Hi all,
I know other people may have asked the question
here, but I've been shopping around for a new
laptop for myself. I've found these laptops
and I want to see what do you guys say..

Gateway MX8734 notebook.Has a Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 graphics card.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1173578008196

Gateway MT6705 notebook. Has a Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 graphics card.
http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?...Ne=6&An=browse

Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook. Has a ATI RADEON Xpress1150 256MB HyperMemory™ (Integrated) graphics card.http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...e=ss&c=US&l=EN

What would you guys say on which laptop would work better with linux? I know most likely the gateways
are better because they have intel graphics cards
that hopefully should work with linux.But on the dell, people here, http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...t=3740&cat=514
claimed that it worked out of the box.. But everyone
says stay away from the ati cards.. So I got mixed
reviews on both graphics cards.I just want to get the full native resolution out of the laptop...
You know I just don't want to make a bad purchase
and that I could only use the laptop with VESA only.

If you guys can,
Throw over your comments...
The lappies are on sale, so I got only a few
more days left to make up my mind.

Thanks a bunch!

The thing I would worry about most is graphics card ... ATI support really sucks, IMO. So, yeah, intel should do fine, just search to make sure others haven't had problems with them. nvidia cards are also good (too bad you have to use proprietary drivers to get 3D accel, and the drivers do cause many problems when they install. For example they overwrite and delete things without asking me).

One more thing, are you going to be using Window$ or you gonna wipe it ? If you wipe it, I would recommend laptops without an OS pre-installed (it's a lot cheaper too).

Nothing is guaranteed to work "out of the box."

Hey H_TeXMeX_H,
Okey I'll be then going after the gateways
since they have the intel card and you said that
they work fine and I should get the full native
resolution.One more thing,the gateway MX8734
notebook has a native 1440 x 900 resolution.
Do you think the intel card could manage to pull out
that resolution in linux? The second gateway has
a 1280x800 so I'm just wondering.
Oh on the winblows part, I'll be wiping the HD and
installing slack on it.If I really will need winblows, then I'll install XP on it.I will NEVER
use vista!

Thanks for the advise.

If you're not gonna run Vi$ta, why pay for it ($100 - 200) ? And then wipe it ? (and support the evil empire ?)

I would recommend trying to find laptops with no OS pre-installed. Here are a few examples:
http://system76.com/
http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/

Getting the display and wlan adapter working is the only real trouble I have had with Linux on laptops.

I have an Acer TravelMate (2300 with Intel 855 graphics & IPN2220 wlan adapter) I had trouble with the 1280x800 display on Kubuntu 6 & Suse 10.1 which was fixed by installing the 915resolution utility and doing a bit of commandline stuff. The wlan needed ndiswrapper and the WinXP drivers.

Kubuntu 7.04 doesn't seem to have 915resolution installed by default, but the display resolution settings page detected that it was needed and installed it when I said OK. Very impressive.

Suse 10.2 also needed 915resolution, but it had to be installed manually. After that it was fine, and I now use that as my main OS. I have it triple booting with XP and another Linux for testing.

I built a Dell Inspiron 1300 for my mum with Suse 10.1 and it needed 915resolution, and some work with ndiswrapper to get the wifi going, but it has been running fine with no tweaking for about a year.

This week I tried PCLinuxOS 2007 as my second Linux on the Acer and it has some nice features including getting the resolution right on reboot after the install, and having ndiswrapper already installed so seting up the wlan was easy, just select the adapter, browser to a directory with the XP drivers, set-up the security and away it went.

http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html
Check these out.

Are not Dell going to offer a Linux laptop - and if so wouldn't that work 'out of the box' ? (Yes - I know it would probably be Ubuntu but just to be pedantic !!)

Doh ! - just read the original post fully - sorry for re-mentioning Dell !!!! (Have to stop rushing in with an opinion..)

I agree, video card and wireless card are the two biggest install issues on laptops. The Dell Inspiron E1505 is their "linux laptop", not the 1501. It comes with Ubuntu pre-loaded.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...=DNCWEL1&s=dhs

I'm not recommending any of them, just maybe thinking if you are looking at Dell, look at the one they are selling with linux already on it.

Dell has one with Linux on it, great. I agree, look at that one.

(Hmmm ... maybe I should get at that price)

Hmm..
Maybe like H_TeXMeX_H said,
I should look for a lappie that doesn't have vista
installed to not support winblow$.
I kind of like the system76 laptops.
They had one for $650 that doesn't look to bad.
Well I think all the help I got,
thanks for the help!

It would be interesting (for me anyway) to get the opinions of someone who has bought one of the Linux Dell lappies as to what they are like "out of the box" - although this forum is not the place to look. I'm going to have a scout around.. My brother is in the market for a new lappy and I have been trying to get him into Linux. Although he already runs a M'soft house with a home network and media servers - using old XBoxes as media clients. At one time he was playing with Linux distros on the Xboxes to get round a problem he was having so I may have a chance of talking him round but obviously if Linux is not a viable solution to him there's no point. Quite an interesting mix of technology at his place !!

I agree that you should get a laptop without any OS pre-installed as it would just be money down the drain for you, and money into Bill Gates pocket.

I have friends with Dells, and they have big partition problems, as dell create extra partitions (and hide them) which are realy annoying to remove (unless you have a full blown wipe-disk)

I hope my random talking will help you in some way