Re: Re: Where to start: hardware and reading material

On Sunday 09 October 2011 09:03:40 Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> On Sat 08 Oct 2011 21:39:48 NZDT +1300, Chris Gavin-Egan wrote:
> > I used to have an X30 thinkpad and now do much work on a T40 thinkpad.
> > Just love the machines and would wholly recommend IBM thinkpads.
> >
> > Solid, reliable and just work !
>
> Where do you get IBM thinkpads from these days, or does your statement
> extend to Lenovo?
>
> I would be reluctant to buy an old laptop, the performance is absent, as
> is most probably any battery life. Having to replace a laptop battery
> brings it very close to beyond economic repair.
>
> The cheapest useful starter option is probably one of the used HP/Compaq
> desktops in whatever case size you can get your hands on. Buy at least
> 1GB of RAM if you can, an upgrade is very expensive because those RAM
> types have gone through the roof. The basics in those machines work with
> Linux out of the box, but the details do not. Getting sensors to go is a
> lost cause (I tried on several around the d530, dx7200 mark), and the
> ICH6 Intel chipset SATA controller do not support hot swap with the
> kernel drivers. There are supposedly alternative drivers which do
> support it but I couldn't even get them to talk to the disks. SATA
> hotswap isn't necessarily a beginner's function though.
>
> Volker

Where do you get 'em from?   Trademe, of course.

When you say 'performance is absent', performance for what?   Browsing, 
editing documents, email - even a 10-year-old laptop is more than adequate 
for that.   You can certainly get more oomph for your money with a desktop, I 
resort to my homebuilt AMD64 when I need to do any heavy lifting like copy a 
DVD with K9copy or edit 80MB TIFF's with Gimp or stuff like that, but 95% of 
the time I sit in the lounge (as now) browsing on the laptop or ssh'ing into 
the desktop for email.   (With a charger plugged in because, yes, the battery 
is tired).

So it really depends on what the user's going to do with it and where.

cr

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