[Discuss] Laptops

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2018-09-25 17:02-0000 Deryk Barker (Honorary Colleague) wrote:

> As my old Asus is now 5+ years old and the keyboard is starting to go (I already had to replace the HD with an SSD when the HD failed) I'm starting to contemplate a new machine.
>
>
> Anyone any suggestions? I'd like a relatively pokey CPU (say Core-i5 or better) 8GB RAM, but screen no more than 13 inches and weight < 3 lb. And < $1000;
>
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> SSD would be nice but does anyone have experience running linux on a machine with a hyrbid (Firecuda?) drive?
>
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> Any input gratefully received and if it's available locally rather than having to bring it in
>
> so much the better.

Hi Deryk:

My primary advice is to review whether you actually need a laptop.
For example, a nettop or smart phone might be all you need for your
mobile needs, and, of course, PC's are great for your home office
needs.

Just in case you are really serious about buying a laptop,
I looked at <http://zareason.com/Laptops/>, but
the one entry they have there seems a bit too heavy and pricey for
your needs.  But it likely answers a number of Linux compatibility
questions, and it might give you a good comparison for what you
eventually decide to buy.

I used a local firm (Mother Computers) for my own recent buy of a
custom Linux desktop.  And I am sure they would be willing to assemble
a custom Linux laptop or sell you a standard laptop.

Their Linux competence was quite low (just good enough to follow my
directions to install a minimal (without X) Debian distribution just
to prove basic Linux functionality and networking worked.)  But they
made it clear if some component of the custom box was not Linux
compatible, the replacement would be on my dime.  So you would have to
do a lot of Linux compatibility research for a custom laptop, but if
they were selling you a pre-assembled one, then perhaps they would
allow you to run a live distro on it to check out all its Linux
functionality before you bought it.  And similarly for any other
vendor in town that sells pre-assembled laptops.

MC did seem competent on the hardware front.  They did have an
assembly mistake where they plugged the SATA drive into a dead SATA
port on the MB (created by installing a M2 SSD) so I had to bring it
in the next day to get that issue fixed.  But these things happen, and
they fixed their assembly mistake with obvious good will.  They did
give me lots of good advice about hardware compatibility of the
components used to assemble my custom box, and they also gave me good
advice (which I took) about avoiding installing a particular expansion
card because they noticed that expansion card was manufactured quite
badly (spare solder dripping down onto the connectors with the
possibility of shorting out the MB).  That expansion card was bought
independently by me to supposedly provide esata capability and was an
instructive example of "cheap is usually more expensive".  :-(

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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