[Leaplist] Laptop Hardware Advice

[Todd Davenport]

Hey all.  Maybe some of you out there can give me some
advice?  (Warning: lengthy email)

OK, I have two laptops that I've bought in the last
two years, both on sale and for cheap.  A Dell
Inspiron 1100 and a Gateway MX series.  I think I've
learned my lesson, though, about buying laptops on the
cheap.  Neither of them lasted a year.  The Dell needs
a new hard drive and the Gateway's power socket is
hosed (I've had it re-soldered twice by a tech but it
keeps breaking again).

So my wife (who is actually the primary laptop user)
is tired of this and told me to spend the money and
get her a laptop that isn't going to break.  Aside
from a Panasonic Toughbook, I'm thinking Mac of
course.  But now I'm exited because if I can fix the
two broken laptops I can have more Linux boxen and
start doing neat things on my home lan...streaming
media server, web dev/test box, etc.

The Dell with the broken hard drive, I've been using
Xubuntu LiveCD but haven't been able to get
persistence to work.  I flipped around on TigerDirect,
etc., looking at hard drives but unfortunately, while
I'm a software geek I don't know much about laptop
hardware (I last built my desktop about three years
ago, that's the last time I touched any hardware.  I
don't even have a PCIe video card!)

Can anyone out there give me a pointer to the correct
hdd to buy?  All I know is EIDE, I'm not up on this
Serial ATA/Ultra ATA/SATA stuff.  (I know, i've gotten
too lazy).

As for the Gateway, I'm clueless.  I spent a lot of
money for Captial Computers in Casselberry to solder
the dang socket and it still doesn't work...I'm
guessing its bricked unless anyone has another idea?

Thanks to all!


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