sony vaio laptops
I love my Vaio (PCG-N505VE). A year ago when I bought it, Debian
slink did not have X support for the Neomagic, and I had to scrounge
for the Aironet (wireless ethernet) support, but not a big deal.
Potato has all that now. The tricky part was the install, because the
Vaio has a USB floppy and a PCMCIA CD-ROM. I had a bit of trouble
accessing the CD-ROM during the install.
I don't know why you want a big, honking screen and a built in DVD or
floppy drive in something you want to carry around a lot. I have not
used a floppy or CD-ROM since the first 24 hours I owned it (to wipe
away Win98 and install Linux). I use ethernet to get whatever I need
onto the machine. Also, the 10.4" screen is pretty nice, at 1024x768
resolution. Heck, it looks better than my Sun at work, with its 19"
1152x900 screen. And I carry it on my commute every day, a couple of
miles of walking per day, with a big hill to go up on the way home.
The sub three pound weight helps a lot there.
The smaller, lighter Vaios are cheaper, too, less than two grand.
On Nov 25, Jordan Evatt (webfreak@themes.org) wrote:
> Hi guys. I've about had it with my Inspiron 3200 laptop; it's fixing to hit
> the dust. Falling apart, literally. I'm looking into getting a new laptop
> before I go to college, if I can raise the funds before that time comes
> (next year). I've lately been interested in Sony's line of VAIO laptops.
> Reason being, when I go to college, I want something that's extremely
> portable - something that I can carry around campus easily in a backpack,
> because I hate laptop cases. I need something that's powerful enough for
> what I want it to do - in reality, the basics, and I like to play games like
> Quake3 and Unreal as well.
>
> When I saw the newer Vaio's, the Superslim Pro models, I was intrigued, and
> looked into them. I played around on sony's website for awhile with the
> configuration stuff, and liked what I saw. They're not *that* expensive for
> a laptop - around $3500 for almost top configuration, which is what I'll
> probably be getting. My Inspiron was $3400, and the best of the best
> component configurations at the time. That was over two years ago though :).
>
> Anyway, I obviously want to make sure the Vaios have good video graphics
> capabilities and excellent linux support for all that is included with them.
> The only personal drawbacks I have against the Vaio's (the superslim pro
> model) is the fact that they don't have drive bays for dvd-rom/floppy drive,
> and the fact that it only has a 12.1" screen. Mine has a 13.3" screen, good
> grief. Does anyone have any good success stories installing/using linux
> (debian specifically) on the Vaio's? Thanks. Oh, I'm on the list, so no need
> to reply to me directly.
>
> - webfreak
--
Neil L. Roeth
neil-at-occamsrazor.net
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