small freebsd laptop suggestions?

[Nikolas Britton]

On 2/17/06, Xn Nooby <xnooby at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to get a small laptop dedicated to (desktop) FreeBSD 6.x,
> ideally one that could run Win2000 inside QEMU and has an nVidia chip so I
> can do OpenGL stuff.   Any suggestions?  It doesnt have to be superfast,
> though I would prolly want to drop a 100GB 2.5" drive in it later.
>
> 2 years ago I foolishly bought a HP Pavillion, and I have to use an external
> keyboard with it for FreebSD (or else it wont boot).  The HP laptop is now a
> dedicated Windows machine (and I'd return it if I could).
>
> Is anyone using a laptop that they are happy with?  Maybe a refurbished
> Thinkpad? (though I prefer to buy lapotops new, in case they are duds).  I
> dont particularly trust the online lists of "laptops that work with
> FreeBSD", since my other laptop is on one of them.
>
> I plan to carry the laptop around a lot, so I'm looking for something a
> little smaller than average.  My HP Pavillion is about 7lbs, which is too
> big.  Maybe a small Thinkpad, if they still make them?

You want a Apple PowerBook err... MacBook Pro. I have a G4 model and
it's sweet... anyways, if you don't want a Mac then look for corporate
/ large business orientated notebooks. They normally don't have all
the stupid whiz-bang features found on home notebooks and are modular
across product lines. For example I had and HP OmniBook 6000 (700Mhz)
and desided I wanted a faster book so I  found a striped out OmniBook
6100 (1.13Ghz PIII-M) on eBay. It used the same batteries, drive
trays, PowerBrick, etc. so I just used the ones from the old notebook.
As for the OB6100 I have, I've never tried FreeBSD on it but SuSE 9.3
Pro worked perfect. I Have Win2K on it now so I can run Multisim,
Mathematica, Maple, and other proprietary software I need for college.
(Going back to school for computer engineering degree.)

You can pickup used notebooks at RetroBox.
"RetroBox clients are Fortune 500 companies. When a Fortune 500
company upgrades to leading edge technology, they leave behind a trail
of some of the best maintained previously-owned desktop computer
equipment available. Well, we're all over it!"
http://www.retrobox.com/rbwww/home/search_results_pc_laptops.asp?bin_id=world