Re: suggestions for a 64 bit laptop?
On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 03:16:27PM +0100, Giacomo Mulas wrote:
> Hello, I am a happy pure64 user on the desktop, and I would like
> to get a 64 bit laptop/desktop replacement as well. However, it looks like
> the models with large displays (15", more than 1280x1024) are only
> available with Intel 32 bit cpus (e.g. Dell), and vice versa. Any
> suggestions for a good Athlon64 laptop with a large display? Possibly one
> which is _known_ to work well with pure64?
Well I have seen many laptops with 1280x800 displays (15.4" WXGA) with
Athlon 64 chips. My wife has a Compaq R3240. She hasn't really played
much with linux on it yet (too much time working on assignments instead,
and accessing a stupid website that requires webct and realaudio and
such). It does have the typical problem of support for the wireless
network, which is a broadcom 802.11g chip, which of course doesn't have
an open source driver, so as far as I know the only way to use it is
through ndiswrapper or driver loader, which supposedly know does support
64bit linux although we haven't tried yet. Everything else is, from what
I have read, fully supported, nvidia video chip, nforce 250 chipset, dvd
writer, etc. I suspect the media card reader that is built in might not
work though, but firewire and usb should, as should audio.
The main thing to consider really seems to be the video chip, the
wireless network, and the modem if you intend to use it. The modem will
be a winmodem, so getting that to work could be a nightmare especially
in 64bit mode. The wireless network is often broadcom and hence not
directly supported. The video chip is normally nvidia or ati, with the
nvidia much better supported than the ati, especially in 64bit linux.
Unfortunately I don't know of any perfect A64 laptop with entirely
supported hardware.
Len Sorensen
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