On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 01:06:36AM -0600, K B wrote:
> I'm looking to purchase a new laptop/notebook computer...Needs to run XP Pro for college (their requirements)
> 
> However, I would also love to run Linux on it - just about any distro (mainly Mandrake, Fedora, Debian, others welcome as well)
> 
> What companies out there either:
> 
> A) Sell laptops preconfigured w/Linux (windows too)
>            I know they're out there...can't remember the sites though.

This isn't necessarily important, since any distro it came with would probably
be out of date anyway =)

> B) Sell laptops that work fairly well w/Linux
>            I know Dell and IBM both often work with it...what others do?

Dell is _not_ linux friendly, and won't be until they stop selling their
hardware with broadcom chipsets.

> I'm looking in the $cheap-~$1750 range...any suggestions guys?

I purchased a Toshiba A15-S127 for $550 after $250 mail-in-rebates (that
I got back in 4 weeks or so) at best buy, I got the one without the built
in wireless card since it was only 802.11b. I paid an extra $65 and put
my own miniPCI wireless card in it (and attached the existing antennas 
to it) to get 802.11a/b/g.

Specs:

Intel P4 Celeron 2.0Ghz (400mhz bus)
256MB PC2100 DDR (Dual SO-DIMM slots, only one in use)
30GB HDD
15" TFT Active Matrix
CD-RW+DVD-ROM (24x24x10 CD, 8x DVD)
v.92 WinModem (Linux drivers work great)
Intel EEPro VE 10/100 Ethernet
USB 2.0 "Hi-Speed" x2

Everything worked with RH9 out of the box. I've got Fedora on it now, and with
the enhanced ACPI support in the 2.6.x kernels I can now use the screen
brightness, system lock, and other hotkeys (including suspend-to-ram and 
suspend-to-disk, LCD/CRT/LCD+CRT vid output) 

Klaptop is working perfectly for handling power (power profiles for on/off
AC, what to do at certain battery levels, including turning down the screen
brighness) when you combine that with the speedstep throttling I can get
just shy of 3 hours battery run-time with normal use.

Overall, I'm thoroughly happy with Toshiba, and to top it off the windows
keys are at the very far top right hand of the keyboard, out of my way =)

-- 
Matthew S. Hallacy                            FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net                           GPG public key 0x01938203

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