Re: Penetration Test Hardware Vendor

For Pen testing you don't need a powerful machine unless you are going 
to be doing some cypher cracking with john-the-ripper or capturing 
wireless encrypted data and cracking it with airsnort. Buy a crappy 
little laptop and install Phlak on it (Professional Hackers Linux 
Assault Kit) it's much like Trinux used to be. www.phlak.org I think it 
is. Try to get a laptop that has both an ethernet card and a wireless 
ethernet card. If you work for a company that will be  funding your 
machine I suggest an alienware laptop, I think they're nice.

Phlak is just a version of debian linux that has been stripped down and 
every security auditing tool you can imagine is on it, download the ISO 
and burn it onto  disk. (Let me add that this tool kit is nice but 
you're better off installing a simple desktop linux like fedora or 
mandrake or something and going and get all of the tools they have 
listed on the phlak website yourself, this ensures you have all of the 
latest versions of the tools.)

Hope you get done what you need
Terry Vernon