[NBLUG/talk] NBLUG/talk] Looking for a Laptop

Jim Bianchi jimbo at sonic.net
Fri Jan 16 15:32:01 PST 2004


Message: 2
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 21:11:13 -0800
To: talk at nblug.org
From: Bob Wachtel <bob at posthorse.com>
Subject: [NBLUG/talk] Looking for a Laptop
Reply-To: talk at nblug.org

Generally I use an old Win95 laptop to SSH to a server, but now it's time
to get a labtop running Linux. Tuesday's meeting gave me some ideas. Any
laptop a few waves back from the leading edge would suit my needs.

	Several months ago, I bought a used Dell C600 laptop on eBay. I
paid $500 for it -- I dunno how good a price this was, I Really Wanted
that one -- installed RH 8 on it and it has worked very well. It came
with 256meg RAM (but I upgraded it to 512meg), a 3.5" floppy drive, and
a CD ROM drive (that I upgraded to a CD R/W & DVD drive), a battery (that
didn't hold a charge -- but this was noted in the advert -- so I bought
another). This model was intended for use with Windoze, so it has an on
board modem and ethernet thingy. Natch, these both are fairly useless with
Linux, so the guy who sold it to me agreed to include a PCI Xytel 56k
Modem/ethernet thingie. This modem works great with Linux (haven't tried
the ethernet yet). I bought a Lucent Gold wi-fi 802.<something>	PCI card
for it and though I haven't used it yet, it is recognised and everything
seems to be well with it.

	This laptop is very nice. The screen is big, the BIOS is easy to
configure, and RH 8 Linux installed and functions well at the native
resolution of 1280x1024. I'm your typical Linux dummy, but even so, I had
no problems at all setting up RH 8 with this unit. Recommended.


-- 
jimbo at sonic.net       Jim Bianchi   Santa Rosa   California

Remember Flight 93 -- "Let's roll!"






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