On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 12:50, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote: > My son starts college in a few days. He has an old Dell laptop that isn't > good enough for him, I guess. He wants for his laptop to be his main > computer, ... > > We definitely want to run Linux (Ubuntu, preferably) ... > > Just thought I'd check here to see what kinds of tips and ideas you guys > have. It's a tricky decision because of the trade-offs with price, power, > battery-life, features, etc. We'd like to keep the price down to $600. Like Florin, I'd recommend an IBM ThinkPad, though I don't have a particular model in mind and I don't know how it fits in with your proposed budget. There's a great list (though traffic is declining) called [ltp] linux-thinkpad at linux-thinkpad.org which is devoted to helping people run Linux on ThinkPad systems. For work, I've run Linux on ThinkPad laptops and used them as a primary machine for over a decade now and I'm very happy with them. -- Brian D. Ropers-Huilman 612.234.7778