LinuxCertified Laptop: A Review

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities     School of Statistics     Charlie's Home Page
University of Washington     Department of Statistics     Elizabeth Thompson's Home Page

I just bought a new laptop from LinuxCertified. After mine arrived and seemed to work Elizabeth Thompson also bought one.

We were a bit worried about buying a laptop from some random company we found using Google. So the first thing to say about it is that it works as advertised.

The specific laptop I got is their

• LC2210D Linux Laptop ($1399, on sale at $999)
  with the following options
  • 802.11g wireless card ($99)
  • SuSE 9.3 Professional ($119)
  and the following standard equipment
  • Intel Celeron M processor 350 - 1.3 GHz
  • 512 MB Memory
  • 40 GB Hard Drive
  • 14" LCD Display (1024x768 pixels)
  • DVD & CD-R/W Combo Drive
  • 10/100 Ethernet
  • 56K Modem
  • Weight: 5 lbs

The standard Linux distribution is

• • Fedora Core 3

and costs nothing. The laptop is delivered with the OS installed and everything working. Various other distributions are available (for varying installation charges).

The processor, memory, hard drive, and display are all upgradable (for more money) to larger, faster, better. But we decided to go for cheap (and light -- with the larger display it weighs a pound and a half more).

The reason I got SuSE Linux is because the the chameleon is cute and that's what we have been running at the University of Minnesota School of Statistics for five years (? maybe more), so I have a lot of experience with it (except for this year, when I am on sabbatical at the University of Washington Department of Statistics, I have been the faculty supervisor of the School of Statistics systems administrators and so do some system administration and oversee the rest).

Elizabeth got exactly the same hardware but for the Linux distribution got the default Fedora Core 3 (no extra charge, hence $119 less than I paid) because they run Red Hat Enterprise Linux at University of Washington Math Sciences Computing Center (which supports the Department of Statistics) and that's what Elizabeth has on her office desktop.

So how does it work? Everything we've tried works so far.

• Ethernet configuration needed a bit of help from the system administration people if for no other reason than that it has to be registered with the DHCP server. There was no problem after we realized that the MAC address registered was typed wrong.

  (Much later) I have registered the MAC address with University of Minnesota networking so it has ethernet in all wired classrooms at U of M (there are many).

• Wireless worked after reading the web page giving instructions. I just configured wireless using YaST (the SuSE system administration tool) saying that the network was University of Washington and no encryption (which YaST warned about).

  (Much later) With some help from a student at the circulation desk of Walter Library I got wireless working there too, following his instructions, which are (somewhat inconspicuously) on the web. Wireless doesn't work in my office in Ford Hall.

• Then after I got back to my office ethernet didn't work until I deconfigured wireless. But then it was o. k. I gather you have to configure/unconfigure wireless each time you use it (that's the Linux way). Actually it's not the Linux way if you're a real geek. SuSE comes with a thingy SCPM that is configurable using YaST that is specifically designed for this sort of thing, but it looks really hairy and I haven't tried it.
• The Synaptics touch pad is maddening. It is way too cute for my taste, though (so I gather from some reading of the web) a very widely used laptop device. Its interaction with Firefox is especially maddening. Just a touch and I've gone back three or four pages! What's happening? I haven't figured out yet. Nor have I figured out how to disable the cuteness.

  (One month later). Support at LinuxCertified told me where to find TFM on the touch pad (a readme file in /usr/share/doc/packages/gpm, gpm being the general purpose mouse daemon, which I had never heard of before) and it turns out that all of the behavior I am having trouble with can be turned off. But I haven't tried that yet either. I'm seeing what part I actually want. So far I have learned how to use a few of the features well

  • Tap the pad for right mouse click.
  • Move up and down on the right edge of the pad for vertical scroll.
  and a few other features badly
  • Tap the pad in the upper right corner for center mouse click.
  • Move left and right on the bottom edge of the pad for ??? Actually, I'm not sure what this does. It makes Firefox go forward and back through the history list.
• The output to video projectors (for talks) works.
• The modem works.
• A USB flash drive (a Memorex M-Flyer USB 2.0 TravelDrive chosen because the web site actually mentioned that it worked with Linux) works.