[LAU] buying a new laptop

[Atte André Jensen]

Hi

My laptop was dropped, and if it's beyond repair, I need a new one 
quickly. I would appreciate a few (preferrably hands-on experiences or) 
advices to this end, here are a few thoughts:

1) It should of course work as flawless with linux as possible (I run arch)

2) I have an edirol fa66 firewire soundcard that I'm quite happy with. 
Problem is, it seems laptops with firewire are hard to find. I could get 
an usb soundcard, but I have the feeling that it's not gonna perform as 
well (low latency, stability) as firewire, it that correct? Plus it's 
annoying to throw away (or sell) a perfectly good, stable soundcard that 
suits my needs, just because of the port type...

3) I would prefer a small (<= 13") light-weight, long-battery-life laptop.

4) I actually don't really need that much cpu power. I have a 2Ghz 
dual-core intel (T7250, whatever that means) now, that's more than 
enough. It's the first dual core I owned, and I had the feeling the two 
cores provides a snappier feeling, would others agree? Besides that I 
don't need the speed I have now.

Options (I can think of):

I saw a secondhand ThinkPad X61s (dual-core 1.6Ghz, 3Gb ram, 12" 
display) from a well known online shop I trust and used many times 
(bought my current laptop there). There's 6 months warrenty, and my 
general impression with ThinkPads is that they have good build quality, 
it's the only laptop I would consider buying used. It has firewire so...

Go the netbook route. I'm at a loss here, all these new processors, both 
the i-series and the atom (N-series), I have no idea how well they 
perform. I tried a few from friends, and they seem fast enough. Anyone 
here making music on a netbook? This would most certainly mean I would 
have to get a usb soundcard, hmmm :-(

Any inputs would be greatly appreciated :-)

-- 
Atte

http://atte.dk   http://modlys.dk