Re: Best "new" laptop
On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 05:38:56PM -0800, Heather wrote:
> * video chipset that is -actually- supported by X 4. I'm strongly
> interested in moving that direction, but since my current systems
> work, I'm not terribly interested in half measures or putting up
> with bleeding-edge vendor bull. Wish me luck. I think this is
> my pickiest feature request.
Hmm, my Dell Inspiron 5000e has ATI Rage Mobility M3 16 MB (r128).
Works rather well in XF4 (@1400x1050), although I get some weird
"desynched" "burning" LCD screens when switching back to text mode
in certain modes.
And if using frame buffer on bootup, then the same weird thing happens.
> * it has to have decent onboard disk space. Or tell me the mm height
> required and if the machine is openable enough, I can fix that little
> problem on my own. I had originally not thought much of this as
> firewire/usb extra storage is now easy to get and anyways, I have
> a PCMCIA/IDE controller bay. But the fact is I do not usually carry
> this sort of peripheral except by appointment. So I'd rather 10Gb
> than 6, and more would increase my ability to treat it as my primary
> system. 20 Gb would probably be plenty.
> btw: best 9 mm drives, anyone? criteria - well behaved, then
> capacity, then price. I might just buy one of these
> and not bother with a new laptop yet.
My 20GB Fujitsu drive just failed on me after only 7 weeks.
Dell promptly sent me a replacement IBM drive (DJSA-220).
So far very good (after two weeks), but IBM drives are said to be rather
"clunky", and it seems Dell has *frequent* problems (read: failure
due to excess clunking (read: platter damage) or high-pitched noise)
with big HDDs on its notebooks (many brands, but also IBM).
Somebody said Toshiba drives were more quiet in general, but I don't know
much about this.
Some people had their third HDD shipped from Dell already...
I had my previous HDD spin down rather frequently (every 20 minutes),
so you might want to avoid that (although I suspected disk failure
for that Fujitsu drive from the *beginning* due to weird changes in noise).
Actually I don't let the IBM spin down any more at all.
In short: bigger drives seem to be VERY fragile !!!
But OTOH the 6.4 GB IBM in my very old Acer notebook already grew
much louder, too :-\
> Comments other than "star, you type too much" welcome.
/me typed too much ;)
Andreas Mohr
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