This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is not a durable solution.
My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I got a new one more than 10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
- Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller than A4).
- Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
- Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
- Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
- Internal WIFI network card.
- Internal Twisted Pair network card.
- Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)
- Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
- Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper size).
- Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and X.org packages.
- Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of the time).
You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might still be useful.
Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an external keyboard? I'll have to check the Linux Laptops site for well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one of the vendors listed on the Linux Pre-loaded site.