On Wed, Aug 22, 2001 at 11:33:10AM -0400, Derek Glidden wrote:
> Ed Centanni wrote:
> >
> > Thanks, I decided to go with a refurbished Dell 5000e. Much the same
> > specs but with twice the HD capacity. Seems well supported by SuSE 7.1
> > (let the contradictory horror stories begin?). And yes I know about the
> > battery-that-catches-on-fire recall.
> >
> > I'd still like to know about the FX215 in case this doesn't work out.
> > It seems like a sweet machine and it's $1299 at Best Buy now.
>
> No, we've tried the cheap Sonys and they are cheap, nasty, and prone to
> failure.
>
> We've had 150% failure rate with cheap Sony laptops. (They've all died
> and one of our replacement units also failed.)
I've had my Sony Vaio Picturebook PCG-XS for over a year now, and I love it.
The chipsets do tend to be more bleeding edge and thus unsupported by
anything but the latest bleeding edge kernels (and then only marginally).
After a year, they've finally hacked in a Video4Linux Picturebook Camera
driver, and *everything* now works wonderfully (save the Winmodem).
I don't think my Sony is "cheap" or "nasty" (just difficult ;), and it
simply hasn't failed. In fact, it appears to be quite durable.
I've actually had more problems with Dell Lattitudes (CPX/J series) - but
then again, I've built dozens of them. Everything on these generic machines
are supported by most modern distros. These seem to be more fragile (cheap
plastic, not magnesium cases) and have a moderate infant mortality.
It's a personal preference thing, really.
Before you buy any laptop, play with it for a bit first (at the store or
wherever you can find one) and THEN decide. Buying a laptop blindly will
only disappoint you when you find out the key layout is wrong, or that
the screen is too dim.
You can retrofit the HD of any laptop these days (standard 2.5" IDE drives,
just varying thinknesses). Most modern laptops use SO-DIMM memory (which
is INCREDIBLY cheap at the moment), and the newest laptops even have
mini-PCI slots for wireless cards and the like. But modularity is still
not the same as with a desktop PC: make sure you buy what you need when
you get your laptop (or enough USB devices to make it do what you want :)
- Ian C. Blenke <ian@blenke.com>
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