Laptops

[Mike]

Yes, I'm back. Haven't really gone away, just not posted in so long forgot my user ID (I knew the password, damn it!). Been a silent watcher.

OK -- I guess it's time to return to my question of a couple years ago and it is a hardware question about what works and what doesn't. I have three nice refurbished ThinkPad T61s courtesy of the fire insurance company (one will belong to the MA Chapter of the American Chestrnut Foundation). Been making do with the XP all this time because .......

I have a serious problem with the definition being used for "works just fine". I can see that according to many I would have no problem getting Linux on these machines and close to "just works" with one teeny ever present exception. Modem. It's really annoying to see every time "didn't bother with the modem -- who in this day and age still uses the modem?"

Well I do if I want to connect to the Internet without loading a laptop into the car and driving seven miles to the village. But from the house, no modem, no Internet at all, bugger the speed.

How serious is the problem? Not seeing anybody claiming to have the modem working is not encouraging me to take the plunge.

[jpaulb]

have you tried http://linmodems.org/ ?

[Mike]

And some "non-free" (both senses) solutions too.

But this is to a certain extent an "attitude" problem with regard to "works" (how reported). Keep in mind that with regard to only having slow connectivity out here I have actually had "techie" types suggest the solution "sell the farm and move to town".

In my case all the laptops would be shared devices and I need to convince an end user who is only concerned with getting her work done, not which OS used for that purpose. So I need not "everything important" working but "everything working" or I catch it. I do realize that may not be possible with laptops but that might mean I just can't put a 'nix on these machines as a primary OS (I can obviously have it there invisible to her).

Back a decade ago I could make the "security" argument but that's not so easy now.

[uteck]

When I used to have dial-up I used this nice server distro designed for floppies, but could be installed on the hard drive as well. It would detect when a machine on the network wanted to conenct to the net and dial the connection. After a few minutes of idle it would drop it. I can't remember the name now, but that would only work if you wanted to network the house anyway.

Not sure how well IPcop will detect modems, but the Update Accelerator plugin would be a nice thing to have if you have multiple machines sharing the connection.

[jml]

If your budget can afford it, you might want to check out the USRobotics 56K USB Modem. Its a true modem, not a Winmodem and is advertised as being compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux. It sells for a bit under $50.00 US at Amazon.com. Here is a link to the web page.

http://www.amazon.com/56K-USB-Modem-Windows-Linux/dp/B0013FDLM0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=miscellaneous&qid=1243823087&sr=8-2

I bought one as a backup in the event my broadband connection goes out or if I don't have broadband when I travel. I have not yet tried it out, but the reviews I relied on before buying one were very favorable.

Joe