In market for a new laptop - any suggestion?

gelandangan

Gday
I need a new laptop, I have make do with a 9 years old notebook for long enough.

I want either an i5 or i7 processor with 8gb ram and SSD.

- LONG battery life (8+ hours) for those long flights
- Not too heavy
- hopefully have all of its hardware drivers available for Ubuntu.
- I sort of like the Lenovo keypads style.

Any suggestion?

1895ss

us.toshiba.com/compute...le-models/

DallanC · Site Admin Joined: Jan 18, 2005 Posts: 3572 Location: Utah

I am very fond of machines made by ASUS. They make great machines.

-DallanC

gelandangan

Ok, I looked at the z930 and UX31A, they look good.
any other brand?

Pumpkinslinger

I've used Dells and Toshibas for many years with good results. I'm not sure what the latest and greatest models are though.

PaulS

I have a Gateway running DOS and Linux that is more than twelve years old and still going strong. I built my last windows machine about two years ago from a catalog and have not had any problems with the machine but I have had to reload windows twice...... SOP.

gelandangan

LOL, ok I just bought a Samsung Series 5 NP530U3C-A06AU running on i7 with 8GB ram.

So far so good, I like the battery life it seems to go forever.

I somewhat undecided with the new style of keypad but I guess it can be "learned".
Best thing is Samsung has a good complement of WIN XP drivers for it.
Worse thing is you cannot install UBUNTU on it, it will brick if the setting is wrong.. so my buntu must be run on VM.

Oh well..

Suzanne

I had a huge problem getting Ubuntu to run on this thing, but I did get it running, now it's hard to get Win8 to run. Takes a bit of trial and error, heavy on the error side. I had lots of instructions telling me to partition the hard drive (which I did) Win8 makes that part easy to do. Never got Ubuntu to recognize it, so now I have them running side by side and I have a partition that can't be used. Win8 made it pretty obvious the only real way to do it is to get rid of Win8.

gelandangan

Suz, did you get a samsung too?

On samsung computer,t here is a bios bug that would brick the laptop if it is set of UEFI-boot.
linux.slashdot.org/sto...-notebooks

WHich is shame since UEFI is much faster than the plain old BIOS.

Suzanne

Nope I got a desk-top HPackard but the Win8 has a EUFI/secure boot that you have to get around. Don't ask me how I did it because it doesn't make sense. It has something to do with this junk If you can figure it out...if not try Ubuntu help forums, or magic spells, but don't use force. If you have EUFI or BIOS options available that's where you start making changes.

I never made any changes, other than asking it to politely and kindly give up. I really don't know what I did. It's trial and error to get back to Win8 the on screen boot options eventually work if you hit the right one. After being on Win8 and shutting off the computer, the Ubuntu start-up is automatic, no problems. While in Ubuntu the computer will not sleep, well actually it will but won't wake up. You have to turn off the computer. Pain in the rear that one is. The screen saver works fine, but it won't revive if you sleep it. I like that word you used "brick" cause that's what it turns into.

gelandangan

It is sad when manufacturer change things for the sake of change rather than improvements.

I figure that your issue starts from the SSD on the hard drive.
If the OS is booted from the SSD, then unless you can change the grub on it then it just refuse to boot from other source.

OTOH, on Samsung, the actual problem is on the BIOS bug..
The SSD also give problem, I have not yet figure it out, but I guess if anything fail, I will run a VM on win 7 base.
It will be not as good but should do since the i7 have plenty of grunt to run VM.

Vince

I found my pencil sharpener yesterday so I can resharpen my pencil now...and I also bought a new bottle of ink for my fountain pens, so I can write much more gooderer.

dhc4ever

Vince wrote:

I found my pencil sharpener yesterday so I can resharpen my pencil now...and I also bought a new bottle of ink for my fountain pens, so I can write much more gooderer.

Careful you don't stuff the computer screen..........

gelandangan

Don't forget the wipe out and the mouse..

Ominivision1

Suzanne wrote:

I had a huge problem getting Ubuntu to run on this thing

You sense the proprietary wolves beginning to circle and the leader of the opportunistic pack is no other than our old friend Microsoft!!