If money was no object and you wanted a Linux laptop

[mccancew]

Now there's a question !!

I inherited some money, I've always wanted a dual boot top spec laptop.

It needs to do the following :

1) Run oracle 11G
2) Apache web services
3) Dual boot with Vista Ultimate
4) Large and very fast disks
5) Max memory ( 4gb )
6) What is the best distro ?
7) wireless must work
My vodafone 3g usb stick (HSDPA) must work

If you had a few grand to spare what is th best laptop for running Linux.

I have been working and programming on Unix ?(HP UX and Sun for years as an Oracle DBA but I want a laptop with my own stuff

Whats your opinion ??

[bigtomrodney]

Well my thing has always been that the best laptops are the portable ones!

I once spend several thousand euro on a laptop with almost the maximum possible spec only to find that made it heavy, hot and short on battery life. Though it did play Hitman 2 very well and ran Windows and Linux well together.

The thing is, the faster the processor, the more heat, the more the processor struggles, the more it chokes, the more battery it uses. It becomes self defeating.

So with that in mind I would opt for a small to medium sized chassis, a dual (or quad) core processor of 1.8GHz or less that runs at lower speed 99% of the time. As much RAM as it will take, if not onboard graphics I would opt for something light. Where you could benefit a lot is perhaps looking at solid state hard disks.

Also the usual 802.11n wireless, bluetooth, card reader etc. I had a 1920x1200 screen on that beast laptop I had and to be honest as amazing as it was when it came time to replace it I bought a 1280x800. It's really quite useless once you go above 14xx or 16xx.

[Dies]

Well my thing has always been that the best laptops are the portable ones!

Oh man, that is so true..

if I had to do it again I would go for something smaller.

Here's me at Starbucks:



No, that's not me of course but here's the full ridiculous article if anyone cares.

Attack of the 20-inch Notebook

[anomie]

I inherited some money

So pay off your debt and invest what is left over...

It needs to do the following...

It sounds like what you really need is a tower server. Your money will go further for better CPU/RAM, and you'll have more reliable hardware for this purpose than a laptop can provide.

If you additionally require mobility, you could also purchase a lower-end laptop from any of several Linux laptop vendors.

Just my 5 cents.

[mccancew]

Thats useful to know guys. I weas thinking of a dell precision 14.1 screen. As you say, anything over that is useless unless its a desktop replacement.
As far as buying a desktop. I already have an older P4 Compaq with 4gb of ram and a seagate 250gb hard drive. Its ok, and I do use my current laptop using ssh or telnet to connect to it. But I could serve all of my requirements from a 14" laptop.
All of my " stuff" oracle and otherwise ( scripts doco etc ) all live on my network attached storage which I can access anywhere, anytime.

The laptop will serve me for updating my web server, oracle and unix work.

But I think I'm nearly there with my decision. Its between

1) Dell precision 6300 ( the 14.1 screen )
2) Lenovo Thinkpad T61P

Thats about it....keep those opinions comiong thought the fat lady has only just warmed her tonsils, no sining will be done just yet.

[Jonathan183]

I like the 17" screen on my laptop, I would not go larger than a 17" screen but I also would not struggle with a 14" screen.

[Freston]

1) Run oracle 11G
Yeah? Do you expect special hardware needs for this? I think any machine should be able to run this.

2) Apache web services
As above, any machine and any distro can do this. There are lighter web servers though. I'm not really sure what good it is to run a web server on a portable device, but I'm sure you have a purpose for it.

3) Dual boot with Vista Ultimate
Most modern machines can run Vista Ultimate nowadays.

4) Large and very fast disks
Large is a relative term. 4GB used to be large. You want what? 4TB?

5) Max memory ( 4gb )
Sure!

6) What is the best distro ?
Ask ten people, get eleven answers

7) wireless must work
Mostly when you ask a salesman in a store which wireless chipset is in a given machine, they stare at you with a blank expression uttering something about it's Mbit capabilities and compliance to 802.11x
Maybe you can learn a little here

8.) My vodafone 3g usb stick (HSDPA) must work
That shouldn't be a problem.


So what machine? I guess we'll not focus on the iBook? Then there are some good options just outside the scope of the well known retail brands. I myself have bought a Zepto, which I'm very pleased with. But they don't ship to the US. They do ship to Australia though.
As an example, you can look at MSI? I have no first hand experience with them, but I saw most of the machines consist of hardware known to be well supported under Linux. This goes for other brands as well of course.
In any case I recommend looking around for a machine you can configure yourself. Most pre-configured retail machines are at least sub-optimal in one or two areas to keep the price competitive. Since you're looking for a high end machine this will probably be less of an issue... but configuring yourself also has the advantage you know each component that went into it. That way you can be sure in advance whether everything will work or not.