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - HP, and the other is a Dell Inspiron 15 5566. Neither one of these did too well on Linux (Fedora 26, Debian 9 (KDE,Gnome, XFCE), or Linux Mint). I prefer the HP to my Dell. They both will run at least 6 hours on battery. I have 4h 23m 57% remaining as I type this.

Now, I think, I need to define what I mean by 'not well'. Both of these laptops had touchpad issues at the minimum from what I remember. No matter what settings I tried to use, I was just not happy. As I typed, windows opened closed. If you type relatively fast as I do, and you don't need to be looking at the screen when typing a document, you would find that the cursor had jumped around, thus putting your document in a state of WTF. I'm sure there is a solution to these issues, but they were not readily available to me. Suspend and Hibernate did not work with Linux on these either. There were things still running that would burn the battery down to nothing, and I didn't have the time to figure it out. Some people have the skill to write their own drivers or what not, but I am not that guy. I just need things to work. I don't have time to turn my use of a laptop into a Comp Sci project. That said, I use Windows 10, and I run all of my Linux from VMware or VirtualBox.

My contention is that the newer laptops are being made for the largest market share, Windows. These newer laptops have the Windows license number in the motherboard, further proving to me they are not generic systems to say the least. This is probably why my older laptops worked better with Linux as the sole OS.

Also, if you dual boot Windows 10 with Linux your Windows time clock will not hold its timezone value. There is a reason for that, and a solution which goes outside the scope of this email, but be aware of that if you go that route.

I didn't catch all of the responses to this, but I do know there are some PLUG members that run Linux on laptop successfully. Successfully is a relative term used here.

Good Luck
Ron

--------------------------------
Ron Guilmet
ronald.guilmet@phillydatasolutions.com
Cloud Solutions Architect
www.phillydatasolutions.com

---- On Fri, 06 Oct 2017 11:13:28 -0400 Tone Montone <tonemontone@gmail.com> wrote ----

Hello,

Any recommendations for new laptops? Looking for slim and lightweight with long battery life.

Just started the search

Mike

Sent from my iPhone
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

"Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion..." - Kryptos

Lee Marzke, lee@marzke.net http://marzke.net/lee/
IT Consultant, VMware, VCenter, SAN storage, infrastructure, SW CM