budget laptop

[anversha]

Hi friends,
i am a student from india.
I am in a confusion.i am looking for a good laptop with linux OS.
I am looking in price range of Indian Rupees 25000-45000

Pls suggest which is the best laptop in this range..
thanks in advance
anver

[deek]

Check out http://www.pcretro.com and look at what they have listed...I don't know the exchange rate, but other than finding something on eBay, that is one of the best sites I have seen...

[eyeinidas]

I'm not sure of the exchange rate either, but I've had good fortune with the refurbished Laptops. eBay is a good place to look. Also, Google search "refurbished notebooks" will get you about a gazillion parts houses selling refurbished and "lease turn ins". The Dell Latitudes are built well and run in the $500 range. These are the ones I have personally used. I have tested several distros successfully (Including Slackware). Also, parts are still available for these, in case you need maintenance. I have one with a fried mother board and I have checked, All parts are available and so cheap, that I can repair it cheaper than replace it. Don't see that very often with cheap desktops.

[eyeinidas]

I just checked out the exchange rate on Yahoo. It seems you are looking in the $500 range. If you already have a Linux distro you want to use I'm sure you won't have a problem loading it. I recomend a Debian based distro for ease of install. I installed Mepis on one of these and everything just worked. Everything, including my modern 802.11g WiFi card. This is the next best thing to a preinstalled system. If you get a really old one try a distro called "Damn Small Linux". It's very lean and runns like greased lightening on older machines.

[jweekley1]

Maybe check pricegrabber.com or pricewatch.com
they have hundreds of laptops listed, but you will have to search

[nathanallan]

I never thought that $500 would be considered a "budget" system. My laptop is a P166 that I put together for less than $130, that includes a 20 gig harddrive. Not too shabby for the price and what it can do. I know that these days 20 gigs aren't considered a lot but to say that $500 is cheap?

I ran dsl a few times on it and yeah, it ran pretty quick. I noticed almost no lag in most things. I really just need it for cmdline stuff so it doesn't take much anyway. When I need graphics it does a decent enough job of it.

Nathan

[spencerf]

my personal suggestion would be to try to find a thinkpad on ebay. At that price range you could easily get something in the t30 range. I bought a t22 about a year ago and it has given me absolutely no problems and linux compatibility is second to none. I also got the t22 for around 250$ in great condition.

but this is just one mans opinion and others have had great luck with other companies. I will state though that I gad a gateway and it was awful under linux and I would not recommend it to anyone who wants to run linux.