Laptop

02.11.2009 08:24 ·  Notes  ·  laptop

An idiot’s dream :-). Finally it came true — I got a laptop.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about getting a laptop for a long time, but the fact that I have a desktop computer at my disposal has stopped me. There was no real need for a laptop. Cold calculation and expediency have always prevailed over childish “I want it!” impulses. But now the situation has changed in favour of this purchase. I’m going to the QGIS hackfest, and there will probably be more travelling after that.

I opted for a Lenovo ThinkPad SL500. It is not the most powerful machine at the moment, but it was not bought for games. As one article said, “The best laptop is YOUR laptop”, and mine suits my needs quite well :-). The only thing that is a bit annoying is the glossy top lid. It seems to be a problem for all manufacturers: everywhere I’ve been — all laptops are glossy, and many not only on the outside, but also on the inside. So I didn’t have much of a choice here. The newer SL510 is matte (thanks to Patrick, they came to their senses!), but it is impossible to get it now, especially in our province.

For those who are interested, here are the brief specifications: 15.4" WXGA TFT display, Celeron DualCore T3000 1.8GHz/800MHz, GL40 Express chip, integrated video GMA 4500M, RAM 2048 Mb DDR2 667 MHz (PC2-5300), HDD 250 Gb, DVD-RW, modem, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LAN 1 Gb/s, 7-in-1 card reader, webcam 2 Mpx, 4 USB ports, there are also headphone and microphone outputs, HDMI, FireWire and VGA. A detailed review can be found on notebookcheck.net, where the same model is described, but with a slightly different configuration.

I have already installed DeepStyle 3.1, updated some packages and am now setting up a build environment for QGIS. I also need to read a lot of mans and do some fine-tuning (suspend, power management, CPU frequencies, etc.). But all this will probably be done after the hackfest, as there is not much time left.