[GTALUG] Laptop recommendations?

[Evan Leibovitch]

I for one prefer to have my laptops with as few moving (and especially
spinning) parts as possible. In the days of half-terabyte USB sticks,
having a disk reader inside a laptop is dead space/weight used for
archiving/ripping, and certainly doesn't need to be as portable as the rest
of the computer.

This weekend I'm replacing a kaput HD on a Dell laptop with an SDD (if I
can figure out to reinstall Windows on it for the laptop's owner, fine, if
not it's Kubuntu 20.04).

I have an external drive for CD/DVD/Bluray and another one for floppies
that is shared between devices. The floppy drive -- a $14 Aliexpress
generic -- is flaky but that usually seems more the fault of the media than
the drive. How old are those disks? How fragile are those sliding covers?

My main laptop uses a dongle for wired Ethernet (a reasonable trade-off
considering how rarely I use it),but I've seen ingeniously-thin RJ45
sockets built into some units.

- Evan


On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 10:57, Howard Gibson via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
wrote:

> James,
>
>    Does your USB floppy drive work?  I keep ordering these things and they
> work once or twice and then crap out.  The one I have now never worked.
> They cost something like twelve bucks.  I am willing to pay more of
> something that works.
>
> On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 10:39:44 -0400
> James Knott via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
> > On 2020-04-27 10:22 AM, Howard Gibson via talk wrote:
> > >     I think my current laptop has an RJ45 port.  I bought a docking
> station for it, so I use that.  Historically, I use the RJ45s because I
> transfer data to and from the laptop, and I want it to happen quickly.
> >
> > I use Wifi or Ethernet.  For normal use, WiFi is fine.  But if I'm doing
> > something major, such as installing an OS, then I'll use Ethernet.
> > >     I visited Canada Computers in Etobicoke, and I think I got the
> last desktop with slots for DVD/Blu-Ray discs (and 5-1/4 floppy drives),
> and controls on the front.  My cat can no longer turn my computer off.  You
> people are on your own!
> >
> > At least I have an external USB floppy drive! ;-)
> >
> > ---
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>
> --
> Howard Gibson
> hgibson at eol.ca
> jhowardgibson at gmail.com
> http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
> ---
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>


-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch or @el56
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