Mike, I'm not sure how important processing power is for you. I purchased a refurbished Thinkpad T61 off of eBay a little over a year ago, and I've been very happy with it. It has a Core 2 Duo processor, and 2GB of RAM. Here is one similar: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T61p-Notebook-2-4Ghz-2GB-RAM-100GB-HD-DVD-RW-nVidia-1680x1050-/170957588527?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item27cdddc82f It has a 1680x1050 display. The LCD market has gotten a little screwy in the past few years as TVs and computer monitors have converged to use the same "glass." That's why you see so much 1080 vertical resolution stuff. You used to be able to get 1200 vertical pixel stuff but now that's hard to find. I have a 24" display that's 1920x1200 from a few years ago, that I paid $400 for. You just don't see those anymore though. Hopefully with the retina displays we'll see pixel densities go up again. Anyway, if you're looking for something solid, with a good display, consider one of those old T61s. You can find pretty good prices on them. Good luck! -Erik On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 10:10 PM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 14 Dec 2012, Mike Miller wrote: > > Thanks for all the tips on the HP laptops. The problems with general >> flimsiness and loud, unstoppable fans are also reflected in these comments >> (on the model I'm considering): >> >> http://www.amazon.com/HP-G7-**2022us-LED-Backlit-Processor-** >> Technology/product-reviews/**B008QDJUI6/<http://www.amazon.com/HP-G7-2022us-LED-Backlit-Processor-Technology/product-reviews/B008QDJUI6/> >> > > A discovery about the fans: There is an option in the BIOS: "Fan always > on" which is set to <ENABLE> by default. Change that and the fan only goes > on when the computer heats up. > > The fan sounds cheap. The feel of the HP is cheap, plasticy. The DVD > drive platter seems weak, breakable. It's not at all like the old Dell -- > quite like you all have been saying. > > I'm not impressed with it, but how much is it worth to get a tougher > machine? The thing is, I mostly use them when traveling, and I'm not doing > that much traveling these days, so I'm not sure if I should spend more. > The only reason I'm looking at this machine is that my nice little Asus > EEEpc netbook has such a small screen. I do a lot with Xvnc set at > 1680x1050, but the Asus is only 1024x600 while the HP is 1600x900. I'd > love to have 1680x1050, which is what I run on most monitors, but I don't > know of a laptop that has that native resolution. Those with 1920x1080 > would be great, but they seem a lot pricier. > > There is one other reason -- I have a newer Canon DSLR and I want to be > able to process photos on the laptop (e.g., using ImageMagick's convert). > The little Asus would be struggling with them, but I'm sure the HP would > handle them quickly. > > > Mike > ______________________________**_________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/**mailman/listinfo/tclug-list<http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list> > -- Erik K. Mitchell erik.mitchell at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20121214/8185ffba/attachment.html>