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[tickmike]

My Daughter is wanting a Laptop NOT a Notepad, soon for School / uni . £££ 
I have never had any dealings with Laptops, so I need some advice on a suitable type / make.
It Must be able to use Linux (PCLinux ) on it ,
Can you buy them without any software installed ?
Suggestions for ram / HDD Etc.
Price, Size, Supplier.

[jid]

My Daughter is wanting a Laptop NOT a Notepad, soon for School / uni . £££ 
I have never had any dealings with Laptops, so I need some advice on a suitable type / make.
It Must be able to use Linux (PCLinux ) on it ,
Can you buy them without any software installed ?
Suggestions for ram / HDD Etc.
Price, Size, Supplier.

I would recommend Dell or Toshiba.

I have never used Linux so have no idea as to what Spec it needs, however ideally you would need:-
Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB Ram
160gb HDD
Graphics (128mb +)

Again, I couldn't say as to where you could get laptop with no OS, so you could always add a seperate partition?

[broadstairs]

I run a linux distro on a 6 year old celeron 1.2ghz laptop and it runs so much faster than any Windows OS, so in my view you dont need a very high spec machine at all, however it makes sense to get something decent. The problem is that very few come without a Windows OS pre-installed. I believe Dell do supply some machines with Linux installed. My only concern with Linux is if you are using WiFi access in that some hardware does not play well with Linux (I had to get a new PCMCIA card for my laptop to get it working well). I used IBM (now Lenovo) laptops for years at work (well I did work for IBM  ) but I think most are pretty good these days. I'd think about getting something with a good guarantee and perhaps a good reputation for service as its for a student who may well give it quite a tough time.

[UncleUB]

Mike,Dell have them starting at £299 with Ubuntu installed.I am a big Dell fan,been using them for 13 years now and find their support and reliability excellent.

http://tinyurl.com/5lmet2

[roseway]

Dell with Ubuntu sounds a good option to me. I see that wireless mini-cards are optional, and the types listed ought to work fine with Linux, although it would be sensible to ask Dell for confirmation.

[tickmike]

Thanks all. 

That Dell looks interesting although I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, but if it runs with that I would think PCLinux would work.

How quickly do these laptops go out date ?.

[oldfogy]

How quickly do these laptops go out date ?.

Five minutes after you buy it. 

Because there is always something new around the next corner.

Whatever you buy, try and give a lot of thought as to what you may want to use it for in the future.
So memory (RAM), HDD size and processor should all be taken into consideration.

Will you ever want to use XP or even dare I say it Vista ?
Maybe not today or tomorrow, but ...........

**********
PS
They are not called "Laptops" anymore, they are now called "Notebooks" (A Notepad is something different again)
To stop people from saying when they overheat "it's a "Laptop" I use it on my lap.

[tickmike]

Re "Whatever you buy, try and give a lot of thought as to what you may want to use it for in the future.
So memory (RAM), HDD size and processor should all be taken into consideration."

Well my daughter has a couple of years yet before she goes to uni, so we may wait to purchase one   ('thinking out loud' if we get one now she could have that until she goes to uni, then we get her a new updated one when she goes to uni and I have the other one  )

Re "Will you ever want to use XP or even dare I say it Vista ?"

My Daughter is happy at using Linux and is happy to open a 'Virtual XP computer' if she needs to use say powerpoint etc.
Also she will not have to worry about updates if she uses Linux.