[kwlug disc.] looking for techie thoughts on laptops

[Rashkae]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   not strictly speaking a linux question but, given the abundance of
> HW expertise out there, i thought i'd ask, anyway.
> 
>   a friend is sending her son off to college this fall, and needs to
> get him a laptop.  i pointed her at tigerdirect.ca and told her to
> poke around.  she came back asking about an acer celeron-based laptop
> for $640. celeron.  gack.  so i suggested she check out a refurbished
> gateway, of which i have a number and all of which have behaved pretty
> well so far.
> 
>   it appears that you can get pretty decent deals on refurbed gateways
> these days.  i mean, there's this:
> 
> http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3945800&CatId=3444
> 
>   and this:
> 
> http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3887566&CatId=2289
> 
>   and if the son is willing to accept a smaller screen, this with
> 64-bit AMD CPU:
> 
> http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3901460&CatId=1902
> 
>   thoughts on, say, the tradeoff between an intel duo core, and an AMD
> turion?  beyond that, getting at least 2G of RAM and at least 160G of
> HD seems adequate.
> 

I bought one of the refurbished gateways.  I got a good deal and it does
what I want it to do... but I wouldn't recommend them.. terrible support
on the hardware.  This goes double if you want to use Linux.. Even
though my notebook has all supported chipsets, manufacturer specific
tweaks with sound and wireless means those two certainly never worked
out of the box.

I wouldn't be too hard on the Celeron cpu.  (though obviously that's
very old tech).  The point of the laptop should be to be as efficient as
possible. (A notebook that burns less watts will also generate less
heat, and be less vulnerable to heat related failures... One of the
biggest problems with notebooks is the insane obsession with "desktop
replacement" that requires putting dual core cpus and high end GPU's to
create a lap warmer)