[ale] Laptop recommendation

[James P. Kinney III]

I am a big fan of the Thinkpad line. They are not the cutting-edge of
hardware like Sony Vaio's, but they are an excellent example of good
engineering design (usually). They are quite sturdy and reliable. Nearly
all of them will run Linux in some distribution flavor. As IBM is a big
Linux supporter, they have done well to publish (and actively provide
code and patches) info on how to get the big distros running on their
laptops.

Prior to my purchase of the first _used_ thinkpad 600, I churned through
a laptop in about 14 months. The first Thinkpad 600e lasted me 18 months
until I got tired of how slow it was. It was still working just fine
when I sold it. The next Thinkpad was a used T20. I have had that one
now for 26 months (it had a sticker on the bottom that read "Property of
Arthur Anderson". I removed it :). I thought the hard drive was dying.
Its actually the bios battery that is failing. The laptop is now 7 years
old and _still_ works like a champ. Screen is perfect. Battery life
stinks since the battery is the original one and is worn out.

Are they cheap? NO! They are some of the most expensive laptops that
aren't ruggedized. But $3k/7 years vs $1.5k/1.5 years looks better
financially and puts less old PC into the trash pile.
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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