On 8/1/06, Harv Nelson <ai9nl at arrl.net> wrote:
> what is the current lap top of choice for linux.   full debian install.  of
> course price will be a prime consideration.  I plan to carry it in the truck
> and use mostly for mobile Ham radio communications.
>
> thanks
>
> Harv

Shop ebay.com, materialsprocessing.com (surplus store) or ibm.com
("certified used equipment") for a slightly older Thinkpad.

Remove the hard drive and get a CF/PCMCIA adapter and as big a
CompactFlash card as you can afford.  I believe you can get up to 4 GB
cards now, which should be plenty for linux.  I'm running a healthy
Debian install on a 4 GB hard disk partition on my laptop and it's
only using about 2 GB.

Enter the laptop's BIOS and configure it to boot from PCMCIA.  Install
linux to the flash and you have a solid state machine that will fair
much better than any hard drive in a vehicle.

scot