Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
On Wednesday 22 October 2003 10:14 am, Kurt Bechstein wrote: However, if I bought a new one today I would get a IBM Thinkpad. Those things are built like tanks and Linux usually works without a hitch on them. They are sometimes a bit more pricey but it is usually well worth it. Just my $0.02. I've had a couple of IBM Thinkpads (380D and T21), both run Gentoo fairly well. There has only been one application that consistently does not work on the 380D; as it turns out, the application exihibits the same behaviour under both wine and Win NT. I use Gentoo as my primary OS without too many major problems. I do have a time getting some things working because some the software is not quite as mature as I would like, but most things I can do just as well, or in some cases, better than MS-Windows. I also like the Thinkpads for the TrackPoint (the little red dot) instead of the touchpad. The touchpad does not do very well for me when I'm bouncing the the road; too many false clicks with the touchpad. Just a couple of thoughts, Harlan... -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 23 October 2003 11:21, Harlan wrote: I've had a couple of IBM Thinkpads (380D and T21), both run Gentoo fairly well. There has only been one application that consistently does not work on the 380D; as it turns out, the application exihibits the same behaviour under both wine and Win NT. I use Gentoo as my primary OS without too many major problems. I do have a time getting some things working because some the software is not quite as mature as I would like, but most things I can do just as well, or in some cases, better than MS-Windows. I also like the Thinkpads for the TrackPoint (the little red dot) instead of the touchpad. The touchpad does not do very well for me when I'm bouncing the the road; too many false clicks with the touchpad. I have 2 laptops now, my own and one from work. Mine is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600, and it's lovely. Only a celeron 650 but runs gentoo, and only gentoo, flawlessly. Everything works, and it's a dream physically to use. The work one is a Thinkpad R40e, and it's horrendous, truly awful. A P4m 1.8, so it's speedyish, but not what it should (it feels slower than my laptop). The Radeon chip and ATI agp work nicely with development X (4.3.99-13). What makes it truly awful to use is the horrid keyboard, and mouse button placement, but that's probably because I'm comparing the layout to mine, which is so nice. Oh, and I can't get any sound, I think it's the hardware volume buttons. - -- Mike Williams -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/l9n6InuLMrk7bIwRArPaAJ0fnFTZBhtFJEKjzXz03BQ7kI1rTACfQe2p p7D3UYFsgeDGArhXe/jRR7Y= =AXH/ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Mike Williams wrote: The work one is a Thinkpad R40e, and it's horrendous, truly awful. A P4m 1.8, so it's speedyish, but not what it should (it feels slower than my laptop). The Radeon chip and ATI agp work nicely with development X (4.3.99-13). What makes it truly awful to use is the horrid keyboard, and mouse button placement, but that's probably because I'm comparing the layout to mine, which is so nice. Oh, and I can't get any sound, I think it's the hardware volume buttons. For the speed, check the power settings in your BIOS. There's probably a low-power (half-speed) option that can be set to Always, Battery, and Never, and may well default to Always. -- Caution: Product will be hot after heating -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 23 October 2003 14:43, Marshal Newrock wrote: On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Mike Williams wrote: The work one is a Thinkpad R40e, and it's horrendous, truly awful. A P4m 1.8, so it's speedyish, but not what it should (it feels slower than my laptop). The Radeon chip and ATI agp work nicely with development X (4.3.99-13). What makes it truly awful to use is the horrid keyboard, and Oh, and ac-sources. mouse button placement, but that's probably because I'm comparing the layout to mine, which is so nice. Oh, and I can't get any sound, I think it's the hardware volume buttons. For the speed, check the power settings in your BIOS. There's probably a low-power (half-speed) option that can be set to Always, Battery, and Never, and may well default to Always. Eep, but that would mean rebooting! :) Cheers - -- Mike Williams -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/l9xzInuLMrk7bIwRAk49AJkBIEivUA0zuNp+gE5Vqy4qZiqGQACePMlc 5aPQJlTZAZ6XAqlmoIm//JE= =8y0v -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
On 2003.10.21 17:02, eric heller wrote: I recently bought a Systemax laptop (www.globalcomputer.com) because I was dissatisfied with most of the major-brand laptops on the market. Nevertheless, even this computer isn't exactly a dream linux machine. A couple of things to consider: a. does the laptop feature intel centrino technology? mine does, but there's no support for the intel minipci wireless card in linux as of yet. also, speedstep for the pentium-m doesn't seem to be supported in the 2.4.2* kernels, although I hear that it is in the 2.6.* series. also, the 2.4.* kernels don't seem to recognize my cpu cache (/proc/cpuinfo reports cache size: 0 KB), although again I hear the 2.6.* kernels do. I haven't tried it yet; I don't know. Been using 2.6 (and 2.5) since the purchase of my gateway notebook. It works great (except test6), give it a whirl if you have the chance. I also had speedstep (intel enhanced speedstep) working when I had tried early 2.4.22_pre releases of ac-sources too (ac has newer acpi patches and stuff, or at least did at the time). The wireless is a writeoff, unfortunately. I wish it worked, as the builtin card has a nice antenna soldered on that (i assume) runs around the unit's base. Excellent signal strength (in another OS) compared to my linksys card I bought. It is also supposed to be much lower power, but I havent really done any comparisons with the linksys card in windows (and I dont think a centrino on windows, linksys on linux is a valid comparison... for what it's worth, with the cpu clocked to 600mhz, my battery life is slightly better in linux). If i get time/money and dont want to void my warranty by opening the minipci access door on my laptop (theres a part of that I dont understand), I'm going to see if I can get my hands on a cisco airo minipci card, and connect the antenna leads. , integrated wireless. b. other acpi support, which can be dependent on your bios. call technical support as ask them about this. will your laptop be able to sleep and wake up, suspend, hibernate? mine does, but I could never get this to work on my old Dell laptop. If you are buying a new laptop without ACPI support, theres something wrong. :) c. video card. i know lots of people report problems with ATI mobility cards, so you may have to resort to framebuffer if you can't get a driver to add hardware acceleration. perhaps i'm lucky, my ATI card seems to be working fine with X at the moment. The main problem at the moment is the Radeon IGP (aka radeon mobility, note no number). I've got a radeon 7500 mobility and it works great with dri. Radeon IGP also kinda works now (theres development), but you have to add that driver yourself (i believe it is patches to the current radeon driver, so it should be fairly easy to throw into an ebuild for X). I would look at the laptops made by some of the smaller brands, youu'll likely find a cheaper machine that works just about as well as any other laptop out there as far as linux support goes. It depends whats most important to you. I chose a cheap, light notebook that has slight linux compatibility problems, but I knew this going into it, and I don't regret anything. Whatever works for you. other laptop users, what did i leave out? I think you hit the nail on the head with whatever works for you. I could drone on all day about what I think is important in a laptop, and somebody else could do the same and have entirely different points. I dont even use suspend or hibernate states, but to some this is needed and very important. Although, I do reccommend more than a 30 gig drive if you are going to have multiple operating systems installed. I've found that I've pretty much filled my 30G (split down the middle for windows xp and gentoo). Granted, I have a few games installed, though. -- Chris I Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are so long they can't afford the disk space. pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 03:34:48PM -0700, Elric Scott wrote: I am currently looking at the HP Pavilion zd7000 and the Compaq Evo N800W. Which laptop will have the least problems, and the most efficiancy? You probably won't want to hear this, but I would *never* buy an HP/Compaq computer of any sort unless I had an enterprise support agreement. My experience with HP/Compaq hardware is that they use crappy components which break all the time, and then they try to get you to pay them for legitimate warranty repairs or to weasle out of the warranty. I have had problems with HP/Compaq trying to do this with me, even though we have a state-negotiated *contract* with them, and have purchased the equipment through this program. I'm talking stuff like trying to charge us to replace dead tape drives under warranty-- Oh, we have to take the drive and test it. If you want to be able to back up your servers, you'll have to give us $125 for a loaner drive. Nevermind that your contract stipulates the part will be replaced within 24 hours of the time the call being placed. Recently, I've also had a lot of problems with Dell laptops which seem to be related to inadequate cooling and/or use of crappy hard drives in assembly. Do yourself a favor-- get a Toshiba or IBM laptop. The one drawback is that if they break, you have to ship them back (at their expense) for repair, and it generally takes 3-4 days. Cheers, Dennis -- Dennis Soper[EMAIL PROTECTED] Network Supervisor Facilities Services-- The University of Oregon 1276 University of Oregon phone: 541-346-2286 Eugene, OR 97403 fax:541-346-2299 Please note that my email address has changed. Update your address book to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
You probably won't want to hear this, but I would *never* buy an HP/Compaq computer of any sort unless I had an enterprise support agreement. My experience with HP/Compaq hardware is that they use crappy components which break all the time, and then they try to get you to pay them for legitimate warranty repairs or to weasle out of the warranty. Right. I bought a brand new Compaq Presario 8 weeks ago, the harddrive was dead. It took 8 weeks to Compaq to replace it ! Fabien -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
Well, I have a pavillion ze4125 and gentoo works very nicely on it and I have had it for over a year now and haven't had a single problem with the thing so I can't complain. However, if I bought a new one today I would get a IBM Thinkpad. Those things are built like tanks and Linux usually works without a hitch on them. They are sometimes a bit more pricey but it is usually well worth it. Just my $0.02. On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 11:02, Fabien Fivaz wrote: You probably won't want to hear this, but I would *never* buy an HP/Compaq computer of any sort unless I had an enterprise support agreement. My experience with HP/Compaq hardware is that they use crappy components which break all the time, and then they try to get you to pay them for legitimate warranty repairs or to weasle out of the warranty. Right. I bought a brand new Compaq Presario 8 weeks ago, the harddrive was dead. It took 8 weeks to Compaq to replace it ! Fabien -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- Kurt Bechstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You probably won't want to hear this, but I would *never* buy an HP/Compaq computer of any sort unless I had an enterprise support agreement. My experience with HP/Compaq hardware is that they use crappy components which break all the time, and then they try to get you to pay them for legitimate warranty repairs or to weasle out of the warranty. Indeed, I have the same experience with HP. If something breaks during guarantee, they are looking to find some reason you shoud pay. If it breakes after, you can throw it to the garbage container, beacause repair cost is usually between 50-75% of new one ... My personal experience is, that self made PC is MUCH better than any brand mark ... because I put inside componets, which I like to, and 100% linux supported. For the same price I'll have more powerfull PC. I exerienced also, that new added HDD or RAM were not working if not buy from PC vendor , i.e. BIOS is recognizing it cames from compettition and reject it ! (It's quite common stratewgy in between big players ... M$ is doing the same with SW on X box, and planning to use it on usual PC as well.) noro -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Norbert Kamenicky wrote: My personal experience is, that self made PC is MUCH better than any brand mark ... because I put inside componets, which I like to, and 100% linux supported. For the same price I'll have more powerfull PC. I would love to build it myself, however we are talking about laptops here. - Elric Yes, I've heard of decaf. What's your point? -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/lqN4WOxHc22toikRAoZRAJwME685XOc+E6zKJYF7glH6MqaTmQCghbLZ XmwWxTuMflza467OUfQ64Cs= =ugAL -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You probably won't want to hear this, but I would *never* buy an HP/Compaq computer of any sort unless I had an enterprise support agreement. My experience with HP/Compaq hardware is that they use crappy components which break all the time, and then they try to get you to pay them for legitimate warranty repairs or to weasle out of the warranty. The last laptop I used was an HP OmniBook 6000. It ran gentoo beautifully, has HP's quality gone down since then? - Elric If your frightened of dying, and your holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you of the earth. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/lqklWOxHc22toikRAvvwAJ9rk59OIjpb6mL2MagL92aYiZ/NmwCeIO/r I7VOlIGJmz6dlaDiG3C53jY= =NPCN -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 07:47:08 -0700 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 03:34:48PM -0700, Elric Scott wrote: I am currently looking at the HP Pavilion zd7000 and the Compaq Evo N800W. Which laptop will have the least problems, and the most efficiancy? You probably won't want to hear this, but I would *never* buy an HP/Compaq computer of any sort unless I had an enterprise support agreement. My experience with HP/Compaq hardware is that they use crappy components which break all the time, and then they try to get you to pay them for legitimate warranty repairs or to weasle out of the warranty. I have had problems with HP/Compaq trying to do this with me, even though we have a state-negotiated *contract* with them, and have purchased the equipment through this program. I've had no contract problems, but HP (and I presume Compaq) hardware is a POS! I had a desktop machine that kept locking up; finally scrapped it and used the parts. Also, HP takes the cake for crappy case design! If you have never opened one up, do so, and you will never buy one again. -- Collins Richey - Denver Area if you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 15:34, Elric Scott wrote: I would love to build it myself, however we are talking about laptops here. You can come pretty close if you find a smaller company that custom manufactures the laptops. Like i said in another post, I bought a laptop by Systemax, which is somewhere in between custom built and mass manufactured. I think there are also smaller companies that will even ship linux-specialized laptops. A quick search for 'linux laptops' on google will return relevant results. eric heller. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
I agree most with the person that mentioned the IBM ThinkPad's (pricey as they are). I would choose a company that can ship a laptop with Linux installed (much like IBM, I know there are others). Also there are some small shops that will custom install Linux for you, last time I looked at one of these gentoo wasn't around yet though. That may have changed since. Then check out the links below, may be a little helpful. http://www.tuxmobil.org/Mobile-Guide.db/Mobile-Guide.html http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Laptop-HOWTO-3.html http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6684 -Original Message- From: Elric Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 6:35 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get? -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I am currently looking at the HP Pavilion zd7000 and the Compaq Evo N800W. Which laptop will have the least problems, and the most efficiancy? - Elric We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible, for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing. - Mother Theresa -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/lbSNWOxHc22toikRAplBAJ9PgxaB+4yM/d/CQQIKYNMb7g4S8QCfWInh ZifzK9iv0X3zIOLa1M84zLU= =Bqxc -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
On Wednesday 22 October 2003 09:55, eric heller wrote: On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 15:34, Elric Scott wrote: I would love to build it myself, however we are talking about laptops here. You can come pretty close if you find a smaller company that custom manufactures the laptops. Like i said in another post, I bought a laptop by Systemax, which is somewhere in between custom built and mass manufactured. I think there are also smaller companies that will even ship linux-specialized laptops. A quick search for 'linux laptops' on google will return relevant results. eric heller. Has anyone bought or used an ASUS laptop? I've been wondering how well built their laptops are. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
i run gentoo on dell x400 laptop, 933mhz, 630mb of memory, even tuxracer works fast, highly recommended, build-in wireless works, winmodem supported under linux,nice and small and portable 2-3 hours on battery, speed step done by bios, 5-6 hours on extended battery. On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 08:58, Elric Scott wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You probably won't want to hear this, but I would *never* buy an HP/Compaq computer of any sort unless I had an enterprise support agreement. My experience with HP/Compaq hardware is that they use crappy components which break all the time, and then they try to get you to pay them for legitimate warranty repairs or to weasle out of the warranty. The last laptop I used was an HP OmniBook 6000. It ran gentoo beautifully, has HP's quality gone down since then? - Elric If your frightened of dying, and your holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you of the earth. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/lqklWOxHc22toikRAvvwAJ9rk59OIjpb6mL2MagL92aYiZ/NmwCeIO/r I7VOlIGJmz6dlaDiG3C53jY= =NPCN -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Which laptop should I get?
I recently bought a Systemax laptop (www.globalcomputer.com) because I was dissatisfied with most of the major-brand laptops on the market. Nevertheless, even this computer isn't exactly a dream linux machine. A couple of things to consider: a. does the laptop feature intel centrino technology? mine does, but there's no support for the intel minipci wireless card in linux as of yet. also, speedstep for the pentium-m doesn't seem to be supported in the 2.4.2* kernels, although I hear that it is in the 2.6.* series. also, the 2.4.* kernels don't seem to recognize my cpu cache (/proc/cpuinfo reports cache size: 0 KB), although again I hear the 2.6.* kernels do. I haven't tried it yet; I don't know. b. other acpi support, which can be dependent on your bios. call technical support as ask them about this. will your laptop be able to sleep and wake up, suspend, hibernate? mine does, but I could never get this to work on my old Dell laptop. c. video card. i know lots of people report problems with ATI mobility cards, so you may have to resort to framebuffer if you can't get a driver to add hardware acceleration. perhaps i'm lucky, my ATI card seems to be working fine with X at the moment. I would look at the laptops made by some of the smaller brands, youu'll likely find a cheaper machine that works just about as well as any other laptop out there as far as linux support goes. It depends whats most important to you. I chose a cheap, light notebook that has slight linux compatibility problems, but I knew this going into it, and I don't regret anything. Whatever works for you. other laptop users, what did i leave out? eric heller On Tue, 2003-10-21 at 22:34, Elric Scott wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I am currently looking at the HP Pavilion zd7000 and the Compaq Evo N800W. Which laptop will have the least problems, and the most efficiancy? - Elric We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible, for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing. - Mother Theresa -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/lbSNWOxHc22toikRAplBAJ9PgxaB+4yM/d/CQQIKYNMb7g4S8QCfWInh ZifzK9iv0X3zIOLa1M84zLU= =Bqxc -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
