[NBLUG/talk] OT: small notebooks

Kyle Rankin kyle at nblug.org
Fri Dec 12 23:56:02 PST 2003


On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 09:30:34PM -0800, Steve Smith wrote:
> I saw a nice little Acer a few days ago.  It wasn't as small
> as the Vaio T1A or the Fujitsu but it did look like a 12
> inch screen.
> 
> I was recently looking at laptops and wanted a small one.  I
> bought an Avantec and ended up taking it back because the
> keyboard had the backspace undersied and in a strange place
> and the function and control keys were reversed.  Make sure
> the keyboard works for you!
> 
> If you're really interested in the Fujitsu, make sure you
> check out http://www.greenfly.org.  One of the guys in the
> group has a fujitsu and this is his site.  It's one of the
> nicest "how to linux laptop" sites I've seen.  I'd lean
> towards the fujitsu just because of this site.
> 
> I have a big old clunky hp with a 15 inch screen by the way,
> and I'm happy enough with it.  I put SuSE 9 on it without a
> hitch and so far everything has worked.
> 
> Steve S.
> 
> On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, Cameron Tully-Smith wrote:
> 
> > All,
> >
> > I'm looking for a small system, such as a Sony Vaio or Fujitsu LifeBook.
> > Are there any systems other than these two that I should look at?
> >
> > Are there preferences either way re: HDD speed, etc.?
> >
> > I'm looking to do some all-around computing (some movies, some
> > programming, some spreadsheet schoolwork, etc.).
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Cameron
> > --
> > lpstudy at sonic.net

Thanks for the kind words :)

Unfortunately, they no longer sell the P2110 that I feature on my site.
They don't even sell its successor, the P2120 anymore (and there were
substantial differences between the two, namely ACPI-only support in the
latter, that made it more difficult to get everything running).

That having been said, Fujitsu still does offer their P5000 series on their
website (and http://laptopsinc.com still sells it as well). Unfortunately,
as far as I know, the current XFree86 server does not completely support
the intel video card in that laptop, so that it can't show the full
resolution of the screen (1280x768 I believe).  This could change at any
time, of course, like most hardware support in Linux, so keep an eye on the
fujitsu P series forum on http://leog.net for any breaking news on the
subject.

If a built-in CDROM isn't important to you, there's an even smaller Fujitsu
Lifebook P series, the P1000 that has a 8" touchscreen (P2000 and P5000
have a 10.2" screen).  I haven't seen it personally, but I've heard reports
of the touchscreen working under Linux.

If you have an eye on a Vaio the first thing I would do is scour the web
and confirm just how much support you will have under Linux.  Some Vaios
you can get just about everything working, others you really have to work
at it (one thing you might do is check out http://www.emperorlinux.com/ and
see which ones they have been able to get working).

While I haven't seen one up close, I've heard some buzz about the Panasonic
Toughbook series.  Two of the smaller ones are here:
http://www.panasonic.com/computer/toughbook/learn_more_tbw2.asp
http://www.panasonic.com/computer/toughbook/learn_more_tbr1.asp

If you are willing to go to a 12" screen, some people really like the IBM
Thinkpad X series.  I personally don't like some of the expansion options,
but others do.  For that matter a Powerbook might work out well once you
get to that size.

If money isn't an object, try http://www.dynamism.com for a lot of nice
tiny Japanese import laptops.

-- 
Kyle Rankin
NBLUG President
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org
IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
kyle at nblug.org



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