Re: best labtop for debian
on 16:15 Wed 09 Feb, Celejar (celejar@gmail.com) wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 18:24:28 -0800
> "Dr. Ed Morbius" <dredmorbius@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > on 15:23 Tue 08 Feb, Celejar (celejar@gmail.com) wrote:
> >
> > > I'm curious - everyone has always seemed to love ThinkPads, but I've
> > > never understood what exactly makes them so popular. I'm not
> > > disagreeing or challenging - I've never used one, and I just want to
> > > understand why everyone swears by them.
> >
> > Generally: solid construction, good hardware support for Linux,
> > excellent online product information (I don't know if the *1991* 486
> > ThinkPad I'd aquired (originally supporting OS/2) is still listed, but
> > it certainly was well into the 2000s).
> >
> > The keyboards are full-featured and full-sized.
> >
> > For those who like it (and I do), the Trackpoint has no substitutes. I
> > had for a time a work-issued Dell system, with its own variant of the
> > Trackpoint. Dell's implementation used a hard, abrasive rubber which
> > quickly rubbed your fingers raw. IBM's got an attention to detail here
> > (an unfortunately, ThinkPad nibs didn't fit the Dell device).
> >
> > Under warrantee, support service is excellent. I had my current display
> > swapped with 3 days downtime.
> >
> > One key point to remember is that ThinkPad is no longer an IBM product
> > (though there stills eems to be a strong brand relationship between the
> > two, including a lot of current info on IBM's website). Under Lenovo's
> > guidance, I've seen some warts, and my current T410s has some issues:
> > wireless, suspend/hibernate, and display, largely. All work pretty
> > reliably much of the time, but with some warts:
> >
> > - I can't switch from X after starting a GUI session -- console won't
> > display.
> >
> > - After suspending by closing the lid, display won't reactivate.
> >
> > - Suspend/hibernate periodically doesn't restore.
> >
> > I'm also not entirely happy with the 1440x900 screen resolution (a
> > comperable 17" MacBook Pro offers 1680x1050).
> >
> > That said, given alternatives, it's the least bad solution, if not one
> > that leaves me smiling all the time.
>
> Thanks for the detailed report. Suspend and wireless are generally the
> sorts of things where one runs into problems.
Of these, wireless is the larger hassle.
My avoiding use of GNOME/KDE (and hence network-manager and its GUI
interfaces) doesn't help matters much. I suspect that if I were to run
one or the other, I'd have fewer problems in that department.
The suspend/restore behavior is actually pretty reliable. I can think
of one recent restart which failed, going back over the past month or
two, with 2-3 daily hibernations. It's also very /quick/, especially
suspend/restore (to RAM), though hibernate (to disk) ain't too shabby
either with SDD -- the longer delay is going through the BIOS + GRUB +
initial kernel boot sequence.
I've taken to running a pm-suspend-hybrid rather than pm-suspend as a
belt-and-braces security measure. I can afford the extra few seconds on
shutdown and appreciate the state preservation on restore should I
manage to run the battery flat.
--
Dr. Ed Morbius, Chief Scientist / |
Robot Wrangler / Staff Psychologist | When you seek unlimited power
Krell Power Systems Unlimited | Go to Krell!
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