ideal laptop recommendations?

[Kevin Oberman]

> From: "Jesse D. Guardiani" <jesse at wingnet.net>
> Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 17:43:27 -0400
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> Howdy list,
> 
> I'm in the market for a new laptop to replace
> my developer workstation.
> 
> I've seen a ton of great looking laptops out
> there lately, but I know from experience that
> when running UNIX, you buy the hardware for
> the OS, not the other way around.
> 
> Price is not really that big of a factor for
> me as long as it's competative. I'm a
> developer. I spend more time on my computer
> than I do anywhere else, so I want something
> that I'll be happy with for a long time.
> However, my first choice, an Apple Powerbook
> G4 17" _is_ a bit too rich for my blood.
> 
> Here are the features I'd really like to
> have in a laptop, but not necessarilly in
> any particular order:
> 
>  1.) decently fast (2ghz) so I can compile
>      things quickly
>  2.) 512MB DDR RAM
>  3.) Geforce 4
>  4.) Compact Flash card reader (is FreeBSD
>      even capable of using these??)
>  5.) 10/100 Ethernet (duh)
>  6.) Great Power management support
>  7.) 15" or larger screen (don't care about res)
>  8.) CDRW/DVD
>  9.) Wireless support (don't really care how fast)
> 10.) I want all the keys on my keyboard to work. :)
> 
> OK ok, I know that is a lot of stuff and
> I'm picky! But does anyone know of a laptop
> that has all of this AND it all works under
> FreeBSD?

"Great looking" is at the bottom of my list. I prefer  that they
work. :-)

1. CPU speed is only of limited import. If the disks are slow or the
memory inadequate, a fast CPU is not significant for most things. My 1.8
GHz laptop can buildworld in under 30 minutes for STABLE and about 35
minutes for CURRENT.

2. I think any modern laptop can handle 512 MB. After market memory from
a good source (i.e. Crucial) can save $$$.

3. GeForce4?? Can't fathom this. ATI is the current darling of the gamer
crowd.

4. Pretty standard, but slight differences between devices can cause a
bit of pain. FreeBSD STABLE and CURRENT both can talk to my flash stick
as well as many others. Minor hacks can get ALMOST all to work fine.

5. Most are now going 10 GigE as standard.

6. Ain't no such thing today. APM is pretty limited, but I can live with
it. ACPI requires current and is still fairly buggy (as are many
BIOSes).

7. Ahh, a heavy-weight. Look at resolution. You can get 1600x1200 at 15
inches from a few vendors. These will always look better than
1400x1050. (Cost more, too!)

8. Duh!

9. See 8. Look for Prism 2.5 or Prism 3 or for Cisco cards. Built-in is
nice, but some systems using mini-PCI cards have really a bad
antenna. Some are excellent. See reviews. Dell and IBM tend to have
highly rated antennas.

Avoid Broadcom and TI based units. No FreeBSD support is near at this time.

10. Good luck! I think all of the keys on my ThinkPad T30 work, but I
have not mapped all of them to anything useful.

One possible is an IBM ThinkPad A31p. 2 GHz, 15", 1600x1200, does almost
everything you ask, but has broken ACPI and ATI Mobility FireGL
graphics. APM works VERY well, so ACPI is not too important. You do need
the DOS based ps2 utility to set it up, though. (Ugh.) IBM supplies the
floppy images for this. Not really pretty, but rugged and reliable.
Heavy. Over well 7 pounds or 3 kilos. Awesome display!

Good luck!

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634