[CentOS] In the market for a new (old) laptop

Thu Jun 21 15:14:35 UTC 2007
Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com>

Changes at my day job (we have a big merger being finalized), has me in 
the market for a new laptop.

They may require me to only run the approved XP build on the system they 
provide.

I do not know if they will fund another unit for me or not, so I am 
looking to go cheap.  Here is what I am looking for:

Runs Centos (duh!)
    Supports Suspend to memory as well as to disk.
    Bootable from USB devices, e.g. USB CDdrive, SD card, etc.

12" LCD, ie. a small unit that can be used on a plane!
Good battery life, 2nd battery an option (min 4hr battery time, perfer 8hr).
Swappable drives (preferably not requing a screw driver as my old 
Portege or a non-findable drive carrier as my HP nc4010).
Built in Ethernet, and 2 USB 2.0 ports
miniPCI wireless (external antenna options would be nice!)
Eraser-head mouse pointer (IBM thinkpad-style), optional addtional 
touchpad (I hate touchpads for D&D.
Bluetooth would be nice, but own many Bluetooth USB tokens.


Don't need weight, power-draw of a CD/DVD drive, got a USB one when needed.
Did I say light?  I will be having to drag at least 2 laptops on planes 
all the time now.

I dislike Dells, am OK with IBM (but it's not IBM any more!), Toshiba 
Porteges are old friends, and HP Compaq nc4000s....

So who has what working?????