Re: [MLUG] cheap, not too heavy laptops with linux?

[Phillip Kelchen <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Friday 26 May 2006 22:07, Jennifer Dozar wrote:
> Hi again!
> I"m on my quest to find a decent, not too expensive, hopefully under
> $1000 laptop. I was wondering if you guys knew a good place for
> relativly inexpensive linux laptops.  I just want it for school and as
> long as I have open office, i should be fine.  Just curious!

Personally, since you have a desktop, get a used laptop that's a year or two 
old. You can usually get them pretty cheaply. Laptops are really meant to do 
non-intensive things while away from the desk. My 4-year-old Gateway lap 
anchor with a 2.2GHz Pentium 4-M and (upgraded to) 1GB RAM is more than 
sufficient to run OpenOffice, Firefox/Konqueror and an e-mail client. I'd say 
shoot for a Pentium M model with a 14" screen as that would be a good size.

> I was thinking of upgrading my home tower too. especially graphics card.
> I have a AGP ATI card right now... i'm told i should go PCI express, but
> that means updating my motherboard as well.  Suggestions there? I don't
> want to spend too much. I"m still in the car buying process which isn't
> going well!!

You only would want to go to a new motherboard if your processor needs 
upgraded too. Otherwise there's always the AGP NVIDIA 7800GS, which is faster 
than most PCIe cards except the 7800GT(X) and 79x0 series. You could also use 
the AGP version of the ATI X850(some X's and T's here). The AGP 8x interface 
is more than sufficient for everything except SLI setups. The people running 
SLI need two PCIe slots, but the rest of us can do fine with one GPU slot. If 
you don't game, you can get away with a PCI card if you want. My $40 GeForce 
6200TC (admittedly a x16 PCIe part) would make a rotten gamer card but 
handles a 1600x1200 and 1280x1024 monitor in dual-head setup like a champ. It 
also does XGL.

Phillip

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