ideal laptop recommendations?

[Scott Lambert]

On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 12:10:43PM -0400, Laszlo Vagner wrote:
> I had very good luck with toshiba, seems like its very stable and
> after 3 years everything still works fine, i got it dual booting
> freebsd and win2000, the only shortcoming is the lack of serial port
> and the lucent winmodem. its is an s2805-401 700mhz P3 with 15 inch
> display that is clear and bright.

I have the 2805-S201.  Mine is a 650MHz Celery with a 13.5" display. 

That Lucent WinModem works just fine.  /usr/ports/comms/ltmdm/

And with the uplcom driver, the serial port is $30 away.  This is the 
one I bought: 

http://www.jandr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product_Id=1189970

No suspend from resume is my biggest complaint.  I haven't had to have
it serviced since I bought it in February 2001.

It hasn't spent much time on a desk.  Most of my use has it in my
lap on the couch so I can watch TV while I keep an eye on the network.
802.11b has made this much more comfortable in the past year.  When
working from the couch, you often get into positions to stay comfortable
where taking a hand off the keyboard would have the thing fall off your
lap.  The trackpoint is great for that.  Basically it has been hard used
and still lives.

I have even bought the OnTheStick keyboards from
http://www.pckeyboard.com/ so that I don't have to waste time reaching
for the mouse on my other systems.

It has been used for about 5 hours per day average and I've hauled it
around the NYC subways, tossed it in the back of the Mustang and flown
with it.  It goes everywhere I go.  If it's not travelling, it's running
so that I don't have to waste time booting it up to fix something at
work.  I also ssh back into it from work so that I can read my personal
e-mail. 

I've worn the paint off until it has heart shaped palm prints on the
wrist rest.  I had to use clear nail polish to replace the "F" and "J"
key bumps for touch home row location.  They wore off after about a
year.

The only scare I've had with it was when I dropped it, in the laptop
bag, a couple of weeks ago.  The 802.11b PCMCIA card was not recognized
when I next booted it up.  After disassembly, I found the the slot
module had come out of the connector on the motherboard.  After snapping
it back in place, there have been no further problems.

> needs a cd burner though.

Now that I have a digital camera, I agree with you.  Here's hoping
/usr/ports/devel/libusb gets better soon so that gphoto2 will work with
the Kodak DX3900.  Until then, the CF to PCMCIA adapter is doing just
fine.

Another Toshiba datapoint:  My girlfriend's 5 year old (+?) Satellite
2535CDS's only problem is the lid hinge friction is almost gone.

-- 
Scott Lambert                    KC5MLE                       Unix SysAdmin
lambert at lambertfam.org