Hello ubuntu geniuses,
I'm in the market for an Asus laptop and basically I want to know what components to watch out for... I haven't used a laptop in years, I work from home and have a desktop setup that suits me very well. But I need a laptop and it sounds like Asus is a great option for cheap laptops that mesh well with Ubuntu.
So when I look through the Asus laptops I see various components or proprietary goodies like:
Turbo33 NVidia Optimus power4Gear PalmProof
And some people are reporting things like the NVidia optimus don't work too well.
I would like a machine with good battery life, a decent display and a newish processor. I do not want either a netbook or some xxxtreme 2 tha maxxxxx gaming machine with 2 hours battery life. A middle of road laptop, under $1k, not too heavily preferably.
I'm confused about the various Asus product lines. I can see:
- UL - ultralight, sort of a macbook air knockoff
- K - general value/versatility series
- A - similar to K, not really sure what the difference is?
- B - business series, more expensive, better build quality
- Z - I can't even find this on the Asus website? But some of you are mentioning it in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1768551
Then there is P, Z, X, U, G, etc etc?
My ubuntu tastes are very vanilla, I have tried different desktop environments and window managers but I always revert back to the basic GNOME + compiz combination. I run 11.04 with Unity and I'm pretty happy with it (but's let not get into the whole pro-/anti-Unity discussion :P)
I don't tax my computer too hard, I basically use it for the usual tasks (browser, skype, podcasts, torrents, IM) and some statistical software (R, Stata) and analytical stuff. Nothing that is extremely demanding on CPU/memory, I get by fine at home with 4G RAM and an older processor (e7400 core 2 duo).
My local tech store - NCIX.com - has tons of affordable Asus laptops but there are 63 models to choose from and I'm a bit baffled:
http://ncix.com/notebooks/#ASUS
Can anyone straighten me out and/or offer a recommendation for a basic Asus laptop that will work well? I'm seeing a lot of discussion of the K43 series in this forum, would that be the best place to start?
Thanks in advance everyone. :)