[clug-talk] New Laptop

[John E Jardine]

Hi,

I picked up an Acer 5580 (Core2 duo 5500) at Future Shop 3 months ago.
I didn't avoid the MS tax - but wound up with something pretty close to
your desktop setup.  If I ever need to use MS/Vista, I'll just swap the
HDD back and I should be good to go.  My memory says it was $900 + GST.

It's my light-duty laptop (only one airplane ride so far).  I bumped it
to 2GB of RAM and a new HDD which I installed Feisty/64bit on.  

The good:
Pretty much everything works: sound, SD Card reader, 802.11a/b/g.  The
only thing I haven't tried is the modem, and I probably never will.

The bad:
I haven't installed the 32bit compatibility libraries on it so two
common apps won't run: Flash & Skype.  Flash is mostly for ad's so I
don't care but it'd be nice to have a 64bit version of Skype.

The questionable:
The external VGA connection on it is a little weird too - I think it
works but need to play with it again as there were technical
difficulties the the projector the last time.

Just one option for you.

Cheers,
J.J.

PS: Heavy duty laptop is a ThinkPad and I can't count the miles I've got
on that.



On Sun, 2007-08-12 at 11:16 -0600, Dick Angus wrote:
> I am in the market for a laptop. I don't need a super heavy duty machine as it 
> is just for travel on vacation. Watching the occasional DVD, playing some mp3 
> music, storing photos, burning a DVD-RW to hold photos, WiFi to the Internet 
> for access to e-mail. Stuff like that.
> 
> My desktop machine is Kubuntu 7.04 (it's an Intel duo 64, but I'm running 32 
> bit as 64 bit support doesn't seem to be that robust as yet) and I'd like to 
> match that for ease of use. Most of all I don't want to pay any Redmond 
> taxes.
> 
> I looked at Dell Canada and didn't see the Linux boxes they sell in the US. I 
> also didn't see an option to leave of the M$ "stuff." Any suggestions would 
> be greatly appreciated - I'd even consider a solid refurbished machine.
> 
> 
> TIA