[Cialug] OT: laptop criteria

[D. Joe Anderson]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 04:12:22PM -0600, David Champion wrote:
> Optical drive options. Do you need CDRW? DVD?
> 
> Most don't ship with floppy drives, which isn't a big deal to most 
> people. You can get an external USB floppy drive for under $20.

Speaking of optical drives, floppies, and USB, I'll add this
criterion:  It should be able to boot from USB, specifically
from a keychain drive.

Most new systems *should* do this, but I was flabbergasted in
the last year or so to work on someone's ultralight Toshiba
notebook--one without any internal removable media drives
whatsoever--and to find that it wouldn't boot from a USB
keychain drive, the same one that had booted a Dell Optiplex, I
think.

Optical drives can get knocked around pretty hard and get
knocked out of commission.  Then, without another form of
externally-removable bootable media the only way to do an
install is to remove the hard drive and do the install on
another machine.

Besides, even if it boots from a USB floppy drive, who wants to
have one of those boat anchors (in terms of laptops) to lug
around and to add to the clutter?  

-- 
Joe