Notebook recommendations and/or barebones kit experience?

[Daniel Eischen]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Martin Cracauer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Here is what I want:
> - quiet when not under load
> - must operate in warm rooms when compiling kernels
> - NVidia chipset if at all possible

Not sure why you want NVidia, but under -current and using NVidia
drivers/OpenGL you won't be able to use libkse and/or libthr.  All
the notebooks that I have access to and which run FreeBSD have
ATI chipsets.

> - More than 1024x768 *or* working dual-head
> - Firewire, USB 2.0 and/or at least two PCMCIA II slots
> - $1200 - $1500 for a current model but would take a $1000 refurbished
>   with slower CPU
> 
> Some Dell Inspirons fit that nicely, in particular since you can get
> as much display as you want.  But a friend has 4 in the office and all
> 4 had to be sent to get parts replaced already.  What are your
> experiences with them?

I bought a refurbished Dell Inspiron thinking I'd save a few hundred
dollars.  The keyboard was a bit sticky when I got it, but it wasn't
really that annoying so I let it go.  A few months later the system
would no longer power on and I sent it back (I also bought Dell
support).  Dell claimed that I spilled something on the keyboard
and the entire motherboard needed replacing.  I argued that that
was the way I got it and never spilled anything on it (which I
didn't!), but still had to pay $600 to get it fixed.  It ended
up costing me $200 more than buying the system new instead of
refurbished.  I never had any problems with Dells until then,
but now I don't think I'd ever go back to them.  YMMV

-- 
Dan Eischen