Re: new laptop recommendations?
On 13 Aug 2004, John M. Flinchbaugh wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 01:48:20PM +1000, Daniel Pittman wrote:
>> *nod* Also, the Intel "Extreme" graphics chips have decent Linux
>> support, as I understand it, and that is the new budget chip in IBM
>> laptops.
>
> 3d support? i'd happily go with anything with nice open
> support. 3d is just for toys (a game or 2 or screensavers), but
> it's nice to have a bit of glitz when people see a linux laptop.
Well, that is good. I feel very much the same way, but there are plenty
of people who really want 3D for some reason. Anyway, both the IBM
options have good Linux support.
[...]
>> I have a P4m-1.8 processor. Sure, it takes me ten minutes to compile a
>> kernel but, day to day, I get wonderful performance out of the hardware.
>> A faster CPU just wouldn't make that much difference to me, while a 24
>> hour turn-around on replacing a failing hard disk, including IBM sending
>> it to me by courier so I had *zero* downtime, is worth quite a bit.[1]
>
> i'd like to try to spring for the most processor i can afford
> just to keep the machine more useful longer. too be honest, i'm
> still working nicely at 600mhz, but the rest of the machine is
> failing.
That is what I did with this laptop, but then I also paid for the
1600x1200 ultra-fine LCD, and that was certainly worth the investment.
That said, 1.7GHz P4 is fast enough to achieve everything I want without
breaking a sweat, and most of the things are Pentium-M instead; that is
worth around a 20% performance increase for day to day use.
> i might have to think real hard about the ibm. do they have any
> machines designed for linux, meaning all the cool built-ins
> (nic, wlan, bluetooth, sound) definitely work with linux? this
> is where i may do better with a refurb or used machine, i guess.
No, not really. If you are looking, have a look at the reports on the
Linux laptops site, and consider the Thinkpad hardware list:
<http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.hardware.thinkpad>
They doubtless have a homepage and real email interface somewhere, but I
have used gmane forever. :)
If you have specific model questions, that is a good place to look and
talk about them.
Daniel
--
Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.
-- William Ruckelshaus, _Business Week_, 18 June 1990
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