Ok maybe that’s not all I want, but it’s a good start.
I got a new laptop recently, a Toshiba Tecra A11, really nice laptop. A couple of jobs ago I had a Toshiba Tecra M5 and liked it a lot, it had a couple glitches with Linux but for the most part it worked well. The Tecra A11 by contrast, no glitches with Linux, at least not yet. I’ve been using it about three weeks now, everything from wireless, to audio, to 3D, microphone(first time I’ve ever used a microphone in linux, first time in easily ten years I’ve used a microphone on a PC period), and even webcam worked. And most importantly, suspend/resume has been 100% reliable. Really nice to see. It is certified with Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit which is what I’m running.
But that’s not really what this post is about, I wasn’t expecting it, so didn’t look for it, but was overjoyed when I looked and saw that this brand new business laptop had a DB9 serial port, a REAL serial port! Woohoo! I mean my M5 had one too and that was great, I just thought Toshiba had jumped on the train of let’s get rid of serial ports.
What a sight to see. I mean what Linux/Unix/Network geek in their right mind can get by without a serial port? Yeah I know you’ve been able to get those piece of crap USB serial adapters for some time, but I’ll take a DB9 any day! Especially when my favorite network gear uses native DB9 on their stuff too.
(Sorry couldn’t resist getting some purple in there, not enough color on this blog)
I was a fan of the IBM Thinkpad T-series for the longest time, until Lenovo bought them, was introduced to Toshiba a few years ago and they are by far my favorite laptop. If it’s going to be my main machine for work, then it’s gotta be something good. The Tecra line is it, the new T series for me.
Laptop specs:
- Intel® Core™ i7-620M Processor 2.66 GHz (3.33 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology), 4MB Cache,
- Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP3 with Windows® 7 Professional Recovery Media,
- 8GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM (4096MBx2)
- 320GB HDD (7200rpm, Serial ATA),
- Nvidia® NVS™ 2100M with 512MB DDR3
- Keyboard without 10-key numeric pad (black)
- 15.6″ Diagonal Widescreen HD+ (1600×900) TFT LCD display,
- Dual Point pointing device (Accupoint + Touchpad) and Media Control Buttons
- Integrated Webcam and Microphone
- Bluetooth® Version 2.1 +EDR
- Toshiba 4-Year On-Site Repair + 4th Year Extended Service Plan
Customized pretty good they built it special for me! Mainly the “non standard” but “reccomended” keyboard(and custom matte LCD I hate the reflective screens). At first I was kind of upset they only offered ground shipping, I would be willing to pay more for faster shipping, but turns out it wasn’t ground after all, and they shipped it directly from China. Once it shipped it got here in about 4 days I think, through Alaska, then somewhere out midwest at which point I thought it was going to be put on a truck and driven back to Seattle only to find it hopped on another plane and flew to me instead.