Laptops

I've had an overall good experience with Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop, most of
everything works with Trisquel except for the integrated wireless card,
which doesn't, and requires proprietary code to be built from source in
order to work. But that's it, all the rest works.

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 12:26 AM, <name at domain> wrote:

> So the time has come for me to get a laptop. I was drawn to Thinkpads
> because I know they work, but was unable to find anything recent (new or
> used) that came sans Windows and given Lenovo's policy of not refunding the
> Windows tax I looked at other manufactures. I tried Dell, but they don't
> sell Laptops with Ubuntu anymore, I know someone who had a very bad
> experience with System76 and Los Alamos Computer's Thinkpads cost twice as
> much as comparable models with Windows. Any suggestions?
>

--
Loic J. Duros - http://lduros.net

I haven't purchased anything from them personally, but I've heard nothing but good things about Zareason. I'm considering them for my next laptop purchase.
--
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

name at domain wrote:

So the time has come for me to get a laptop. I was drawn to Thinkpads because
I know they work, but was unable to find anything recent (new or used) that
came sans Windows and given Lenovo's policy of not refunding the Windows tax
I looked at other manufactures. I tried Dell, but they don't sell Laptops
with Ubuntu anymore, I know someone who had a very bad experience with
System76 and Los Alamos Computer's Thinkpads cost twice as much as comparable
models with Windows. Any suggestions?

My Thinkpad T61 has been absolutely awesome. I've upgraded it to 4GB of
ram, and a larger harddrive. It's probably about 3 years old now and
it's still in nigh perfect condition. Lenovo also have good manuals for
the Thinkpads, are how to open them up, which I occasionally do to keep
the inside cleaned up.

The only thing I think you'd want to check with more modern Thinkpads is
whether the graphics card is supported for Free Software drivers. The
Intel 965 in my Thinkpad works great with Free Software drivers.

On Fri, 2011-06-17 at 06:26 +0200, name at domain wrote:
> So the time has come for me to get a laptop. I was drawn to Thinkpads because
> I know they work, but was unable to find anything recent (new or used) that
> came sans Windows and given Lenovo's policy of not refunding the Windows tax
> I looked at other manufactures. I tried Dell, but they don't sell Laptops
> with Ubuntu anymore, I know someone who had a very bad experience with
> System76 and Los Alamos Computer's Thinkpads cost twice as much as comparable
> models with Windows. Any suggestions?

Think Penguin has a few laptop models that it claims are fully compatible with free software. They even offer Trisquel preinstalled as an option.

http://www.thinkpenguin.com/catalog/notebook-computers

So I ended up snapping up a refurbished Dell Latitude E6400 on eBay. It comes with Mint, which is Ubuntu with extra blobs, but it's not big deal since I'd format the hard drive anyways. I got a good price on it but am a little worried about drivers for the wireless card. I sent it to some relatives to save on shipping and won't see it for a few weeks. I'll see what happens.

I just got a Thinkpad T420 from Los Alamos Computers today. The
wireless card and graphics cards are both not working with Trisquel. (
They really shouldn't have let me purchase it with Trisquel
pre-installed if the PC doesn't support it.) My suggestion would be to
go to stores with a bootable usb in hand to test.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:26:36 +0200 (CEST), name at domain wrote:
> So the time has come for me to get a laptop. I was drawn to Thinkpads
> because I know they work, but was unable to find anything recent
> (new
> or used) that came sans Windows and given Lenovo's policy of not
> refunding the Windows tax I looked at other manufactures. I tried
> Dell, but they don't sell Laptops with Ubuntu anymore, I know
> someone
> who had a very bad experience with System76 and Los Alamos
> Computer's
> Thinkpads cost twice as much as comparable models with Windows. Any
> suggestions?

My last laptop was an Acer, and it had no problems whatsoever with the libre kernel. Some companies (e.g. Intel, Broadcom) are more hostile towards device driver freedom than others. I think whatever supplier Acer uses is one of the "good" ones.