Hello :).
So, I just got a full refund on a HP Pavilion g6 2213sa laptop that I bought a few weeks ago. It came with Windows 8 and this horrible new UEFI/EFI bull and it just would not behave when I wanted to install Linux of any kind.
So, now I'm on the hunt for a new laptop, and I want to be extremely sure before I buy that, this time, the laptop I get will be just as easy to Dual boot as all the other laptops I've owned previously.
Obviously in places like PC World I can't trust any of the salesmen there to give me the correct answer, and obviously they would never actually demonstrate to me that Linux and Windows can behave and co-exist nicely on their systems. So I guess the only place I can trust an opinion of what laptops are suitable for dual booting is here in Linux forums.
Anyway, I'm an Engineering doctoral student so I do a lot of simulation/programming work, and I'm also a bit of a musician and have a home studio - so that's the things I'll mainly be using the computer for, as well as the usual browsing/e-mail/etc. So for that reason I need a computer with a lot of RAM (say min 6GB), a quality powerhouse CPU (say minimum of an i5 or equivalent) and a decent sized hard-drive (min 500GB).
It needs to have wireless (standard), some USB ports (at least one 3.0 USB port!), HDMI port, CD optical drive with cd/dvd rewriter capabilities, SD card reader, etc.
A decent graphics card would be nice but not essential, and a decent soundcard would be nice but not essential (I have external audio cards for recording in my home studio, so not a lot of that needs to take place on board the computer, just as long as it has the RAM and processing capabilities to handle multi-track recordings in a digital audio workstation).
My range is £400-600, although willing to go a bit higher to be guaranteed quality.
Any responses welcome and appreciated!
So, I just got a full refund on a HP Pavilion g6 2213sa laptop that I bought a few weeks ago. It came with Windows 8 and this horrible new UEFI/EFI bull and it just would not behave when I wanted to install Linux of any kind.
So, now I'm on the hunt for a new laptop, and I want to be extremely sure before I buy that, this time, the laptop I get will be just as easy to Dual boot as all the other laptops I've owned previously.
Obviously in places like PC World I can't trust any of the salesmen there to give me the correct answer, and obviously they would never actually demonstrate to me that Linux and Windows can behave and co-exist nicely on their systems. So I guess the only place I can trust an opinion of what laptops are suitable for dual booting is here in Linux forums.
Anyway, I'm an Engineering doctoral student so I do a lot of simulation/programming work, and I'm also a bit of a musician and have a home studio - so that's the things I'll mainly be using the computer for, as well as the usual browsing/e-mail/etc. So for that reason I need a computer with a lot of RAM (say min 6GB), a quality powerhouse CPU (say minimum of an i5 or equivalent) and a decent sized hard-drive (min 500GB).
It needs to have wireless (standard), some USB ports (at least one 3.0 USB port!), HDMI port, CD optical drive with cd/dvd rewriter capabilities, SD card reader, etc.
A decent graphics card would be nice but not essential, and a decent soundcard would be nice but not essential (I have external audio cards for recording in my home studio, so not a lot of that needs to take place on board the computer, just as long as it has the RAM and processing capabilities to handle multi-track recordings in a digital audio workstation).
My range is £400-600, although willing to go a bit higher to be guaranteed quality.
Any responses welcome and appreciated!