On 05/30/2015 03:25 AM, Stuart Longland wrote:
The other option might be to look at Lenovo's offerings, there might be some Superfish-ridden ones that sellers will be trying to offload dirt cheap: the malware being easily removed with the Debian installer. ;-)
I'll add a vote for Lenovo. I've been using Toshibas (earlier) and Dells (later) since laptops first became available. They've always been my daily drivers, so to speak.
Years ago Toshibas with plasma displays and the early monochrome LCDs were built like tanks. I got knocked off a motorcycle from behind by a pickup driver's California mirror while carrying a Toshiba laptop in a backpack. I landed on top of the laptop in a great big mud puddle, breaking several ribs in the process. I partially disassembled the entirely intact case, rinsed everything with liberal application of alcohol, dried it all with a high speed fan, and used it without failure for another couple of years. I replaced it only because I needed a more powerful system.
The next Toshiba fell apart in my hands within a few months.The Dell Inspiron and Latitude laptops I've used over the years have been downright heavy and flimsy, with failure-prone hinges and creaky keyboards and motherboards. (You can feel them bend a little when you pick them up.) Lots of hard drive and controller failures. (At least they stood by their warranty, but three motherboards and two hard drives on the top-end Latitude in three years was a bit annoying, even with next-day service.)
I carry my systems everywhere and every day. If I had used these laptops under mechanically less stressful conditions they might have been fine. A laptop doesn't have to be tough if it's sitting on the same desk every day.
But Lenovo -- now that's another story. I bought a T520i over the phone directly from Lenovo when the model first became available. They sold it to me without Windows, cheaper than the ones at their Web site because it didn't include the Microsoft tax. It has run like a train -- in the field at archeological digs, on planes and trains, on park benches, in cafes. It gets about 12-14 hours of solid use per day. The only failure was a key that broke when a student dropped a rock on the keyboard. Lenovo sent a free replacement keyboard with complete instructions for an easy repair at no cost.
Everything except the wifi worked with drivers from the main Debian repository. The firmware-iwlwifi package from non-free fixed that. Everything works beautifully.
I hope they're still making them like this when (or if) I need a replacement.