[RndTbl] Question about Laptops

Adam Thompson athompso at athompso.net
Fri Dec 24 17:26:45 CST 2010


One possibility I always encourage people to check out is off-lease Dell laptops.  You can get a business-grade (Latitude, IIRC) refurb unit *with* a 2-year replacement warranty (optional, only about $70-80) for a few hundred dollars.  And their business lines almost always run Linux 100% OK.  They're just not current-gen at that speed.
But contrast to a netbook with tiny screen, cramped kbd, 1yr wnty, slow HD, slow CPU... for similar price.
See http://www.dfsdirect.ca/.
-Adam 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Pfaiffer <high.res.mike at gmail.com>
Sender: roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:59:00 
To: <roundtable at muug.mb.ca>
Reply-To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable at muug.mb.ca>
Subject: Re: [RndTbl] Question about Laptops

On 10-12-24 04:24 PM, Trevor Cordes wrote:
> On 2010-12-24 Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
>> 	Merry Christmas and happy holidays (what ever works for you -
>> you never know). ;-)
>>
>> 	My father had decided to look at a laptop. He wants to put
>> his family tree program on it and take it for a trip out East this
>> spring. He has seen me running Linux on my desktop for years and
>> thinks he would like to give it a try on the laptop. Even in a
>> dual-boot configuration. Being cheap (a typical Winnipegger) he is
>> only willing to spend $200 -$300 for the machine. There are some
>
> Most in that range will be netbooks.  Even cheapo 4-yo technology
> notebooks are still around $400-500+ on sale.  Make sure he knows the
> difference as netbooks can be disappointing if that's not what you
> really want.

	I saw three machines in that price range (retail). One was a netbook. 
It never occurred to me to think about this until you mentioned it, His 
primary thing is the family tree stuff and e-mail.

>> 	The question is what are some good brands and locations to
>> scope out?
>
> Buy today's Free Press and go flyer frolicking!  Surely there will be
> some crazy BD blowouts.

	Got a bunch of flyers delivered this week. Prices range from $175 up to 
over $1,000. Quite a spread.

> As for brands, the entire world except for
> Acer, that's my humble opinion based on selling computers for 13 years!

	A couple of the cheaper ones were Acers. I'll have to take a second 
look. It seems as though quite a few people using Toshibas like them. I 
think my father might be happy with an Intel Mac laptop but the bottom 
end for refurbished units is $400. Add another $200 in upgrades to make 
them useful. That's more than he wants to spend.

				Later
				Mike


P.S. A link from the supervisor at the CLL... Everyone WILL enjoy this. 
It is mandatory. ;-)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ctrvp
_______________________________________________
Roundtable mailing list
Roundtable at muug.mb.ca
http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable




More information about the Roundtable mailing list