Looking for a replacement laptop

anichols

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Jun 24, 2014
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I am currently using a (sadly no longer available) Dell Inspiron 17R Special Edition laptop which is (equally sadly) broken beyond my ability to keep running for much longer. I have been trying to find a suitable laptop online for the past few hours and have been unsuccessful. These are the features I am looking for in a replacement, in order from most important to least:


  • Price Range: Under US $1000
    [strike]Legacy BIOS (or at least a UEFI that can be disabled to allow me to use XUbuntu instead of Windows)[/strike] Edit: As pointed out, UEFI isn't a barrier to Linux as it was when I was last shopping for a laptop and had to send one potential machine back because the UEFI's secure boot could NOT be disabled.
    17 inch HD widescreen display
    Full keyboard with 10-key
    Backlit keyboard
    Non-ALPS touchpad (as Linux cannot recognize these properly I cannot disable tap-to-click)
    Dual hard drive support (rare at the time I bought the current laptop - might be impossible now)

My usage of this laptop consists of the following:

  • Basic internet
    Limited gaming (mostly text based and vintage emulator gaming [NES/SNES/Sega])
    Website design
    Browser based and Linux based programming
    HD video playback

Any suggestions that meet these criteria (or at least come as close as today's market will allow) are welcome. Thank you all in advance for any constructive replies you have to this topic.
 
Solution
Good luck. All modern units and desktop motherboards have UEFI bios now. I can't think of a single currently available unit made in the last year that doesn't. Not sure why you need legacy bios to run Ubuntu. Nobody else does.


http://www.howtogeek.com/175641/how-to-boot-and-install-linux-on-a-uefi-pc-with-secure-boot/
Good luck. All modern units and desktop motherboards have UEFI bios now. I can't think of a single currently available unit made in the last year that doesn't. Not sure why you need legacy bios to run Ubuntu. Nobody else does.


http://www.howtogeek.com/175641/how-to-boot-and-install-linux-on-a-uefi-pc-with-secure-boot/
 
Solution