I needed a laptop. A workhorse. Something I can haul around with me, but not have to pay an arm and a leg for it. Something that won't have problems running Linux or Windows. Something that I can get a decent battery life out of. Well, someone told me that Dell makes their laptops so that they won't have any problems running Windows. Sure enough, Dell's web site lists a number of items on Linux (RedHat, mostly) - tips, etc.

I started looking on eBay - at the time (February 2001) you could get a PII/366 for ~$700 - so I went and bought it. Dell Latitude CPiA PII 366MHz, 128MB or RAM (later bought another 128MB chip), dual-battery-capable, 24x CD-ROM, floppy, 13.3' TFT screen, 6.4GB hard drive.

First off - OS installation. RedHat Linux 7.0 and Windows 98 - dual-boot managed by Linux's lilo. No problems - in either case. None at all. All hardware was correctly identified (although for Windows I had to download some drivers from Dell's support page - which wasn't a big deal, actually).

Now, battery life. I bought two high-capacity batteries (model number 1691p) - with both of them in the laptop, I got good 7 hours of work time, although now it's down to about 5 hours.

A word of warning: the screws on the bottom tend to get loose - at which point the batteries lose contact. Just screw them back in tight and everything is ok again.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 700
Operating System: Other
Processor: Intel Pentium II
Processor speed: 301-400
Screen Size: 13
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20