[CS-FSLUG] A little advice, please

[Ed Hurst]

My original message was trapped because I use the wrong sending address. I  
was lamenting the death of my desktop box. From the messages, I gather the  
CPU is getting marginal. I've seen the symptoms before. So I put that  
aside, and am now restricted to the laptop featured in my latest Ofb.biz  
article.

Now, I'm grateful to God this thing still works well after all these  
years. Frank Bax sent me a 4GB harddrive to fit this laptop because the  
other was dead, and just in time. Still, that's not much room, even with  
the spare requirements of FreeBSD. And this old Gateway Solo with 266Mhz  
CPU and 160MB of RAM is just not a lot to work with.

So I'm saving up for a newer laptop, because it fits the way I work better  
than a desktop machine. I may even get help from a friend who supports my  
ministry, and I'll always accept donations, because my computers belong to  
God. I know that there are some pretty good used laptops out there, and  
anything from a 500Mhz on up would be big leap in performance. Googling  
brings back way too much, and I have no experience purchasing used  
equipment, especially online.

The question, then: Whom would you trust as a vendor of used laptops? I  
will mention in passing that IBMs are favored with BSD devs, and Compaq/HP  
are reputed the worst choices. My experience with this and another Gateway  
makes me view them favorably. In general, the FOSS community likes the  
response from the big 3 Japanese brands. Given that, I'd like to read your  
comments on what you would do in my place.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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A Bible Site -- http://webs.tconline.net/softedges/
Linux & Unix Help -- http://ed.asisaid.com/
Blog -- http://ed.asisaid.com/blog/