I might need help. ;D

[GrannyGeek]

You can have my desktop machine when you pry it from my cold, dead .. wait, that one's already taken.  In all honesty (and when I don't say that I'm lying) I think I'll want a desktop machine for some time to come.  This is mainly because I like building, re-building, modifying, and adding to them, and so on.

You may be surprised to hear that I'm like that, too. For as much as I like laptops, I sure don't want to get rid of my desktops. I like the upgradeability and I like knowing that I can almost surely repair it myself if anything goes wrong.

I wouldn't call messing with computers my hobby, but I do enjoy it and it seems every few months I get the urge to upgrade something. I've built three computers from the case up and have upgraded just about everything in every desktop I've ever had. I'm currently in a period of calm and don't feel like upgrading anything, though I may have to replace the CD/DVD drive in my older desktop but I currently can't afford it. Besides, I recently had to deal with a nasty hardware problem in my newer desktop that turned out to be a video card that had gone bad. Troubleshooting that thing was very time consuming and it drained me of any desire to get my hands inside the box--for a few months, anyway.
--GrannyGeek

[tomh38]

GrannyGeek:  I'm not surprised that you want to keep your desktop machines; I'm also not surprised that caitlyn no longer feels the need to have one.

The way I see it, different people have different wants and needs.  I still have a land line even though I use my cell for almost everything.  Some people I know (mostly younger people, but not only) no longer see the need for a land line and so only have cell phones.  Most of the gamers I know (not many, since I'm not really into those kinds of games) like to have a desktop machine (or an Xbox, Playstation, etc.) rather than a laptop for gaming.

I'll take into consideration your advice about which laptop to buy.  In the end I'll avoid brands that are known to have low quality control, and pick something thought by reviewers and Consumer Reports to be solid and stable.  A Lenovo would be nice.  I really haven't figured out how much money I can spare for this.  I'm not too worried about speed since VL will run very fast on any machine that's fairly recent.

Thanks,
Tom

[caitlyn]

Toshiba has a very bad reputation for support after the sale. They don't do anything by e-mail and you have to call and usually talk to someone who's not competent (so what else is new?).

Actually the part about no e-mail support isn't true.  I've subscribed to the Toshiba Linux support mailing list for years.  It's run by Toshiba engineers in their home office in Japan but it's in English.  The list is very helpful, particularly with some models they've had that are a bit more interesting to get fully functional with Linux.  However, since most Toshiba machines seem to support Linux very well a lot of the content is the typical newbie support.  Some of it is user-to-user but genuine Toshiba people do post.

My only experience with Toshiba repair was in 1997.  I had a Toshiba Portege (a snazzy Pentium 90) which failed barely within the two year warranty.  I was living in San Francisco at the time and there was a depot in town.  I dropped it off and had it back in about 10 days with a new motherboard and no charge.  I never had a problem with it again.  I don't remember if I gave it away or sold it but I do know it was still working and running Linux flawlessly.

GrannyGeek is right that these are anecdotal stories and not a basis to judge by, hence the YMMV.  OTOH, I've owned a total of six Toshiba machines over the past 15 years or so and my experience with them is uniformly excellent which is why I keep going back to them.

[tomh38]

Thanks once again, GrannyGeek and caitlyn.

Any tech support I get would have to make a real effort to be worse than the time I had somebody come out to replace my cable modem.  The guy they sent was drunk, and also failed to find the problem.

True story.

Tom

[Windozer]

Gateway is the absolute pits - caitlyn

Never buy anything that looks like a cow or steer unless you're a rancher.