On Sunday 13 November 2016 09:38:52 Joe wrote: > On Sun, 13 Nov 2016 00:10:21 -0600 > > Doug <dmcgarr...@optonline.net> wrote: > > I don't know what these Chromebooks sell for, and of course you know > > that they are diskless > > (which is maybe what you want) but there are frequently sales of > > refurbished used Dell laptops
Dells tend to be particularly heavy. > > in the $120 to $160 price range, and they are 14" or 15" with at > > least 256 GiB drives and 4 GiB ram. > > Try and get one with something other than Broadcom wifi--it's a real > > challenge to make it work, > > unless you want to run Windows. > > The size is an issue, at least for me. I have an HP 15" laptop, which > cost maybe $250 brand new, as I need a Windows laptop to run various > odd peripherals. But it travels with me by car, there's no way I would > carry that beast around on a strap. Quite!! That is the whole point. I am aiming at less than a kilo. (Around 2 pounds the other side of the pond.) > > I also have an Acer Aspire One netbook, which I carry around when I need > a portable computer for anything other than work. Excuse me while I weep and re-don and rend my black clothes. My much loved and perfect Acer Aspire One, which ran Debian and TDE with EVERYTHING working, was conned out of me (more fool me :-( ) and *dismantled* for *spares*. That is what I would like to replace. I could buy a second hand one, but I have had bad experiences except where I knew the seller. > It weighs a fraction > of what the big laptop weighs. It has a small, slow SSD, so I also > carry a (genuinely) pocket-sized USB hard drive for more demanding jobs, > probably the smallest ever made and, of course, unobtainable now. > Almost every [x86-based] computer I've ever tried boots from this, and > both netbook and drive run Debian unstable. > > Both are more than five years old, which is not a bad life for portable > stuff. I've been looking for replacements for some time, but tablets and > netbook-sized stuff all seem unable to run Linux (the Acer came with > Linpus, based on Fedora). Yes, so did mine. I left Linpus on while I went on holiday since I was afraid that I might have some trouble getting the wireless going in the time available, and "after all, how bad can any Linux be?". I found out. Linpus lasted about 30 seconds after I got back from holiday and I installed Debian. The wireless almost just worked. This was some years ago. I needed a backported kernel and a backported wicd. That was it. That was all I had to do and the whole thing Just Worked. > Sorry, I don't count it as 'running' if only > half of the hardware works. Time seems to be running out, modern > hardware no longer has an Ethernet port and has only one or two USB > ports. I want a *computer*, if I wanted a toy I'd get a smartphone. I know. I have a tablet, but I don't like it. It isn't a computer. It runs Android for when I need it. Lisi <adds ashes on head to rent black clothes>
