Used ones

Simon · External Since: Oct 25, 2005 Posts: 2

Hi there,
I'm looking to get a used portable computer, but since I never used
one I wonder if there is anything specific about them I should know?

I will be installing Slackware and will need to have a 3D accelerated
video card, about 128MB of ram, a disk of at least 10-15G and a cd-rom.
CPU speed is not important, at least 200Mhz should be fine for me! Wink

How can I know if it will be compatible or not (or should I care
about compatibility at all?).

I'd like to know if there are anything specific to the portable
technology in Linux (things to install/configure and then know how to
use them, like the battery stuff, etc...)

Thanks for starting pointers,
Simon

John Thompson · External Since: Jun 07, 2005 Posts: 374

On 2005-10-25, Simon <simon.xhz.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm looking to get a used portable computer, but since I never used
> one I wonder if there is anything specific about them I should know?
>
> I will be installing Slackware and will need to have a 3D accelerated
> video card, about 128MB of ram, a disk of at least 10-15G and a cd-rom.
> CPU speed is not important, at least 200Mhz should be fine for me! Wink

>
> How can I know if it will be compatible or not (or should I care
> about compatibility at all?).
>
> I'd like to know if there are anything specific to the portable
> technology in Linux (things to install/configure and then know how to
> use them, like the battery stuff, etc...)

Thinkpads ar generally a safe bet. I bought a used Thinkpad-240
(Celeron-400, 192MB RAM, 12GB HD) for about $150 on eBay last year. It
works fine with linux.

--

John (john@os2.dhs.org)

Simon · External Since: Oct 25, 2005 Posts: 2

Thank you guys, I'll try and look in my area for a used thinkpad!

Thanks!

Michael Perry wrote:
> Simon wrote:
>
>
>>Hi there,
>> I'm looking to get a used portable computer, but since I never used
>>one I wonder if there is anything specific about them I should know?
>>
>>I will be installing Slackware and will need to have a 3D accelerated
>>video card, about 128MB of ram, a disk of at least 10-15G and a
>>cd-rom. CPU speed is not important, at least 200Mhz should be fine
>>for me! Wink

>>
>> How can I know if it will be compatible or not (or should I care
>>about compatibility at all?).
>>
>>I'd like to know if there are anything specific to the portable
>>technology in Linux (things to install/configure and then know how to
>>use them, like the battery stuff, etc...)
>>
>>Thanks for starting pointers,
>> Simon
>
>
> Awhile back I purchased a Thinkpad T23 from overstock.com and thought
> it was a great value. It has a 1.1ghz P3 processor and it came with
> 128mb of memory and a 10g hard disk drive. You can find a lot of
> information on the linux laptops website including what people have
> done to get things working. The T23 works very well these days but
> when I got it I had a few issues with ACPI but those seem to have
> disappeared with some of the newer kernels and suspends/sleep events
> work very nicely. I also have seen some with intel 2200 abg minipci
> cards in them which have an open source driver.
>
> All told, I purchased the laptop for around 700.00 and it came with a
> CD/rw drive I believe. I upgraded the hard disk drive to 80g for
> around 150.00 and bought a memory upgrade for around 90.00.
>
> The ACPI stuff may take a bit of work but I think you can find a lot of
> great help on the linux thinkpad mailing list and the thinkwiki. It
> details a lot of the ways/means to get things like acpi, wifi, etc
> working. The integrated ethernet card just works fine with the e100
> driver. I did have some problems initially with the modem but I rarely
> use a modem these days so it was not a major pain.
>
> I also have a Dell Inspiron 4100 that is very similar to the Thinkpad.
> It has a Pentium III 1.1ghz with 512mb of memory and an 80g drive. It
> also works very well with Linux and APM these days. At the current
> time it runs XP for some work stuff I need and I run VMware workstation
> on it with Fedora Core 4 as a guest. It does VMware well albiet a bit
> slowly.
>
>