15" laptop recommendation
Hi everyone, My brother is looking for a new laptop. He uses it for generally pretty basic stuff - multimedia playback, web browsing, a bit of gimp. His criteria is: - Ideally 15" screen, 14" would be acceptable - 2.5kg or lower - ideally battery lasting through a day at uni - running ubuntu Please reply all to include him in the discussion. Cheers, Bianca
Something like the LENOVO B590 or E540 might be a good place to start looking. I still find that most Lenovo laptops are reasonably well built, cheap, have good support and will run Ubuntu straight out of the box. Maxed out RAM and an after market SSD (if you are comfortable doing the upgrade yourself) would also be on my shopping list. - Lauchlin On 22 December 2013 22:48, Bianca Gibson <bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com>wrote:
Hi everyone, My brother is looking for a new laptop. He uses it for generally pretty basic stuff - multimedia playback, web browsing, a bit of gimp.
His criteria is: - Ideally 15" screen, 14" would be acceptable - 2.5kg or lower - ideally battery lasting through a day at uni - running ubuntu
Please reply all to include him in the discussion.
Cheers, Bianca
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
I really like my Thinkpad T430 and before that T400. I've heard some not so positive things about thinkpad edges and ideapads. I was thinking Intel graphics. An after market SSD is way cheaper, it shaved heaps off the cost of my T430. It also means you are absolutely sure which model SSD you get, which OEMs won't necessarily tell you. I'm not sure about maxing out the RAM. I ordered my T430 with 2GB of RAM, the minimum, and upgraded it myself. It was much cheaper than getting a decent amount of RAM from lenovo. I think 4GB should be OK for him, but RAM is cheap anyway. Cheers, Bianca
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-Touch-i7-3667U-8GB-256G... http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-14-1600-900-Core-i5-342... Personally I prefer smaller lighter laptops, and wouldn't look at a 15" again. I plug in to a large monitor at home. The laptop above looks like the best of all worlds though, except perhaps price. What's your budget? A smaller screen is good for battery life too though. I use a 2.5 year old Lenovo X220, which still stacks up pretty well. Not quite as light as the above, but much better battery life, and you can pick one up for about $400 on ebay. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Intel-Core-i7-2-7-GHz-8GB-RA... Andrew On 22/12/13 23:00, Lauchlin Wilkinson wrote:
Something like the LENOVO B590 or E540 might be a good place to start looking. I still find that most Lenovo laptops are reasonably well built, cheap, have good support and will run Ubuntu straight out of the box. Maxed out RAM and an after market SSD (if you are comfortable doing the upgrade yourself) would also be on my shopping list.
- Lauchlin
On 22 December 2013 22:48, Bianca Gibson <bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com <mailto:bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi everyone, My brother is looking for a new laptop. He uses it for generally pretty basic stuff - multimedia playback, web browsing, a bit of gimp.
His criteria is: - Ideally 15" screen, 14" would be acceptable - 2.5kg or lower - ideally battery lasting through a day at uni - running ubuntu
Please reply all to include him in the discussion.
Cheers, Bianca
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au <mailto:luv-main@luv.asn.au> http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
On 22.12.13 23:00, Lauchlin Wilkinson wrote:
Something like the LENOVO B590 or E540 might be a good place to start looking. I still find that most Lenovo laptops are reasonably well built, cheap, have good support and will run Ubuntu straight out of the box.
+1 Even Debian installed without effort on the Lenovo Thinkpad that I bought 2 years ago. (With LXDE instead of Gnome, for faster boot.) I've been happy with it since. It has a 15" wide aspect-ratio screen, which I've come to appreciate, since I always have 4 windows open. Unfortunately, the only model number gumpf I can see on the back is "Type 1143-6YM" and "Product ID: 11436YM". Anyway, after 2 years, the current models will be called something else. The battery life is only 3.5 hours, but it's holding up well under terrible neglect. Buy a second battery pack on day one?
Maxed out RAM and an after market SSD (if you are comfortable doing the upgrade yourself) would also be on my shopping list.
The SSD might just get rid of the spin-up delay when accessing files after a period without disk I/O. That would remove a minor annoyance. And though I don't have its weight, it's probably over 2.5 kg. Erik -- You will pay for your sins. If you have already paid, please disregard this message.
Fedora installed without effort on my t430, ubuntu on my t400 and fedora and ubuntu on a friends x1 (original, not carbon). Toby (CC'd) had a problem with an intel wifi card in a thinkpad, which one was that? Bianca - on my phone, please excuse my brevity.
On 23/12/13 11:04, Bianca Gibson wrote:
Fedora installed without effort on my t430, ubuntu on my t400 and fedora and ubuntu on a friends x1 (original, not carbon). Toby (CC'd) had a problem with an intel wifi card in a thinkpad, which one was that?
Some old Thinkpads had a Prism chipset (not intel) that did not support wpa in Linux. Btw, one option is to get a Chromebook: cheaper, reasonably long battery and install Ubuntu, light weight but not 15" screen.
Bianca - on my phone, please excuse my brevity.
Daniel.
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
All Lenovo laptops come with a BIOS that is locked to one, maybe two, wifi cards, preventing you from changing them over. Not at home right now to check, but the Intel wireless card in mine was perhaps an Intel Centrino 2230 "N" card? Runs terribly under Linux; just about works, but throughput is minimal - I have to use wired ethernet for anything beyond ssh. (Same laptop has speedy wifi under Windows) I haven't had a good time with the combined nvidia+intel video setup in the Lenovo either, but that's more of a problem with Linux's support for that than anything else. That said, apparently Bumblebee works for some people on some laptops; mine just crashed last time I tried it. On 23 December 2013 11:04, Bianca Gibson <bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com> wrote:
Fedora installed without effort on my t430, ubuntu on my t400 and fedora and ubuntu on a friends x1 (original, not carbon). Toby (CC'd) had a problem with an intel wifi card in a thinkpad, which one was that?
Bianca - on my phone, please excuse my brevity.
-- Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart; the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
Thanks Toby. Could you please check the specific card? I don't think discrete graphics would be worthwhile for him anyway, so I doubt the problem with switching is relevant. He doesn't intend to be gaming or doing any other 3D stuff. Cheers, Bianca
Hi, just confirming -- it's an Intel "Centrino Wireless-N 2230" wifi card http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/centrino-wireless-n... *appears* to be supporting fine on kernel 3.08 and 3.11, but has terribly crippled performance. Have tested the various suggested module parameters to no avail (including disabling N entirely and using 802.11g); also ensured I was using the latest firmware blob. -T On 23 December 2013 16:32, Bianca Gibson <bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Toby. Could you please check the specific card? I don't think discrete graphics would be worthwhile for him anyway, so I doubt the problem with switching is relevant. He doesn't intend to be gaming or doing any other 3D stuff.
Cheers, Bianca
-- Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart; the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
It's perhaps also worth mentioning that the lenovo trackpads have mostly been pretty poor. They also have the trackpoint which does the same sort of job. I gather the X1 has significantly improved the Trackpad though. I'm happy with the trackpoint, and turn the trackpad off entirely in the bios. It probably depends a bit what you're doing with it though. I'm not doing a lot of graphical work.
I think the trackpads are fine, but the only other ones I've had substantial exposure to in the recent past are macbook trackpads. The lenovo track pads are a lot nicer than macbook ones in my opinion. I quite like having the middle click button on lenovos, it's awesome for web browsing. I also like having the buttons above the trackpad. Please remember to reply all.
On Sun, 22 Dec 2013 10:48:00 PM Bianca Gibson wrote:
His criteria is: - Ideally 15" screen, 14" would be acceptable - 2.5kg or lower - ideally battery lasting through a day at uni - running ubuntu
I like my Zareason UltraLap 420, works with Kubuntu, 1.5kg and 14.1". Powertop is reporting < 8W with the screen on at minimum brightness. http://zareason.co.nz/UltraLap-430.html You might get better power efficiency from a Haswell based laptop (mine is Ivy Bridge). My work laptop (a Dell XPS 12 9Q33) is *really* nice, but it's just a 12" screen so won't meet his requirement there. cheers! Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP
participants (8)
-
Andrew McNaughton -
Bianca Gibson -
Chris Samuel -
Daniel Jitnah -
Erik Christiansen -
Lauchlin Wilkinson -
Toby Corkindale -
trentbuck＠gmail.com