The other day I was looking at the inventory of laptops I've accumulated over the years and the ones that stand out are the ThinkPads. I have a couple of Dell Inspirons which have both been in for service multiple times even though they're only 18 month old, an HP 800-CT (great travel machine), and a couple of older Thinkpads. The Thinkpads just keep on going and both have stood up to multiple sessions with my 3 year-old neice (she managed to mangle the Inspiron in one sitting) and getting banged around during travel. The Dells took very little tweaking using Redhat (one is 7.3 and the other is 8.0). If you use a Lucent wireless card they work as installed. The last time I had Linux on the Thinkpads was 6.x and they worked fine. The 365XD had some minor initialization issues with XFree (the first time it ran after power up it had to be started, stopped and restarted to properly set up the screen). The Dells come with both a trackpad and stick mouse. I always prefered the stick mouse on the Thinkpads but I find myself using the trackpad exclusively on the Dells. Part of that is that the stick mouse on the Dells tend to be less refined than the IBMs - they're stiffer and seem less accurate. If I was buying a new laptop it would be an IBM ... unless it was a PowerBook :-) BTW, Linux Journal has been running a series on using Linux on a laptop, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6684 that might be useful. --rick Jim Crumley wrote: >Does anyone have any recommendation for laptops to use with >Linux? > >Some of my considerations are as follows: > Harware that can be made to work with Linux is essential. If > it has a software modem that won't work it's not the end of > the world, but still a minus. > Weight doesn't really bother me. > Sturdy is a plus - I have been known to drop things. > Large screen size would be nice - probably 15 inches. > Linux pre-installed would be great. No OS is ok. I'd really > like to avoid the Windows tax. > A well respected brand would be nice. As would something > local. > I prefer trackpoints to trackpads, but as far as I can tell IBM > forces you to choose one type of Windows or another. > >Has anyone gotten a laptop from any of the smaller Linux >specialist dealers online? In particular, Los Alamos Computers >http://www.laclinux.com/ has caught my eye. > > > _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list