Where an Ubuntu-compatible second-hand laptop?
Hi All, Am interested in buying a not-too-old (or even new) laptop. (My Acer Aspire 5315 just can't play hi-res video files on smplayer well, even when doing nothing else.) An MSY store pointed me to a couple of new low-price ones, but they didn't seem Linux-compatible. Looking for fairly old-school specs: Compatible with HDD (not SSD) internal SATA drive DVD (or better, BluRay) drive Decent (full-size good-feel) keyboard 1 bidirectional (or 2 unidirectional) 3.5mm headset sockets Not IBM, Dell, or HP (personal) Built-in camera... meh Highly compatible w/ Ubuntu (using Mint MATE Qiana, not a sysadmin) 64-bit and multi-core CPU, I suppose USB 3.x Anyone selling something like that? Know someone who is? Thanks in advance. Carl Turney Mobile 0427 024 735 Home 9720 3975 Out Ringwood way
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 10:22:49 AM Carl Turney wrote:
Am interested in buying a not-too-old (or even new) laptop. (My Acer Aspire 5315 just can't play hi-res video files on smplayer well, even when doing nothing else.) An MSY store pointed me to a couple of new low-price ones, but they didn't seem Linux-compatible.
In what way did they seem incompatible? Linux generally works quite well on laptops. Sometimes there's a delay in getting support for the newest video chipset but you can usually run with fewer video features or a proprietary driver while waiting.
Looking for fairly old-school specs: Compatible with HDD (not SSD) internal SATA drive DVD (or better, BluRay) drive Decent (full-size good-feel) keyboard 1 bidirectional (or 2 unidirectional) 3.5mm headset sockets Not IBM, Dell, or HP (personal)
AFAIK IBM doesn't make laptops. Lenovo bought the Thinkpad line from IBM and they have done a good job of producing good products. <http://www.graysonline.com/computers-and-electronics/computers-and-it- equipment/laptops?method-of-sale=auction-items-only> Anyway Grays Online has worked well for me for buying laptops. Refurbished name-brand laptops are cheap and have good specs. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 3/08/2015 4:13 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 10:22:49 AM Carl Turney wrote:
Not IBM, Dell, or HP (personal)
AFAIK IBM doesn't make laptops. Lenovo bought the Thinkpad line from IBM and they have done a good job of producing good products.
True about IBM, but Lenovo screwed themselves with Superfish ... so I've got to rule them out as a bad player, very bad player. Why not Dell? They have had an XPS Developer version [and some other options now] with Ubuntu being the OS provided. Sadly though, getting one of the Dell units brand new in AU has been impossible to date -- unless it has recently changed. Given that Dell has gone through a number of versions, there is a possibility of getting one second hand. http://bartongeorge.net/2015/04/09/4th-gen-dell-xps-13-developer-edition - -available/ "4th gen Dell XPS 13 developer edition available! I would first like to thank everyone for their patience and support as we worked through various bugs that crept up. This has taken longer than we would have liked but I’m happy to say that as of today, the Dell XPS 13 developer edition is now available in the United States, Canada and Europe!" Wish they would sell these in AU :( Really what I would like is a Librem, but the price is too high in my opinion; however if enough people choose this option, then there is a possibility it could help with scale and pricing. https://puri.sm/librem-15/ NB: For many, they price may be right.... and it really might be for me, but not right now; you often get what you pay for. Anyone with a Librem 15 able to give a good review and let us know if it is or is not really good value, even though it is at the premium end of pricing?
http://www.graysonline.com/computers-and-electronics/computers-and-it- equipment/laptops?method-of-sale=auction-items-only
Anyway Grays Online has worked well for me for buying laptops. Refurbished name-brand laptops are cheap and have good specs.
If Grays Online has a it as a refurbished unit; remember, it is refurbished for a reason. You can get good value, you might not get all the /normal/ inclusions and you may not get normal full warranty. A. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iF4EAREIAAYFAlW/SuoACgkQqBZry7fv4vvLHAEAjcuj8tI1gnC8hUqAOkrcZI3b vVPY/djkn3DWeCYg3VABAMjP7ztDjgohUpGADg8NSxFF1PCYDYeudxDdCEgQGvyC =CEyi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
nt/laptops?method-of-sale=auction-items-only
Anyway Grays Online has worked well for me for buying laptops. Refurbished name-brand laptops are cheap and have good specs.
If Grays Online has a it as a refurbished unit; remember, it is refurbished for a reason. You can get good value, you might not get all the /normal/ inclusions and you may not get normal full warranty.
A.
I bought a refurbish/new ASUS laptop from GOL ~2 yrs ago. It was sold as new, ie not been used before. It did look new and still had the protective film on the screen intact. But it was not properly packed, came in a unmarked/no label box, had no manual or any user guides or documentation, no usual warranty certificate, software license document etc. But it did come with a statement from ASUS Australia for 1 yr warranty, as an included letter. So obviously it was taken out of original packing. In fact one thing that I was disappointed is that I could not see the bit says if you dont like Windows ... You can do this and that anywhere! Or I would have tried get a Windows refund. But for what I paid $189+shipping, I thought it was good value at the time. It did come with windows 7 - so I am guessing it came from an old Win 7 stock. It still has windows 7 on it, but I have never booted windows 7 on it. I have shrunk the windows partition to its minimum and will probably delete it when I need more space - not yet. Linux runs perfectly on it. EVERY thing works straight out of the box, including hibernation, wifi, webcam, and it did also have UEFI, which I disabled in bios. I have had Ubuntu in various versions from 12.04, Mint and Debian Wheezy and now Jessie is my most used OS on it. There was a small issue with an early version of Jessie (freezing), but I take it, it was the OS - because now after latest update it works perfectly again. Daniel.
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On 3/08/2015 9:47 PM, Daniel Jitnah wrote:
nt/laptops?method-of-sale=auction-items-only
Anyway Grays Online has worked well for me for buying laptops. Refurbished name-brand laptops are cheap and have good specs.
If Grays Online has a it as a refurbished unit; remember, it is refurbished for a reason. You can get good value, you might not get all the /normal/ inclusions and you may not get normal full warranty.
A.
I bought a refurbish/new ASUS laptop from GOL ~2 yrs ago. It was sold as new, ie not been used before. It did look new and still had the protective film on the screen intact. But it was not properly packed, came in a unmarked/no label box, had no manual or any user guides or documentation, no usual warranty certificate, software license document etc. But it did come with a statement from ASUS Australia for 1 yr warranty, as an included letter. So obviously it was taken out of original packing.
In fact one thing that I was disappointed is that I could not see the bit says if you dont like Windows ... You can do this and that anywhere! Or I would have tried get a Windows refund.
But for what I paid $189+shipping, I thought it was good value at the time.
Sounds amazing, what is the exact model designation? What are the specs? Thanks A.
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 09:05:16 PM Andrew McGlashan wrote:
On 3/08/2015 4:13 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 10:22:49 AM Carl Turney wrote:
Not IBM, Dell, or HP (personal)
AFAIK IBM doesn't make laptops. Lenovo bought the Thinkpad line from IBM and they have done a good job of producing good products.
True about IBM, but Lenovo screwed themselves with Superfish ... so I've got to rule them out as a bad player, very bad player.
Wipe the hard drive as soon as you get it and that's not a problem unless you want to boycott them.
Anyway Grays Online has worked well for me for buying laptops.
Refurbished name-brand laptops are cheap and have good specs.
If Grays Online has a it as a refurbished unit; remember, it is refurbished for a reason. You can get good value, you might not get all the /normal/ inclusions and you may not get normal full warranty.
You will never get a full length warranty on a refurbished computer. But that's not a problem, the short warranty will cover most manufacturing defects and if something goes wrong after that time you can just buy another. Refurbished computers are usually significantly less than half the list price so you can buy a second and still be saving money. I bought my current Thinkpad on Grays and it cost about the same as a new battery and PSU for my previous Thinkpad (which is also a refurbished one from Grays). The old one started working again for no apparent reason so I now have 2 laptops which is handy. My current Thinkpad is a T420 and the previous is a T61 so I did get a reasonable amount of use out of the T61 before it had problems. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
The old one started working again for no apparent reason so I now have 2 laptops which is handy. My >current Thinkpad is a T420 and the previous is a T61 so I did get a reasonable amount of use out of the T61 before it had problems.
I have seen a thinkpad doing something like that before : intermittently working and not working. Replacing the cmos battery fixed it. Its likely under the keyboard. There is a screw underneath that holds the keyboard in place. It may be though that you need to pull out the battery to get to that screw? Daniel.
On Tue, 4 Aug 2015 11:13:56 PM Daniel Jitnah wrote:
I have seen a thinkpad doing something like that before : intermittently working and not working. Replacing the cmos battery fixed it. Its likely under the keyboard. There is a screw underneath that holds the keyboard in place. It may be though that you need to pull out the battery to get to that screw?
I don't think it was the CMOS battery because it never lost CMOS data and has worked consistently since. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 at 21:05 Andrew McGlashan < andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
True about IBM, but Lenovo screwed themselves with Superfish ... so I've got to rule them out as a bad player, very bad player.
My understanding is that the Lenovo Superfish issue only applied to their consumer level laptops. The Thinkpad laptops were not affected. I think any other manufacturer could be just as bad. It was Lenovo that was caught out.
On 4/08/2015 5:42 PM, Brian May wrote:
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 at 21:05 Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au <mailto:andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au>> wrote:
True about IBM, but Lenovo screwed themselves with Superfish ... so I've got to rule them out as a bad player, very bad player.
My understanding is that the Lenovo Superfish issue only applied to their consumer level laptops. The Thinkpad laptops were not affected.
It's against the "vibe" at the very least. If they were happy to do that on some machines, then every machine should be suspect.
I think any other manufacturer could be just as bad. It was Lenovo that was caught out.
They were caught out, but with how low level some things can go; well, there is no guarantee that we cannot trust them to behave properly at the firmware level. You screw up that bad and you don't deserve to get a second chance. And it was a mighty big screw up indeed. A.
On 5/08/2015 7:17 AM, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
I think any other manufacturer could be just as bad. It was Lenovo that was caught out.
They were caught out, but with how low level some things can go; well, there is no guarantee that we cannot trust them to behave properly at the firmware level.
You screw up that bad and you don't deserve to get a second chance. And it was a mighty big screw up indeed.
Lenovo screwed up again, this time, even worse! Seems they are another Sony in root kit territory, but much worse because they are working at the BIOS level to compromise computers now. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/407868,lenovo-rootkit-loaded-bloatware-onto-cl... A.
On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 02:11:19 PM Andrew McGlashan wrote:
You screw up that bad and you don't deserve to get a second chance. And it was a mighty big screw up indeed.
Lenovo screwed up again, this time, even worse! Seems they are another Sony in root kit territory, but much worse because they are working at the BIOS level to compromise computers now.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/407868,lenovo-rootkit-loaded-bloatware-onto-c lean-windows-installs.aspx
This is really bad, here are some of my thoughts about it: http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/support/unix-support/misc/horror # the BIOS on a Lenovo computer would check a file to see if it was from the PC # manufacturer or Microsoft - if the latter, it would be deleted and replaced # by a Lenovo one Firstly this has a lot of potential for things to go wrong. Any case where files are automatically deleted or overwritten has potential for a bad result. The Unix Horror Stories (see above URL) has an anecdote about a script to automatically delete files named "core", so it's not as if automatic deletion is a new problem that people can be reasonably unaware of. Also replacing a Windows file from MS has potential for bad things to go wrong when there's a routine Windows patch that depends on the MS version of that file. I can imagine "patch Tuesday" causing all Lenovo systems running Windows to fail at once... Another concern is when the NTFS filesystem format changes. MS reserves the right to make changes to their filesystem at will. For a long time the Linux NTFS code refused to mount NTFS read-write and many people still try to avoid such things due to the risk of dealing with reverse engineered filesystem code. Even if the BIOS was doing something useful I wouldn't want it messing with a filesystem on any computer I ran. # System data was also sent to Lenovo by the rootkit. This included the system # unique identifier, type and model, the region it was set to, and the date. # Lenovo said no personally identifiable information was gathered. This is incorrect. There has been a lot of research on ways of recovering PII from summary data such as phone call records, both theoretical attacks (by people who want less data to be stored) and practical attacks by law enforcement and military organisations. It wouldn't be difficult to intercept those system IDs from a conference like LCA, combine that with the delegates list and then work out who has which Thinkpad when people use them at home. # The fact that the program in question is vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks # makes it even more of a problem. # # The PC maker used a Microsoft feature called Windows Platform Binary Table # (WPBT) to run the program that downloaded its software. # # This is a permanent table used by the Advanced Configuration and Power # Interface management system in PCs, and provides an address to an executable # file copied to physical memory from firmware, which in turn can be run by # Windows. I presume that Linux won't just run programs on request of the BIOS so this particular attack won't be a problem. But the case of a BIOS that runs the OS in a VM with a corrupt environment or interferes with the boot loader code to compromise the kernel is still going to be a potential issue. Now the question is what vendor do I use for my next Laptop? I think that Lenovo has demonstrated that they can't be trusted. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Hi All, On 13/08/15 19:33, Russell Coker wrote:
... (Carl says: Much intelligent discussion, by Russell & other correspondents, most of which I could understand).
Now the question is what vendor do I use for my next Laptop? I think that Lenovo has demonstrated that they can't be trusted.
Ah yes, the point of my original posting on this thread... Looking for fairly old-school specs: Compatible with HDD (not SSD) internal SATA drive DVD (or better, BluRay) drive Decent (full-size good-feel) keyboard 1 bidirectional (or 2 unidirectional) 3.5mm headset sockets Not IBM, Dell, or HP (personal reasons) Built-in camera... meh Highly compatible w/ Ubuntu (using Mint MATE Qiana, am not a sysadmin) 64-bit and multi-core CPU, I suppose USB 3.x New or barely-used. Anyone selling something like that? Know someone who is? Thanks in advance. Carl Turney Mobile 0427 024 735 Home 9720 3975 Out Ringwood way
On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 at 19:33 Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
Now the question is what vendor do I use for my next Laptop? I think that Lenovo has demonstrated that they can't be trusted.
Lenovo in their official statement say that "Think-brand PCs are unaffected." and "The software does not come loaded on any Think-branded PCs." http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=2013 Which presumably means all Thinkpads are OK. Still, they seem intent on destroying their Lenovo brand name reputation however. I don't think they appreciate that dodgyness on their cheap range of laptops can also affect their reputation for the more expensive laptops, even if the production is entirely separate.
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 10:22:30 AM Brian May wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 at 19:33 Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
Now the question is what vendor do I use for my next Laptop? I think that Lenovo has demonstrated that they can't be trusted.
Lenovo in their official statement say that "Think-brand PCs are unaffected." and "The software does not come loaded on any Think-branded PCs."
But the people who thought it was a good idea were involved with the Think branded PCs.
http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=2013
Which presumably means all Thinkpads are OK.
Still, they seem intent on destroying their Lenovo brand name reputation however.
Yes.
I don't think they appreciate that dodgyness on their cheap range of laptops can also affect their reputation for the more expensive laptops, even if the production is entirely separate.
Giving customers a choice is a good thing. Daimler AG owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart. I don't think that will bother Mercedes customers as long as they don't do a Pinto. If they ever do a Pinto with Smart cars then Mercedes customers will probably get concerned. Lenovo has just done a Pinto. That doesn't mean that they should be distrusted forever (Ford has been making decent cars in recent times) but we should be more sceptical of them for the next decade or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_tank_controversy It's interesting to note that the Pinto Wikipedia page says that probably not so many people died because of it. I presume that some people will start saying similar things about Lenovo soon enough, not many PCs were hacked and not many identities were stolen so their unethical behavior is no big deal. :-# -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Stay the hell away from Lenovo Thinkpad's -- they've become quite nasty and unfriendly in latter years. Even before the issues below, they were doing BIOS-level stuff, like locking you to whitelisted IDs so you couldn't repair/replace/upgrade parts yourself, and Linux compatibility was not something they cared about maintaining for drivers. On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 at 20:33 Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 10:22:30 AM Brian May wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 at 19:33 Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
Now the question is what vendor do I use for my next Laptop? I think that Lenovo has demonstrated that they can't be trusted.
Lenovo in their official statement say that "Think-brand PCs are unaffected." and "The software does not come loaded on any Think-branded PCs."
But the people who thought it was a good idea were involved with the Think branded PCs.
http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=2013
Which presumably means all Thinkpads are OK.
Still, they seem intent on destroying their Lenovo brand name reputation however.
Yes.
participants (6)
-
Andrew McGlashan -
Brian May -
Carl Turney -
Daniel Jitnah -
Russell Coker -
Toby Corkindale