Re: laptop recommendation
On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 03:40:06PM -0600, John Schmidt wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 April 2003 2:14 pm, florian wrote:
> > hi!
> >
> > im currently searching a nice laptop which works well
> > with debian. basically it should have a at least 15" big
> > screen and at least 1400x1050 px resolution..
> >
> > would be also great if it would not be too heavy and
> > big.. anybody got an recommendation for that?
> >
> > do the pentium-m chips from intel work with debian/linux
> > yet? is the wlan chip supported?
> >
> > thanks alot!
> >
> > ciao!
> > florian
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I recently purchased a Sager 8886 from DiscountLaptops.com. It is
> heavy, but has a 15.7" screen with a numeric keypad. You can now get a
> Sager with a 16" screen. I have an ATI Mobility 9000 which is supposed
> to be supported by XFree 8.3 (I am running 4.2 and using vesa driver).
>
> This particular laptop has a 2.8 G P4 chip 1G of RAM and 2 hard drives.
> The stock Debian kernel 2.4.20 supports everything on the laptop with
> the exception of the windmodem. The tv tuner card works, the
> detachable mp3 player works, the two hard drives work, sound, cd
> burner, etc. No MS windows on this laptop.
>
> I develop software and needed a fast computer with fast compile times
> (Lots of c++ code). Most of the time, this is sitting on my desk at
> home. Once a week, I take it up to work, so I don't mind the 12lbs +,
> since I am not carrying it around much. The battery life is short (2
> hours, but mine is always plugged in). It does generate a lot of heat,
> but it sits on my desk 99.9% of the time, so this is not an issue.
>
> The pros:
> fast, has a lot of stuff that works right off the bat with Debian.
>
> The cons:
> heavy, short battery life, generates fair bit of heat.
>
> It is my understanding that there are just a handful of laptop
> manufacturers out there. Sager is one of them. I could have purchased
> MS Windows but didn't have to and the purchase price was discounted.
>
> Essentially this machine is a desktop replacement that is mobile enough
> that I can take it places if I need to. I wouldn't want to be using
> this on a plane, or have to carry it around all the time (which I
> don't), so the limitations don't come up in my particular case.
>
> I would have preferred a mac, since I am a 20+ year Apple guy, but for
> my needs, this laptop is faster compiling my codes and running it. I
> have a 466 Mhz G3 sitting right next to me and it is substantially
> slower (greater than 4X) than my laptop in compilations and run time.
> There was nothing on the market from Apple that had the characteristics
> I needed.
>
> John Schmidt
>
I've had a few dell laptops and now am using a Dell Inspiron 4100 with
the ATI chipset. The ATI was not supported until X4.1 I think but
perhaps it was later. I lost track. The 4100 does not higher
resolutions/screendepths like you want; but it works pretty well for me
overall. I also have a little Dell Latitude ls which is the superlight
laptop built a few years ago
Secondarily, during a previous life I got to play with a lot of IBM
Thinkpad computers and got linux running on them one way or another. My
favorite laptop had to be the IBM Thinkpad T21 just for its versatility.
I think the T21's shipped with different screen sizes. The other things
I really liked about the T21 family was the sound card in Linux. I
think it ships with a Crystal Spectrum sound card. The T21s are older
laptops but I think they run Linux really well. They have a lighter
heft but the screen is gorgeous.
I have also used a Thinkpad 600e. I had issues with it overall but it
seemed to work most times okay.
Just my thots though :)
--
Michael Perry | Do or do not. There is no try. -Master Yoda
mperry@lnxpowered.org | http://www.lnxpowered.org
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