<div dir="ltr">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. <br>
<br><a href="http://portland.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=thinkpad">http://portland.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=thinkpad</a><br><a href="http://portland.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=lenovo">http://portland.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=lenovo</a> (the newer alias)<br>
<br>Good luck!<br><br>Michael<br><br>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.<br>
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<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 8:49 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:znmeb@cesmail.net" target="_blank">znmeb@cesmail.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>On Wed, 2008-08-13 at 20:41 -0700, dan p wrote:<br>
> as someone who gets paid by the the other side, why AMD?<br>
<br>
</div>Because they're less expensive. Because all my other machines are AMD.<br>
Because their tuning package is free and Intel's is $700. 3DNow.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
</font><div><div></div><div>M. Edward (Ed) Borasky<br>
<a href="http://ruby-perspectives.blogspot.com" target="_blank">ruby-perspectives.blogspot.com</a><br>
<br>
"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." --<br>
Alfréd Rényi via Paul Erdős<br>
<br>
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