Comments on: Looking for a good laptop for Ruby development

By: Luca

Luca — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I wouldn’t buy an Acer.
Why don’t you go for a Dell, a HP (business models) or a Lenovo (IBM) T-series?

By: erics

erics — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I also ran into this problem and just grabbed a macbook (13″), dual booting with Ubuntu (with upgrades from dapper -> edgy -> fiesty) and think it is very good value for the hardware you get.

I personally, after supporing a university research department for over three years in laptop purchasing, would only consider the following hardward vendors in this order:

1) IBM (if you have the $$$ to spend).

2) Apple (same with IBM, $$$).

3) Dell (the smaller X line mostly).

Lets face it, you are buying laptops to be portable and they tend to have inferior hardware to make them smaller. The above three are the only vendors that consistently make it past the 3 year mark for me without breakage under my user base. They travel, they work on them in the office, and they are pretty much normal users (windows, Linux, or osX).

Last but not least, always, and I mean ALWAYS get the extended warranty converage. A min of 3 years is a must, especially if you deviate from the above brands.

If you end up with a Macbook in some form, I have tips and hints posted on diverse items with regards to getting your favorite Linux stuff running on my site (see Software category).

Good luck with the decision. 😉

By: Phil Armstrong

Phil Armstrong — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ah, you’ll be one of those people who doesn’t get on with nipple-nice then !

Although I quite like nipple-type mice, I’ve found that a USB optical mouse will work on most surfaces & can therefore be used pretty much anywhere that a laptop can. You can get dinky ones if portability is a concern.

cheers, Phil (loaths trackpads)

By: Phil Armtrong

Phil Armtrong — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ah, I see. Hitting ‘submit’ doesn’t update the page. Bug?

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

How ’bout another Thinkpad… like the T61?

In my experience, a 7200RPM hard drive is essential to ensure the machine feels fast. It’s got the Santa Rosa chipset as well.

By: James Hubbard

James Hubbard — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve been using the Dell notebooks. The M65 is a nice machine. With the Docking station you can get Dual Monitor output. The winmodem doesn’t work in linux. The nvidia graphics card means that you can use 3d. I have concerns about any machine that has an ATI card. I too second the need for 7200 RPM drive.

By: Adi

Adi — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have HP laptop with docking station and big monitor. I have few concerns about this machine that I want to share with you:
1) I feel that there is something wrong with Windows XP that comes with these machines. HP modifies add to add security center, and many more things. My machine hang everyday (gives me white monitor).

2) this machine has 2Giga ram, however, it takes about 8-12 minutes to boot in the morning :(.

Generally the hp is decent.. And the 15” Mac Book Pro is cool
I wish that helps.