Hi-res refurb Dell laptop. Comments?

[Ian Petersen]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 9:00 AM, Digimer <lists-5ZoueyuiTZiw5LPnMra/2Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On 08/03/2012 11:49 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 08:41:22AM -0700, Tyler Aviss wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey LUG'ers,
>>>
>>> I've currently got an Asus laptop. Beautiful power with a Core i7, 8GB
>>> of RAM, etc.
>>>
>>> However, I've been doing a lot of dev work lately, and the one falling
>>> point I've run into is that 1366x768 isn't a lot of real-estate
>>> screen-size
>>>
>>> I started looking at what's available for larger screens, and noticed
>>> this little guy with a 1920x1200 native LCD resolution.
>>>
>>> http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834200599&Tpk=M6300
>>>
>>> Obviously it's a bit older and the Core2 probably isn't going to keep
>>> up with my i7, but according to here the Linux compatibility is good:
>>>    http://www.linlap.com/wiki/dell+precision+m6300
>>>
>>> Anyone have one of these and/or know how well it performs on a recent
>>> linux distro? At $267 the price is quite nice...
>>
>>
>> The specs are not bad, screen seems nice.  Of course it is a Dell laptop
>> and those don't exactly have a reputation of being reliable (and the
>> reputation is well deserved).
>>
>> But it is pretty cheap.
>>
>> RAM and HD is rather puny.
>
>
> DDR2 is going to be hard/expensive to find.
>
> It's nowhere near the price point, but if you're looking for more power,
> I've been rediculously happy with my Thinkpad W530. The new keyboard layout
> bugs me, but that's because I'm a traditionalist. They keys themselves are
> very responsive and have awesome feedback. The screen is a dream, too. I
> opted for the 1920x1080 screen. It's upgradeable to 32GB and supports the i7
> quad core. I swapped out the HDD for an SSD after receiving it (their prices
> was unreasonable to do it at build time).
>
> Anyway, an option. As for Dell quality; I have to echo Lennart. My
> experience is very poor with Dell as a former support tech. I hated working
> on them.

I own one of those.  Beautiful machine.  Get the idiot insurance if
it's available.  The video card in mine died and it was going to be
~$400 for a new one.  It seems to be a custom build for the laptop and
you can't get it anywhere but Dell.  Dell treats you pretty well, in
my experience, once you've paid for the extended warranty.

Rather than spend $400 on a new video card for an aging machine I
decided to spend ~$800 on a whole new machine.  Can't remember all the
specs right now, but it's an Acer (I think) with an 18.4" 1920x1080
monitor and newer parts all around.  It's nice, for what it is, but I
*really* miss the 10% more vertical pixels on my old Dell.  1920x1200
monitors on laptops are hard to find but really awesome to have.

I ran Gentoo on it when I bought it for ~$5,000 and it performed quite
well but I don't really remember how well--it's been a while since it
died.  I do remember it stood up OK to running Eclipse, PostgreSQL,
Apache, and JBoss all at the same time (it was my luggable dev box).
I probably upgraded the RAM, though.

Ian
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