I am running Mandrake 8.1 on a couple of notebooks. The older machine is a 3.2 lb HP Omnibook 800 - 166MHz Pentium, 80MB memory (maximum possible) and 4 GB disk space. This machine now does very light duty as a server on my home network but was my main portable until I got the IBM last year. The HP is unusual in that it has built-in SCSI so it is easy to hang periphereals off it (A scsi tower containing an additional 10GB disk, cdrw and Jaz drives plus a legal size flatbed scanner).
My active laptop is an IBM X20 - 600MHz PIII, 320MB, 20GB, modem, ethernet, pcmcia/cardbus socket, compact flash socket, audio in/out, external video out, usb ports set up for dual boot (Win98). Weighs about 3.5 lbs (I like light laptops) but has an Xbase that increases the weight to about 5.5 lb and adds dvdrom and floppy, printer, serial and external mouse ports. Most of the time I carry the machine without the Xbase. Having juggled cables and external drives for floppy and cdrom with the HP and watching Vaio owners juggle all that stuff I am convinced that the Xbase is the way to go when the extras are needed. Everything is working under Linux except the hot swap of the Xbase - I have to reboot every time I add/remove it but I have not spent time trying to see if I can solve this yet. The modem is a winmodem which I have working but there are at least three different modem/ethernet combinations for this machine some of which do not appear to work well (even under Windows). Connection to my lan is made wirelessly using a Linksys pcmcia card although I did use the built-in wired ethernet port before getting the wireless card. Battery life is excellent and suspend/resume works smoothly and quickly. I have been very happy with this machine. Although this is not one of the machines that IBM will/would preinstall Linux on I have had no problems other than the Xbase docking. I picked the IBM up fully loaded as described for ~$1K as an open box special (but new unused with full warranty) at about the time last year that a lot of 'technology' companies were having difficulties. GaryS On Sun Apr 14, 2002 at 12:59:55PM -0500, Jason Guidry wrote: > yeah, this may not be completely on-topic, but I need advice from users > who are not necessarily winXP + Intel freaks. > > So, howbaaadit? I need to replace my trusty tuxtops K6 with a sub-$2K > laptop. I'm going back and forth from a Sony FXA-49 and an iBook. > while opinions on these two are welcome, I'm interested on > opinions/experiences of any variety. Is there anything just on the > horizon? stay away from brand X? good experiences from dealers, brands? > > thanks for your wisdom.
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