[ale] laptop advice needed

[Preston Boyington]

Sean wrote:
<snipped>
> I would like some advice on what to stay away from and/or look for.

My last two laptops were Toshiba and had the Atheros chipset for
wireless and Debian installed very easily.  I also am tinkering with a
new Acer Aspire One and like what I see (Acer AOD150-1577 10.1"
Widescreen Netbook).

Personally I'm sold on Toshiba with the Acer a close second, but after
thinking about it would lean toward a Dell laptop because they sell
loads of them and they are pretty widely adopted by the linux community.

(I'm guessing that lots of parent's purchase them for their high
school/college kids and when the kids get bored they install Linux to
gain cool points.  When something doesn't work they get on the forums
and blast away until someone fixes the problem.)

I also will suggest removing the Gnome Network manager and installing
Wicd (and wpasupplicant).  I haven't had ANY issues with my network
connections on any of the machines I've done this with.  Gnome Network
manager comes off as soon and I can access the package manager.

I've had problems with HP's in the past and now steer clear of them.

So my preference is:
Toshiba
Acer
Dell

I would also do like you have in mind and take a few LiveCD distros to
test the hardware.

Happy hunting!

-- 

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Where the road takes me - a highwayman's perspective
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