Hey all, I need a laptop. But the requirements are slightly odd. This is for a machine to stay in our colo cage for use as a barcode scanner, serial interface, basic GUI, and ssh server management console, etc. It needs to have USB for an eToken, PS2 for a barcode scanner, serial to manage PDUs KVM etc, on-board ethernet, and not be flimsy, big, or expensive.
Obviously we can easily get a USB to serial adapter, meaning we'd need at least 2 USB ports, but a PS2 keyboard port seems a rarity now-a-days. Battery life isn't really important. Doesn't need to be a properly ruggadized, just sturdy. 15" or so screen, with a decent resolution to fit webpages and OO documents etc, 17" is too big. 512-1G of ram, so-so CPU (this P4M 1.8 I'm using is way more than powerful enough). Can anyone recommend a laptop that does all these things, runs Linux happily (Gentoo of course), and isn't a Thinkpad (I was forced to use one a few years ago, and hated it). Thanks -- Mike Williams -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
