Notebook recommendations

[Rainer Duffner]

Christopher Hilton wrote:
> Thanks for the advice. In this case I'm trying to replace my Gateway 
> 450ROG. That had a 1.4 GHz Pentium M and (a 4.5 hour battery life) as 
> well as an ipw driven 802.11b card. Everything worked pretty well  but 
> I hated the build quality of the machine.
>
> If the new intel wifi chip isn't supported that's not too bad. I would 
> have bought an atheros based card anyhow because that's the only thing 
> I can get to work reliably with kismet. I really should have said that 
> a real serial port is a requirement. I forgot that I don't want to buy 
> a usb GPS when my Garmin 12XL works just fine.




Fujitsu-Siemens' latest Lifebooks E (8110 & 8210) still carry serial and 
parallel ports.

To match your old Gateway, a Lifebook E8010 would also work, which 
should be available via ebay a bit cheaper.

ACPI S3+S4 do not work with my E8010, either, though, so the chances 
that it works with newer models is slim, at best.
But the build-quality of the Lifebooks is very good. IMO, they are 
borderline to a toughbook (minus water-resistance, of course).

And as I said: ACPI is a a big, commen problem with current notebooks, 
even when you use e.g. SuSE: everything bar XP is going to give major 
problems in the ACPI-department (at least). And even using XP could 
force you through the odd BIOS-update cycle (or two) until everything works.




cheers,
Rainer