Toshiba best for video cards and hi-res screens? (Was:IBM T42 discussion)
The discussion on IBM T42 is very interesting, and after the last mail, where the screen resolution
was said to be 1024x768, although the ATI Radeon 7500 is capable of 144x1050 (to external monitor),
led me to post a question on what makers are good options for higher screen resolution as well.
I bought a second-hand laptop in January this year, a September 2005 model Toshiba SS with 14" screen
capable of 1400x1050 pixels, and an nVidia card with 64MiB of memory, not shared. The laptop itself
can take 1.536GiB of RAM. Plus the processor is a 1.5 MHz Pentium M and the hard drive size is 80GiB,
although a bit slow as usual. I spent more than than a 1.5 years looking and waiting before buying,
not only because I needed to learn more about linux while using my work Dell Inspiron 1100 and a home
PC with an nVidia card, but because of the screen resolution: it seems really hard to find laptops here
in Japan with higher resolution than XGA.
I did look into IBM, and really wanted to get myself one, probably an X40 or an equivalent 14" model.
But eventually the Toshiba turned out be appeal more to me, the only reservation I have is that it
most likely is not as durable as an IBM machine. It seems hard to find a combination of the following:
a) ATI or nVidia graphics card
b) dedicated video RAM (not shared) of 64MiB or more
c) screen with higher than XGA resolution (SXGA, or better, UXGA if the production quality is good)
Other requirements such as Pentium M are not so hard to meet, while a larger hard disk can be remedied
after purchase also.
Are there any others on the list that have had problems lining up these criteria, or does it turn out
not to be important for most people? After having been happy using an SXGA screen on my desktop or at
work for some years, it is a pain to see worse on the laptop...
Cheers,
Gernot
--
Gernot Hassenpflug
Find out how something works, to know its functionality and limits
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