Choosing a new laptop

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <200307082215.h68MFtmT016507 at koa.aloha.com>
            knowtree at aloha.com writes:
: FreeBSD on it. How does the MPC-205 compare?
:   o Battery life, Gnome 1.4, < 2 hrs, noticably less when using XEmacs.

I'm getting about 2.5-3 hours from my X environment.  I have the speed
set to '4' (of 8) in ecconomy mode, which helps a lot.  I found an
extended life battery in akihabara this past week and have been
getting more like 7-9 hours of life out of it, depending on what I'm
doing.  i'm working on some code here to make freebsd sip power
better, but haven't committed them yet due to some undesirable side
effects.

:   o Cannot adjust LCD brightness without Windows, so Win2K is still
:     clogging up the HD.

Can do that at any time, and the bios remembers the setting for the
power mode.  I have no windows on this machine, but it came to me that
way.  I think this is a function of the bios or something, but don't
know the mechanism well enough to comment further.  i know there's no
program in freebsd that i've found to do lcd level manipulations.
still, being able to set it using the keyboard is very nice.

:   o Hardware initiated suspend works, but pressing any key awakens. I have tried
: to conserve battery by booting and going into suspend on A/C power, but while
: riding bike, pressue on unit has caused it to wake up, so it arrives very hot
: and tired.

I've not tried to get suspend/resume working.  there are some issues
with doing this that are generic to freebsd that i have only partial
patches for.  however, when i have tested it in the past, i have to
try pretty hard to resume.  i do set it to S4 because S4 bios is
true.  I've not done much (any?) testing of S3 mode.  i had to hack
things a little to have the right S modes work.  but the fiva only
supports s3 s4 and s5.

:   o No timeout initiated suspend, only HD and LCD power down.

I haven't tried to set this up.  so i don't know how easy/hard this
would be.

:   o WEP encryption does not work, a driver issue.

I don't use wep much.

:   o Hibernation does not work. 

if by this you mean S3, then when i've tested itin the past it works
to a point, but there are some issues with it.

: Is it possible to watch DVDs in FreeBSD, or is that another reason to keep the
: Windows partition?

I do this all the time with my Dell I8000, but it has the dvd drive
built in.  i have no experience with dvd via cardbus/pccard to speak
of.

: Can you recommend a supplier?

no.  i got mine as a gift from Casio so that i could improve freebsd
support on the platform.

Warner