Re: [SLE] small laptop

Doug McGarrett wrote:
This may not be the name of the original thread.
Sorry, I was not following it, and this message
may have been sent already, but here is my take:

I saw an ad today for what appears to be a small
laptop--a slightly older Compaq--with a 14.9" screen.
Seems like a small laptop. All kinds of I/O, 20 GB
HD, attractive price, from a nationally distributed
mail-order catalog.

WARNING: It comes with Windows 98. That is almost
a guarantee that it doesn't have the horsepower to
run Windows XP, and by logical extension, the latest
versions of Linux.

The other clues are, Pentium III, speed of 1.3 GHz,
and only 128 GB RAM.

One other caveat: Compaq computers are notoriously
hard to upgrade. There might not be any way to
put more RAM in this thing. Of course, the catalog
did not have the Compaq model number.

FWIW, I have SUSE 9.1 running on a 166 MHz (IIRC) Pentium, with 64 MB,
though it's only used as my firewall. I've also got a 866 MHz Compaq
with 128 MB (IIRC) running SUSE 10, for my test system. While it's not
the fastest, it is usable.

On the other hand, SUSE 10 on my own ThinkPad R31 (1.18 GHz PIII & 384
MB) significantly outperforms XP on my work ThinkPad T30 (1.8 GHz P4 &
512 MB). I can also tell you some horror stories about the users I have
to support, running XP on various systems (such as 15 minutes to boot
up!). So a computer that's inadequate for XP is often fine with Linux.



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