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Re: [LUG] Laptop as a desktop replacement

 

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010, Rob Beard wrote:

On 22/04/10 11:34, NW wrote:
I have kept away from laptops until recently when I was given one. Now
that I am somewhat used to it I can see that it could be useful to look
for a more powerful one to replace my rather aged desktop. And it would
save a lot of room in the spare bedroom which doubles as my study.
Brownie points are always welcome!!

<snip>

I am not interested in gaming at all. I suspect also that some laptops
work better with Linux than others. Is that the case?

Anyway, any recommendations would be gratefully received,

Neil Winchurst

Okay, well before any shouts, yes I know this machine I'm going to recommend is running Windows 7... however I do know it runs Ubuntu fine. My step-father recently bought one and I installed Ubuntu 9.10 for him...

http://tinyurl.com/28vkmdx

It's an Acer Extensa 5635Z notebook, it has a 15.6" widescreen LED backlit screen with a resolution of something like 1366x768. It has 2GB Ram and a 250GB hard drive. The CPU is a Pentium Dual Core T4300 which is 2.1GHz with 1MB Cache. No I know as well some people bad mouth the Pentium Dual Core and Celeron Dual Core CPUs, but this little machine was NEARLY as quick as my Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz.

My experience with Acers has been quite good - I have both an AAO and An Acer Aspite 5050 standard laptop thing.

One good thing is that the Acer Laptops (and desktops I bought for a company I worked with a while back) seem to come with the hard drive partitioned into 3: A small windows recovery partition, then the rest abut 50:50 with a Windows C: drive and a blank D: drive. I unstalled Debian Lenny on the D: drive (after repartitioning it as I needed it) and made it dual-boot. I very rarely go into Windoze (it's XP), but there is one program I need to use which I can only run from XP, and it's sometimes handy to view a website in IE - other than that I leave it - so I've never gone to the hassle of wiping it and getting the refund.

I've bought mine (and wifeys AAO) from Moortek in South Brent - they are an Acer dealer and a friendly bunch (I knew them when they were based in Buckfastleigh).

Gordon

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