small freebsd laptop suggestions?

[Xn Nooby]

thats an awesome website!  I will check it out more thoroughly over the
weekend, they had a lot of used thinkpads

thanks!


On 2/17/06, Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>