Whats in the box

[clickit]

I intend to buy a used laptop shortly. The devices I will attach are currently using parallel port and USB on my desktop.
I don't know what was on a mid to hi end laptop 2 years or so ago in the way of ports. Would someone comment on that please?
Is the PCMCIA still being used to attach different devices?
Are there more than one type of USB port and if so which has the best support for now and into the immediate future?
What was the speed of a mid range laptop 2 years ago?
Will I need a serial port to use my 56KB modem?
Thanks this will help some towards selecting from what is available.

[Rubberman]

1. Try to buy a recent model (2 years old or less)
2. If you need a parallel port, try to find a laptop with one, otherwise you can get a USB -> parallel port adapter, though you might have some problems with Linux support (I have no experience with this directly).
3. You should get a system with at least 1GB of RAM.
4. Get a dual-core CPU if you can. Speed should be at least 2GHz.
5. Most laptops still have a PCMCIA port, but a lot of new small "netbooks" and laptops don't.
6. Any USB port on systems built over the past few years are USB 2 (480mbps) instead of the older USB 1.1 (11mbps) that you'd find before. You will DEFINITELY want a USB 2.0 or later type.

[gnuuser]

I currently use a 6 year old dell latitude d800 2 gig ram 1.8 ghz cpu and it runs most versions of linux
its currently running gnome version of pclinux os and it runs quite good.been using linux for 5 years now after (25 years of micro crap)

[Rubberman]

I currently use a 6 year old dell latitude d800 2 gig ram 1.8 ghz cpu and it runs most versions of linux
its currently running gnome version of pclinux os and it runs quite good.been using linux for 5 years now after (25 years of micro crap)

The D600 I gave to my grandson is about that old - about the same RAM and CPU that yours has, except it won't run 64bit software. It runs Ubuntu just fine, and I used to run Linspire/Freespire on it for awhile, also without problems.

[clickit]

Thanks seems like Dell d6/800 should be a good move. Really appreciate the hardware description as that led me to set the minimums I need. Can't wait to spend a week installing 60G drive in one. Do they come that large for a laptop?? My desktop uses about 40G assigned and /opt has 22% and /usr is 46% full the rest are under 10% after installing 13.0.

[Rubberman]

I picked up a spare drive from dell for both the old D600 and my newer D630. They come in sizes up to 250GB or so. They are basically 2.5" form-factor IDE or SATA drives. For a D600/800 you would want an IDE/ATA drive. For a D630 or other newer models they are using SATA drives.

Yes, PCMCIA is still being used, but not to the extent it was in the past. Most devices these days seem to be using USB for connectivity.