What Laptop Do You Use, And Why?

[craigtyson]

For almost 2.5 years: IBM x31. I love it.
Small, robust, quite light, yet fully usable.

Excellent! Thinkpads rock!  

Il go along with that.  Had a few issues getting UBUNTU 7.10 to work properly on it though, all now sorted inc proper power management  

[Fushnchupsh]

I use a Dell c400 ultra portable.  I have a thing for small computers, what can I say?  It seems to be the trend amongst us zaurus users

I love this little beauty.  It's great for everything I need.  Sure it doesn't have a cd drive built in, but honestly, what I use it for on the run isn't going to need anything but a massive thumb drive

The only problem is that I don't have the dock and I can't install linux without pulling the HD and installing it on another machine.

Previous to this laptop I had a gateway 200 ultra portable.  The thing was a piece of crap.  I am really hard on my machines and this thing just couldn't take it.  Plus, you couldn't boot from the docking station, so I had issues installing ubuntu with the live cd system  My dell is amazing, really sturdy construction, nice case.  I love it.

--Fish

[Capn_Fish]

Not to hijack the thread, but I've got a mini-ITX desktop with no optical drive (I was too cheap to get one), and have installed Linux on it with a USB optical drive many a time (I think you can even install Linux from a thumbdrive). You could try the same thing if it's overly frustrating to install Linux on it.

[snk4ever]

Fujistu Lifebook B-2154 circa 2001

1.4kg, Celeron 450, 192MB and touchscreen configured as follows

1. Ripped the HDD out and replaced with 4GB CF card (Transcend 266x which gives 40MB/s)

2. Had the batteries refilled with newer LiIon cells from batteryrefill.com - takes the life up to 5 hours from 3

3. Installed Windows 98SE (yes!) with IEradicator to remove IE and unofficial SP2.01.
This is remarkably secure and fast, no services running in background, most malware won't run.
Linux does run but not quite as resource efficiently and the touchscreen and BIOS suspend/resume are not quite 100%

4. Install CPUIdle

5. Install OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and the whole PIM/PI suite

I've been thinking about doing such a thing with the exact same machine but I was afraid of the battery life and unaware of the CF lifetime. Did you tweak the swap (lkike turning it down) to save your CF or didn't you do anything specific ?

[zmiq2]

I'm using an ebay fujitsu b2610, PIII-800MHz/256RAM/30HD, 10' touchscreen (configured but not using it) with kubuntu. I like it so much that I bought a second unit just for p2p... (about 250euros each)

Theu don't have cdrom, but I just installed linux over the net with netboot/pxe boot. A little trouble, but with just one day fiddling I got it working. I know I could have bought a cheap usb-cdrom, but I liked the netboot option too! The netboot was only for installing linux; now it is not needed anymore.

The machine runs very well and it's very light, but a little underperforming; since I like the format, I'm planning on getting either a fujitsu P1610 or a Panasonic R7. Does anyone have experience on those?

[cal]

I have a black Apple Macbook with a 2 GHz core duo, and 2 Gigs ram running Leopard.

I have it because its pretty and people will like me more for being trendy.

[deluxe]

I am current using an HP tc4200 tablet. I also have an IBM r60(provided by the school I attend.)

The Thinkpad is a very nice computer. it seems to be very well built and sturdy.

But the HP tablet is another story. I am completely amazed by what this computer has survived. It is a long story that I won't get into, but it got left on the roof of a car, and it flew off at 50mph. (I think that was the highest my blood pressure has ever been.)
it survived with a tiny crack on the edge of the screen. Everything worked except for the Pen it flew out of the computer and got crushed by a car.  I got a new pen and it worked great. about two months later I got into a car accident on my way to school. the table was in my bag on the seat next to me. It flew forward when I t-boned the other car and slammed into the dashboard.
The ram was unseated, and a small part of the case broke off, but that was it. (I was able to glue it.)
I am using the computer right now. it is simply amazing how tough it is. Both times the computer was in standby.
So at the moment I am partial to HP, but I have been happy with IBM also.

I just hope my Zaurus doesn't through anything like that. I am not sure how well it would fair.

I was lacing my shoes the other day before going for a walk. My Zaurus sl-c1000 fell out of my hip pocket and landed on a ceramic tiled floor. Estimated free-fall=3 feet.
When I picked it up there was no damage, nor scratches, but it wouldn't turn on. I took out and replaced the battery, reseated the Seagate Microdrive (another source of possible damage), tried turning it on again and it rebooted.
Works fine since!!! Phew!! My BP definitely rose a few points when that happened.

Not nearly as heart-stopping an escapade as a couple of years ago with my jornada 568. That fell from my hand, and i instinctively swung my foot out to break its fall. it flew off my foot like a soccer ball, and skidded all the way across the hardwood floor about 12 feet to the wall. Not a scratch again, and still works fine!!!

[pelrun]

and i instinctively swung my foot out to break its fall

I love that reflex! I can't tell you how many things it has saved from a nasty fate.

...just as long as I never drop a bowling ball...

[Hrw]

Dell D400 - 12" screen, no CDROM/DVD drive at all, Pentium Mobile cpu

I use it as 32bit build machine for Poky/Ångström and sometimes when I travel.

I hope it works OK for you! How is the battery life? And the heat?

During long builds CPU goes to 70°C even so the airflow is quite hot. I use cpufreq 'ondemand' on it so it automatically lower cpu speed when not too much to do.

Battery gives me 40 minutes. New one is on a way to me.

[Tom61]

Asus EEE here. It had the right combination of size, processing capability and price, as well as my Lifebook P1120 being dead at the time. Runs Linux out of the box, and installing Ubuntu to a SDHC 8GB card was as easy as hooking up an external USB DVD drive. Cold boots to the default distro in less than 30 seconds.

Prior to the EEE I had a Fujitsu Lifebook P1120. A bit slow with only a 900MHz Transmeta processor and only 256MB (with 16MB of that eaten by code-morphing). However, it was the only thing in the size range that I could afford at that time (~$375 on ebay). When I was upgrading to a faster 60GB HD I dropped a screw into the wrong place and shifted it the wrong direction trying to get it out, and the only way to get it out was to completely disassemble the P1120. The insides of this laptop are horrible. I managed to get the screws out and reassemble it shortly before the EEE came, but it's a bit worse for wear now. Installing Linux was an interesting process, as it can't boot from most USB CD drives (or HDs, or anything but floppies and certain really old CDROMs). I installed DOS onto the drive I used, then used that to install XP (a license key was included on my P1120), and then used a utility to install Ubuntu from XP boot loader.

Before that, I had a Toshiba Libretto 110CT(~$150 off ebay). Fun machine, but nearly useless in this day and age. Mostly used it to play Tyrian 2000. It did cement my desire for another more powerful machine in this size, as I didn't want a full sized laptop.

[speculatrix]

Personally, I had a few IBM thinkpads which were pretty solid - one (380ED) is still with me - it was my Dad's for a few years, i'm going to clean it up and it'll be my Mum's simple word processor and email appliance.

I then had a Dell Latty C610, nice, but a bit flimsy.  The Latitude got replaced relatively recently with a Sony TX2/XP which has an awesome screen, and best of I don't need to carry tons of adaptors, and can often leave charger behind. My laptops don't often leave home, so the relative flimsiness of the TX2 doesn't matter - they get moved around the house depending on what I'm doing.

At work I often didn't have a laptop, a few years ago I gained a cast-off Dell Inspiron 5000 which was a huge chunky solid thing, and it was really robust. Then I had a Dell D400 and D410, neither of which were particularly nice. Changed job in June, got a MacBookPro, lived with OSX for a few months but found Linux was more useful for my tasks, passed off the MBP to a new guy and ended up with a Tosh Tecra M9 (with discrete Nvidia graphics) mainly runs linux, very rarely Vista for specific tasks . We also have Lenovo's at work but a few problems with them meant we decided to try a different brand. A colleague has a Tosh R500 and I'd probably buy one of those instead of a Sony TX/TZ as it feels more solid.

--edit - clean up.

[njefferies]

I've been thinking about doing such a thing with the exact same machine but I was afraid of the battery life and unaware of the CF lifetime. Did you tweak the swap (lkike turning it down) to save your CF or didn't you do anything specific ?

Nothing special for swap - I did use an SLC flash card though, which has about 10x the read/write cycles of MLC flash cards (allegedly). To be honest, I have 12V linear flash cards from 1993 on the Omnibook 300 which are still working fine and I've never encountered a problem with flash failure - maybe I just don't buy cheap enough!

Batteryrefills do a good job for boosting battery life - they warranty their work and you can send them old failed batteries which is what I did. It's not pretty as they have to split open a plastic welded unit and then glue it back toegtehr but it works well (and they don't use Sony exploding cells either). Otherwise, changing from HDD to flash makes less of a difference to battery life than you would think - the processor and backlight are more hungry.