Looking for a new laptop

i92guboj · Posted: Sat May 09, 2015 11:42 am Post subject: Looking for a new laptop

Hi everyone.

I am looking for a new laptop. Refurbished/second hand is an option, since I don't need to stay in the bleeding edge.

I am fed up with all the annoyances of the one I currently own, which is an Aspire 9420 I bought cheaply enough from a well known e-commerce site, and the number one annoyance is nVidia. I bought it only because the previous one burned out and I needed something cheap at the moment to finish a project I was working on, otherwise I wouldn't have bought it.

So, I am looking for recommendations about laptops that will work with linux without any proprietary blob (so please, no nVidia chips).

I need something that can work unplugged for a few hours at least, so having a GPU that can do energy saving is important. In this regard, can anyone suggest a radeon chip that works ok with linux and has low energy consumption? I don't need fancy stuff and I don't do gaming. I care about power consumption and proper compositing support would be nice just for the sake of saving cpu cycles but nothing else.

Are intel cards better in this regard?

I am also fed up with the 3945ABG intel wifi chip. It usually works ok, but like 75% of the times I wake up from suspend it just will stop working, which automatically means that it's far less time consuming (on average) to just shutdown the computer completely and then turn it on. Otherwise, 75% of the times I have to wake, and reboot.

I have also been longing for years to have a machine that has proper support for virtualization. In the past, this was just the geek in me screaming, but now it's more a need than anything else, since I have to deal with several different OSes at work and I need to use virtualization for many purposes. For this very reason, 8gb is the RAM I am considering.

Other than gcc, I rarely use cpu or ram intensive applications. I don't need superb graphics, just an vga output if possible. Having a serial port would also be interesting.

Recently, one of those Thinkpad T410 fell into my hands and I had the chance to test if for a few hours. I really liked the felt of it. I loved the keyboard (though I'd like a full blown keyboard with a proper numeric pad). All in all I liked it, but I have no idea if I can expect some linux specific issue with those, and the screen was a bit small (14" or so).

I also loved the vintage touch and the "tough" construction

So, what I need:

proper energy saving support
at least 15.6", 17 would be better, with good contrast for use in heavily lighted office room and sometimes in the outside
at least moderate battery life
wifi chip that doesn't stop working when I hibernate or suspend
vmx, ept, whatever else is needed for proper virtualization support

Of course, having more cpu power, more ram, ssd, hdmi or whatever else you can imagine won't do any harm. But that's not necessary. I also don't want the latest and greatest thing, I certainly don't plan on investing 1000 bucks on a laptop and as said I will consider second hand. I just need a tool that will get the job done. Using linux, that is.

I will be glad to hear any suggestion.

cboldt · Veteran Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 1046

Thinkpad T420 is working for me. Pretty common machine, no significant setup issues from my point of view.

Edit to add: bought on eBay for around $200. Dual boots Win 7 pro and Gentoo (triple boots, if you count the Sysrescuecd used to debug significant issues); 8 Gb RAM, 320 Gb HD. This model appears with fairly high frequency on eBay, 10-20 or so a day, so easy enough to get a replacement if this one craps out. Battery life is better than 4 hours.

Jaglover · Posted: Sat May 09, 2015 7:23 pm Post subject:

Yes I got one of those from eBay, too. Was nice and clean, for $200. Except for that horrible Windows Vista sticker. But I peeled it off and put it back on eBay, somebody took it for $50 ...
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

miket · Posted: Sat May 09, 2015 8:38 pm Post subject:

The best thing about the T420 is that the keyboard still hasn't gone over to the chicklets. It does have the stupidly enlarged escape and delete keys (WHY did Lenovo feel the urge to do that kind of thing?), but otherwise it has the nice Thinkpad keyboard.

The only kind of laptop I've ever wanted has been Thinkpad. I sure wish IBM still made them, though. Some of Lenovo's recent silliness has made me feel less loyal.

Jaglover · Posted: Sat May 09, 2015 9:04 pm Post subject:

IBM never made a single laptop, they were made by Quanta and re-branded. Probably Lenovo is doing the same.
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat May 09, 2015 9:18 pm Post subject:

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

I got a Lenovo G780 a few years ago. Excellent computer with plenty of horse power, good battery life and the computer keeps itself fairly cool under high loads. It has a huge screen for a laptop, 17 inches if I recall correctly. I got it for a good price since they discontinued that model, but if you can find one I'd say it is worth it. I have had no problems running Linux on it, although I don't use any hibernation or suspend features so I can't vouch for those.

And mine was an intel video chip, although they did offer it with an option for nVida as well. I think it has an atheros wifi card as well.
_________________
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

i92guboj · Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 9:22 am Post subject:

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. Keep them coming, please.

What about intel vs radeon? I am mostly concerned about power consumption. I know the theory but I would like to hear about how these gpus perform in Thinkpads, regarding power consumption.

i92guboj · Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 11:09 am Post subject:

Does anyone know of a similar model which has a bigger screen?

EmaRsk · Apprentice Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 158 Location: Italy

John R. Graham · Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 1:23 pm Post subject:

Several of the 17in Thinkpads have a full numeric keypad and separate cursor keys as well. The keyboard feel of the slightly less than new Thinkpads is so awesome that, although I haven't typed on one of the very latest ones, I'd take miket's "chicklet" comments seriously. Something from the W7xx series might be perfect for you. I've never had issue with the nVidia chipsets but this series is available with either Intel or nVidia graphics. Alas, I can't comment on how the hardware handles hibernation as I've never worked with it. Core i series processors, of course, handle completely modern virtualization.

The one requirement on your list you're going to have trouble meeting is battery life. As the screen size goes up, the battery life almost universally goes down, so you may have to trade off your desired screen size against that. Would a spare battery be a reasonable compromise?

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

i92guboj · Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 9:02 pm Post subject:

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

i92guboj · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 5:48 am Post subject:

Jaglover · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 6:54 am Post subject:

I just recently switched to nouveau with mine (out of curiosity) and it seems to work well, supporting even hardware decoding on some cards, haven't tried power saving features yet.
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

John R. Graham · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:51 pm Post subject:

i92guboj · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 8:12 pm Post subject:

nvidia-drivers-304.125 won't compile against 4.x. I am using linux-3.19.2, and even for that, I need to apply a patch (last time I checked anyway).

Officially, I don't think nvidia 304 legacy series will compile out of the box against anything newer than 3.18.x.

So yes, I have noticed it. And I tell you it's not the first time. I remember something similar happening to me ten years ago with a desktop machine. As you say, that turned out to be easily fixable, by substituting the card by one which was supported by the radeon driver.

As said, if it wasn't because I was in a hurry and kind of short on bucks, I wouldn't have bought this crap. :lol:

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

i92guboj · Posted: Tue May 12, 2015 4:51 pm Post subject:

All in all, and given my economic mediocrity, I feel like playing the lottery :lol:

Well, in any case some other programmer came into my office carrying a Lenovo carbon and I had the oportunity to read its screen from a 10 degreen angle. Those laptops are really well thought.

Since my eyes are in good shape, I might finally pick one of those in the 14-15 range, provided they can offer an high enough resolution. The screens seem to be very good and as said I don't have problems with small font sizes.

Finding a radeon based one would give me peace of mind though. I am not so confident about Intel since I have read horror stories, and I am definitely not buying any nVidia gpu.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

i92guboj · Posted: Sat May 16, 2015 9:51 am Post subject:

That's true.

Well, I am still looking for alternatives. I am not in a hurry so I want to make sure before buying.

Besides those Lenovo T4xx, what else can you recommend for a Linux-only laptop these days with, let's say, an i5 cpu, an intel gpu and 900 pixels screen height?

I am now considering 14" seriously, but I truly consider any resolution below 900 pixels useless for any serious editing (plus some programs simply won't display correctly with lesser heights).

I don't need a top-notch screen, but I need it to be readable when I am sitting in front of it.

One of the many annoyances of my Aspire 9420 is that simply moving like 5 degrees up, down, left or right the screen is unreadable at least in part. Complete crap.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

i92guboj · Posted: Sun May 17, 2015 11:33 am Post subject:

How about those Dell E6xxx laptops? Has any of you had a positive experience with them on Linux? How do they compare to the Lenovo T4xx machines?

They look somewhat similar but I haven't touched one of those, they are not that frequent around here.

i92guboj · Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2015 4:02 pm Post subject:

I finally purchased a T420 for 232 euros.

It comes with an i5 2520m, 4gb ram (I plan to lift that a bit since during my investigations I found the chipset of the 420 supports up to 16gb even though officially it was sold as max-able at 8gb) a 120 ssd drive and a 1600x900 screen. It's 2nd hand, but I couldn't tell the difference if they had told me it was new. It's damn fast, it goes from grub to openbox in less than five seconds. The drive is a bit small, but that can be overcome in many ways so it's a minor problem.

Wifi never breaks after suspend, and kms works flawlessly with the intel chip. Sound worked out of the box.

I have been using it as my main machine for two weeks and I am really satisfied with it. Everything I tried worked without problems, and I didn't need to set up anything special outside what the vanilla kernel offers to get everything working smooth. Battery is partially worn out but even so and with the 1600 screen it lasts like 3 or 4 hours. I plan to replace that someday, but for now it's good enough.

All the cool stuff such as volume buttons, thinklight, screen bright, etc. seems to work at hardware level, so no problem there. The physical wifi switch also works (good tiny thing).

I haven't tried everything though. I never had a use for a webcam and I don't plan to change that now. I haven't tested the card lots, the sata port, the hdmi port nor bluetooth (which by the way can be disabled via software only, but that's a minor thing...). I never had a firewire device, so that port is also untested, I don't even have firewire support in my kernel so...

I can't recommend enough this laptop, even more taking into account the price. There are even cheaper ones in ebay if you don't mind a slightly weaker cpu (520m) or a couple of scratches here and there. And you can buy the same model with a bigger ssd drive and 8gb ram for around 400 euros, last time I checked.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I hope it will help someone else in search for a linux laptop.