My personal experience with anything ATI in the recent past is bad (at least until b65.) Somehow, Belenix works great but Nevada fails to set the right resolution. Anything nVidia is okay in general.
Regards, - Raju On 7/16/07, Eric Boutilier <ericb at opensolaris.org> wrote: > > [Cross-posting to osol-discuss and indiana-discuss. Followups to > laptop-discuss please. I've set the reply-to header accordingly.] > > Prompted partly by anticipation (and delight) of the distro constructor > project being discussed on indiana-discuss recently, I bought an > "economy model" laptop over the weekend. The point was to find a > barebones (cheap), 32bit laptop to serve a an install/packaging/etc > sandbox, and since I researched quite a few models, I thought I'd post > a write-up of some of the component specs I uncovered (in this > price-class) and related thoughts/guidance in hopes that it'll maybe > start a useful laptop-bargain-shopping thread (wiki page?). > > My bargain-hunting method was the weekly-ad, loss-leader, > in-store-purchase routine. The retail price (MSR) range turned out to > be roughly $550-$700 USD. The price range after discount and mail-in > rebate (though some were available w/out rebate) was roughly $400 - $450. > > So without further ado, and with corrections and other > improvements highly encouraged... > > (courier font recommended) > > Key: > PDC = Pentium Dual Core > AMD = AMD Sempron 3500+ > PCM = Pentium Celeron M > > GMA = Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 > VIA = VIA Chrome9 HC IGP > ATI = ATI Radeon > Y/N = Does the optical drive write DVDs > > Models: > Compaq Presario, C502US: PCM, GMA, N? > Acer Aspire 3680: PCM, GMA, N? > Compaq Presario T2080: PDC, GMA, Y > Everex StepNote VA2000T: PDC, VIA, Y? > * Toshiba Sat. A135-S2326: PDC, ATI, Y? > Acer Aspire 3100: AMD, ATI, ? > > > I wound up getting the Compaq Presario T2080 at Best Buy. > > The asterisk on the Toshiba means it is purported to have Atheros > wireless. Most, or all of the rest have Broadcom. (I think that means > the NDIS driver is required?). To narrow things down, first I decided > to stick with GMA graphics based on something I read in > laptop-discuss. Unfortunately that ruled out getting Atheros wireless. > That left the 2 Presarios and the Aspire 3680, and I figured the Dual > Core Pentium would be better than the Celeron M. > > The Sunday ads I perused for this were Best Buy, Walmart, Circuit City, > Office Depot, Staples, and CompUSA. Here are the stores that I know > currently carry each brand. This is way incomplete though... IOW, no > doubt each brand is carried at more than the stores listed here... > > Aspire: Walmart, Staples ... > Presario: CompUSA, Best Buy ... > StepNote: Walmart, Circuit City ... > Satellite: Office Depot ... > > > Some more caveats off the top of my head... > > - Advertised specs are often wrong. > - Cheap laptops are big and clunky. > - Installed RAM was either .5 or 1GB, but I didn't keep track of which. > - I think the HDD was 80 GB in all of them, but I'm not sure. > - Some of these might be available for on-line purchase only. > - I think one or two of them has a 14.x-inch screen. > - Loss-leader shoppers are frowned upon by electronics stores, > be prepared to be treated that way. > > Model names/codes can get really tricky (e.g. "Toshiba Satellite > A135-S2326") and are probably not valid outside the U.S. So it > might be helpful here if anybody has knowledge of equivalent > model names in other countries. > > So now I have my nifty new cheapo... er... economy lappy but I haven't > had time to do much with it yet! What I did get a chance to do though > was download and fire up Nevada b67 via the BeleniX 0.6.1 LiveCD (also, > I stuck with Xfce and the Realtek ethernet NIC for now) and everything, > including LAN/WAN/DHCP discovery worked great! > > Eric > _______________________________________________ > laptop-discuss mailing list > laptop-discuss at opensolaris.org > -- -- Raju Alluri -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/laptop-discuss/attachments/20070717/6973eba7/attachment.html>
