[Discussion] Notebooks for CACS

[James Howard]

> Hi,
>
> Jim Stockford introduced me to someone who might be providing us with good
> notebook computers.  This just hypothetical right now, just an
> introduction.  As soon as I find out the specs, I will let u know.  These
> machines supposedly are no more than 3 years old

This is very good news. AGE is actually one of the most useful specs for
estimating performance. CPU clock and RAM quantity are much less useful.
For example, A 2 GHz Core i7-2635 from last year is 26 times as fast as a
2 GHz Willamette Pentium 4 from 2001.

If possible, the serial number from a sample machine -- or if they're
Dells, the service tag -- would be very useful in determining whether or
not we should accept these machines (for example, will the video or wifi
chip play nicely with Linux), but it sounds like they're solid.