I'm typing this on my first notebook. I bought it in 1999. It is woefully obsolete, but it really does work. - NEC Versa SX - Pentium II at 233MHz - 256M of RAM - 1024 x 768 screen (actually, I like the aspect ration) - 16 bits / pixel (oops) and a Trident video chip (support in X isn't 100%) - Fedora Core 1 - ethernet card plugs into a PCcard slot Via some simplified version of Moore's law, things ought to be better by about a factor of 1000 (two to the power of (16 years / 18 months)). - Processor clock speed is faster by a little more than 10. The work done per clock tick is perhaps 2 or 4 times greater. - The RAM is larger by a factor of 100 (the machine came with 64M). - disk space has gone up by perhaps 250. It came with a 4GB drive and I upgraded it to 10GB - screen resolution has gone up perhaps a factor of 2 horizontally and 1.3 vertically - keyboards don't seem better. Trackpads do. - price has gone down a bit.