I've always built my own desktops systems, usually w/AMD chips, and have been very satisfied. Now I'm in the market for a laptop, which obviously I can't build myself. So I'm wondering if anybody has any experience w/off-brand laptops? Any suggestions for good quality, reliable, reasonably priced ones? Is it worth it price-wise compared to the name-brands, or should I just buy a Dell? Thanks, Harold
Ain't worth to look for grey cheapies anymore. Especially the last months you'll find a lot of top brandname laptops for about $1000. Don't try to buy the LATEST processors, you'll pay through your nose fore these. Look for AMD Sempron Mobile 3300+. Very fast. Stay away from anything AMD Turion ML but buy MT. Centrino ain't bad either but I prefer AMD. Make sure you got mobile processor types, no notebooks with workstation kind of processers inside!
Stick with the big name brands, a friend of mine bought an Avatar, he had a problem with the computer and the customer service was so hard to get a hold of, that he decided to buy a new one before he was ever able to speak to someone on the phone. He purchased a new apple for $899 a left over from the previoious model. It works great.
Hi Maria, There are probably many. Notebooks require careful checking of software to make sure everything goes. Especially fan control and Wifi can be difficult to get right. All I can say that I just bought two Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1645 with AMD Mobile Sempron 3300+ (512MB, 80GB disk). I am now running Ubuntu 5.10 (pre-release) on those without any problem. For the time being Ubuntu is going to be my workhorse release. I went rather quickly from Gentoo to Suse Pro to Ubuntu, mainly because of my search for a good notebook solution ( ) Be good, nononsense
Hi Maria, There are probably many. Notebooks require careful checking of software to make sure everything goes. All I can say that I just bought two Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1645 with AMD Mobile Sempron 3300+. I am running now Ubuntu 5.10 (pre-release) on those without any problem. PS: I only buy notebooks if (1) they are ridiculously cheap; (2) I can try it and return it if NOT satisfied. Be good, nononsense
Interesting on moving from Gentoo / SUSE to Ubuntu on a Fujitsu. Have been looking at the Fujitsu's and at the Asus (rather common here and reasonably priced). I would be interested to hear of your progress of running Linux on a laptop. Need to find a suitable charting program... Maria
Ubuntu is SO BLOODY GREAT. If anyone's interested in trying out Ubuntu with different hardware, remember there's a LiveCD which you can take to the store, pop in the drive, and run without harming the default Windows setup. The only thing I find I ever have to watch out for is the wireless card -- Avoid buying anything with a Broadcom card especially if you ever want to use wireless without buying a third-party PCMCIA wireless card....
My first laptop was an off-brand and it was plain garbage. After that came a Dell, which was not bad. My current one is an IBM, and it's the best computer I ever owned. However, due to a tight situation I have to sell it. If somebody is in the Los Angeles area and would like to take a look, please PM me.