On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 14:50, Gavin Denby wrote:
I saw in a flyer from warehouse stationery that they have a Toshiba A10 with Intel integrated graphics and celeron 2.2
Price is about 1500 so in budget. but that includes MS tax.
Intel tend to be good at linux support nowadays
worth a look if you dont have one yet
I bought one a couple of months ago and have installed Mandrake 10.0 on it. Most things were detected during installation and worked well. Sound, Video, and CD-writer needed no fiddling to speak of. The speakers are pathetic, and the touch-pad is quite useless! As useful as an on-board mouse can be on occasions, I replaced it with an external USB wheelmouse immediately (it has no PS2 port). The internal 56k modem didn't work (I didn't really expect it to). I selected this model because it had a PCMCIA slot, so I could fit a proper modem, rather than wrestle with a winmodem. As much as I would have preferred to buy a Windoze-free laptop, the only other readily-available candidate (from DSE) didn't have PCMCIA, and at the time, the prices were comparable. I removed the internal modem (an easy job) just in case it caused problems. The Toshiba A10 does have a couple of shortcomings. It has no serial or parallel ports, and it doesn't have a floppy drive either. I managed to get a parallel printer to work with a USB-to-serial/parallel adapter from DSE, but it was something of a battle. Last week, I bought a Epson CX3100 multifunction thingee, and it works perfectly with minimal fiddling: Printer, Scanner, and Copier! Another minor irritation is that the PCMCIA slot seems to have almost no "grip" to the card which is inserted. Even a small tug, applied to disconnect the modem cable, pulls out the card itself. No floppy, ports, useable mouse-substitute, or working modem! When you buy all the "extras" that should be standard it isn't much of a bargain. -- regards, ********************************************* Dr Denise J. Bates, PhD School of Geography & Environmental Science University of Auckland Private Bag 92019, Auckland New Zealand E-mail: d.bates(a)auckland.ac.nz Telephone 09-3737599 ext 86592 Home: 09-2336433 email: dbates(a)iconz.co.nz *********************************************