Looking for Laptop Suggestions

[Stephen]

"As for jounalism...she should re-evaluate because it is an industry in a
death spiral."

This is true, but is it because of quality journalism or not... i gave
up paying attention because i kept getting bombarded with crap instead
of insightful information and the like... quality journalists can help
that "death spiral"

that being said she has a tough line cut out for her.

on the netbook idea, they are pretty fantastic, My company has an Eee
PC 901 and a few  Acer Aspire 1's

Both are nice with their specific quirks.. the EeePC has more ram
available (2gb vs the aspire 1's 1.5GB) but the one we have
specifcally has this goofy little SSD thats split in 8gb and 4gb
partitions, which is ok for little stuff or if you plan on having an
external HDD of some sort for large bits of data. but it has built in
bluetooth. hate the keyboard tho as i have large hands, the aspire
ones has the sata hd and larger keys for the keybaord but the fan can
be audible and no bluetooth. and ACER's support is iffy at best.

System 76 has a netbook and there is a samsung one thats pretty nice.
but i do have to say the 9.04 netbook remix is good on both the Aspire
1 and the EeePC 901 with no hiccups yet found.

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 7:23 AM, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 06:58 -0700, Mark Phillips wrote:
>> My oldest is heading off to college in the Fall, and she needs to take
>> a laptop with her. She has used Linux all her life, but only from
>> Gnome, so Windows, Mac, Linux are all "the same" to her. She is a
>> journalist, not a computer geek. Anyway, one significant requirement
>> is for iTunes to work with her iTouch (i.e. buy music and download to
>> her iTouch). I have not been able to get Wine/iTunes to work with
>> Debian, so I have resorted to a single Windows computer just for a few
>> games and iTunes at home.
>>
>>
>> Any recommendations (1) for laptops and (2) how to keep her using
>> Linux and not shelling out extra bucks for a Mac, or heaven forbid, a
>> Windows machine?
> ----
> The only growth segment is in the netbook area and given the low cost, good battery life and ultra portability of a netbook, I would definitely recommend one.
>
> I have an Acer Aspire One which was $350 w/ Windows, 160 Gb HD, and 1 Gb
> RAM and I partitioned the hard drive, giving Windows 32 Gb, 80 Gb for
> 'media' (formatted also to NTFS) and the rest is for Linux.
>
> Wine/iTunes isn't realistic. I tend to think of Wine as desperation
> software.
>
> Rhythmbox and gtkpod are able to sync with iPod's and I seem to recall
> that there was some slowness to backporting the changes Apple made to
> the iPhone and iPod Touch device synchronization but it probably is
> working now (I have a 5th Gen iPod so I can't tell you).
>
> I actually mostly use Windows to sync my iPod but the data is on the
> media partition and I use Rhythmbox and/or Amarok to play it or I
> suppose iTunes if I actually boot into Windows which is rare.
>
> mt-daapd can also read the music data and share it without other iTunes
> users which is pretty cool actually.
>
> If you buy a netbook, you would probably want an external DVD drive as
> they do not come with a DVD drive. You can always hook up a
> keyboard/screen/mouse when at home base...which I do...my KVM.
>
> Also, you would want to stay with some bleeding edge Linux stuff for a
> netbook because things are changing rapidly and they are paying
> attention to details like suspend to disk/ram, wireless connections and
> limited amounts of screen real estate. I have Fedora 11-Beta on mine but
> I would suspect that Ubuntu 9.04 would do well and Mandriva has a 'mini'
> version.
>
> As for jounalism...she should re-evaluate because it is an industry in a
> death spiral.
>
> Craig
>
>
> --
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-- 
A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen