On 10/02/2014 06:39 AM, Brian Miller wrote: > On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote: > >> I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? > Been using CentOS.available on a series of Dell Precision laptops > (M4300, M4600) since 2007 or so without much difficulty. > > I am typing this reply on a Dell Precision M4300 in Thunderbird on CentOS 6. Even though the M4300 isn't the newest thing out there, it is my primary machine, and has been for a year or so (previously my primary was a Dell Precision M65 for about four years). The M4300 is essentially the exact same thing as a Latitude D830, with a different main and video BIOS. The video chip in the D830, if you pull the heatsink, actually has the FX 360M silscreened on the die, even though it identifies as either an NVS135M or NVS140M (depending upon amount of video RAM). (The M65 is essentially the D820, and the D820 just has a slightly crippled BIOS that reports the video as and NVS-series instead of an FX-series). With a Penryn CPU and sufficient RAM the box is snappy (I have a T9300 in mine, although the T9500 or X9000 would be a bit faster. The X9000 is over three times the price of a T9300, used, and the difference between a Penryn at 2.5GHz and at 2.8GHz is minimal; now, the 2.5GHz T9300 will wipe the floor with a 2.6GHz Merom-core T7800 (I've tried this comparison, and the Penryn is significantly faster). And since many sellers just list the speed and not the core, you're guaranteed a Penryn if you get a 2.5GHz, but the T7800 Merom and the T9500 Penryn are both 2.6GHz..... and while the T9300 and T9500 are both listed as 35W chips (the X9000 is a 44W chip, and while it will work, these machines are already straining in the thermal management department.....) the T9300 does run a bit cooler, and that's good for the GPU, which shares the heatpipe radiator with the CPU and northbridge. Do note that the FX 360M is one of the heat-plagued nVidia chips, so I have a small supply of known working motherboards (mine are in machines....) on-hand, since the GPU will fail sooner or later. As to the wifi, I'm using a Dell-branded Broadcom BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n card, using the ELrepo kmod-wl built from the 'nosrc' RPM available from ELrepo (the kmod interface means kernel updates shouldn't break it.....). The reason for the Broadcom has to do with another OS that I'm dual-booting on this machine..... I know, that's probably more than you wanted to know.... but, not too incidentally, a gently-used M4300 can be had on eBay for less than $100. I got another spare just this past week for about $60, 1920x1200 screen and all. I have thought about trying for an M4400 with a quad-core, though.