[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Buying a laptop

[Michael Bunsen]

I was in the same position: a Mac die hard, until I dropped my iBook for the
last time and couldn't afford another one. Now I am a die hard for the
ThinkPad X series. I have an X40 that I got on ebay for something like $220.
1.2ghz, 1gb ram, with hard drive motion sensing thing for the clumsy, SD
slot, wireless, and all that. No optical drive, but I my usb external one
works fine the few times that I've had to use it. It's lighter and smaller
than a new MacBook, or 12" ibook. I run Ubuntu exclusively and the wireless
and 3d effects worked out of the box. VirtualBox with windoze XP is pretty
speedy as well. Mac OS 10.5 even installed and worked with the wireless
card, plus audio ichat with the built in mic! (though stopped working when I
rebooted and I haven't played with it since ;). So winding up, I have bought
a handful of ThinkPads on craiglist for "clients" over the last couple years
and I think they are most robust non-Mac or non-flash-based laptops out
there. Doesn't have to be an X series, but they're the portable models.

http://portland.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=thinkpad
http://portland.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=lenovo (the newer alias)

Good luck!

Michael

P.S. The slipstreamed version of Mac OS X I installed can be found under the
name "Kalyway Leopard". This is the only hardware I've come close to getting
it to work on.



On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 8:49 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
<znmeb at cesmail.net>wrote:

> On Wed, 2008-08-13 at 20:41 -0700, dan p wrote:
> > as someone who gets paid by the the other side, why AMD?
>
> Because they're less expensive. Because all my other machines are AMD.
> Because their tuning package is free and Intel's is $700. 3DNow.
>
> --
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> ruby-perspectives.blogspot.com
>
> "A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." --
> Alfréd Rényi via Paul Erdős
>
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