Greetings! Within the next couple days, I should be ordering a new laptop to replace this one, which is on its last legs.
For various reasons -- including the international warranty and a decent repair record, I plan to get an ASUS machine. This time out, I have fairly well determined it'll be one of the small, light ones with good battery life--probably something from the UL30 series of 13.3 inch screen machines. At present, These all have either the SU7300 ULV dual core, or the new Core I3 or I5 Mobile CPUs. The newer CPU machines are quite a bit more expensive, as you might expect. However, the things I do these days are not particularly taxing, so the SU7300 should be fine. My conundrum, though, is whether to simply go with the Intel 4500M integrated graphics models (which can be had new for $600 including 500 GB hard disk and 4 GB of RAM), or to pay another hundred and change for one with switchable graphics that include nVidia discrete graphics chips in addition. I am not a gamer, nor do I do things like video encoding that cry out for all the CPU and graphics horsepower you can throw at them. However, I still do appreciate decent performance, so I am tempted to the models with switchable graphics. The only problem is, support for these boxes is still kind of sketchy in Linux, it seems. The 2.6.34 kernel has incorporated "VGA Switcheroo"--but that is not yet fully stable and tested with Intel/nVidia combinations like the ASUS boxes. Oh, yes, one more issue--the older models often have WIFI issues--many of them have difficulty getting solid connections even when sitting within ten feet of a wireless router. If I get one of these, I would also get a much better wireless card and at least one additional antenna, as ASUS has been only putting in a single antenna. Thus, I will probably be out another thirty or forty bucks or so and about ten or fifteen minutes labor to make the switch. So, what's your opinion--should I simply get the cheaper machines with integrated graphics only, or would I be a bit too much on the cutting edge to get the dual graphics machines? What would you do? (And who knows, there might be someone here already using one of these machines, and I would most definitely love to hear your thoughts in particular.) TIA, David Thanks for any suggestions you may have. David ------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from this list, please email [email protected] & you will be removed.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
