Charles Curley's Weblog

Computer advice

My brother recently emailed asking for advice on whether he should buy a computer. We emailed back and forth. What follows is a distillation of the advice I had for him. For what it's worth.

He's an attorney, and most attorneys would still be using quill and ink if the rest of the world would let them. My brother is a bit more adventurous: he got permission from his company's tech support people to put OpenOffice.org on his office computer.

Image courtesy of thinkwiki, and probably copyright by IBM or Lenovo or somebody.

I have a 4+ year old Lenovo R51 with Ubuntu 9.10 (everything here is Ubuntu 9.10 or 8.04), and it has some display issues which I think 10.04 will clear up. But these days Ubuntu just falls into place on it; I don't have to do any of the wrestling I did when it was new.

I'd stick with Lenovo. They have a reputation for being solid as bricks, and this one has been, other than having two hard drives and some RAM die on me, none of which was Lenovo's fault. OK, driving around in the Arizona desert isn't the best thing for a hard drive's longevity.

There is an excellent but rather technical wiki for Lenovos, thinkwiki. You can learn a lot about what is in them and how well Linux supports them. Also, tuxmobil and linux on laptops.

Most laptops these days will handle one or more external displays, and I even see DVI and HDMI adapters on middling Lenovos. The display software handles adding and removing an external display gracefully.

Video conferencing may be a problem. Skype works for most purposes. Their Linux client is getting better, but it is definitely not their best effort.

I also have several USB keyboard/mouse kits from Logitec. The keyboard and mouse share one USB connection, important with laptops. I carry one set and a 17" monitor with me when I travel if I know I'll be using the computer a lot; that works very well. Or keep a keyboard/mouse kit and monitor at work and use the internal ones at home.

On the other hand if you want a desktop, I bought mine at End PC Noise. It's a 2.5 year old Silent AM2 Cube PC. It ain't cheap, but it is quiet and solid as a brick. I just blew it out to 4 GB and added a 1.5TB drive, and it is very nice. I can turn the processor fan down all the way and literally not hear it. None the less the thing runs at good temperatures. Also, their customer support is excellent. I emailed them with a question a year after my warranty ran out, and they helped me with no questions asked!

I also have a small herd of Fit-PC 1.0s. I would not now recommend them for desktop use, but they have been excellent for SOHO servers, firewalls, etc. One of them may be the world's lowest power backup server, running amanda.