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This is the exact laptop that my employer provides me. While it is not thin or light, it is a pleasant machine to use. I have no problems using it on my lap o
by heywire 10y ago
This is the exact laptop that my employer provides me. While it is not thin or light, it is a pleasant machine to use. I have no problems using it on my lap on the couch or at a coffee shop. My machine is configured as an i5-3340 with 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD (I also added a second SSD in place of the CD/DVD drive). I frequently have 3 or more VMs running under VMware, an instance or two of Visual Studio, Chrome, Outlook, and half a dozen other small utilities (text editors, skype for business, etc). I have no complaints whatsoever about performance. The touchpad isn't the greatest (I prefer my T420 in this department), but the keyboard is fine, and the screen as well.
As someone else mentioned, the T4x0 series are also very good. I have a personal T420 that I have upgraded to 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and Blu Ray that has held up very well over the years. To be honest, aside from the screen resolution, there is nothing pushing me to upgrade to a newer machine, and this thing was released in early 2011.
When I am looking for something thin and light, I use an Acer C720 Chromebook which has been reloaded with a full Linux install. It is perfect for SSHing into a more powerful machine if I'm just going to be in vim / bash all day. I get 8-10 hours of battery life in this mode. I picked this machine up for $130 a year or so ago (refurbished).
- wj 10y agoI tried Ubuntu on my c720 and had issues with the cursor. I think it might have been me brushing my hand against the trackpad which I believe the Chromebook os recognizes as accidental but Ubuntu did not. Have you had this issue?
- heywire 10y agoI don't remember having that issue specifically, but I do know that on a fresh install the touchpad is not very responsive. I'm currently running arch with the following as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf: Section "InputClass" Identifier "touchpad catchall" Driver "synaptics" MatchIsTouchpad "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Option "FingerLow" "5" Option "FingerHigh" "10" Option "VertScrollDelta" "-25" Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-25" Option "CoastingSpeed" "5" Option "CoastingFriction" "20" Option "TapButton1" "1" Option "TapButton2" "3" Option "TapButton3" "2" EndSection There's also a specialized Ubuntu-derivative called GalliumOS [1] that you might try. They try to work out all these configuration oddities before you get it loaded. [1] https://galliumos.org/ https://galliumos.org/
- davidbanham 10y agoPalm detection is turned off by default for some reason, but you can just turn it back on.