Harald Sundt wrote:
> I thought I'd ask again. I asked a month ago and the talk about Dell was
> fun but I still want to know what Packages and laptops have the best
> reputation.
None of us knows the answer to that question. The problem is that
the manufacturers upgrade their hardware every couple of months.
There are hundreds of models, and by the time compatibility reports
start coming in, the model is out of production.
Instead, maybe we could have a discussion about good and bad
components in laptops. Here's my limited and biased understanding.
Things that just work. keyboards, trackpads, USB, wired Ethernet,
hard disk, CD/DVD.
Things that almost always work. sound.
Video: Intel video works well but is not fast enough for Windows
games. (or so they tell me. I don't use Windows.) ATI's current
chips require the proprietary fglrx driver and even so, don't work
well. (There's a free radeonhd driver that just started development
last month, and should give ATI a much better position in six months
or so.) I don't have any NVIDIA experience. I know they require a
proprietary driver, which is a bother if you upgrade your kernel
often.
WiFi: It's just gonna suck. Every WiFi chip requires a proprietary
firmware blob. Aside from Intel, manufacturers release no information
about their chips. I personally have an Intel IPW 3945ABG WiFi chip,
and have never had any configuration issues. But on another mailing
list, I read about someone who can't get it working at least once a
month.
Suspend/resume: It's almost impossible to predict whether it will
work. The best thing is to minimize the number of proprietary drivers
you rely on, as the open source drivers get fixed quicker. The second
best thing you can do is pick a popular model, in the hope that a
developer will have the exact same unit and will be motivated to make
things work on your distro.
The thing that makes a bad situation worse is that you get what you
pay for in a laptop. The $400 laptops that people like to buy are
reliable like Yugos. (Remember the Yugo?) It's hard to tell whether
you have an incompatible subsystem or just a broken one.
Some manufacturers let you configure your laptop and pick components
on the web site. If I were laptop shopping, I'd use one of those
sites and pick Intel video, Intel WiFi, and as much screen resolution,
RAM, CPU cache, and disk space as I felt like paying for.
I've tried to keep my post neutral up to this point. But my personal
preference would be to get a Lenovo T61p Widescreen, 1680x1050
resolution, with Intel G965 graphics and Intel 3945 WiFi. (That's
probably about an $1100 configuration, though. :-( ) Anne and I have
carried four T-series over the last few years, and we like them. (I
bought one, and Juniper, Cisco, and Symantec each bought one for us.)
They're pretty nearly bulletproof, which is why Corporate America
likes them. Plus, we already have extra A/C adapters and docking
stations. (-:
--
Bob Miller K<bob>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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