ideal laptop recommendations?

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 09:43:20 -0700
> From: Darryl Okahata <darrylo at soco.agilent.com>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> "Jesse D. Guardiani" <jesse at wingnet.net> wrote:
> 
> > How long have you had the Thinkpad? And do you know where I might purchase
> > one besides On-line? (Bestbuy and Circuit City don't carry them)
> 
>      I've had it since mid-January or so.  Sorry, I don't know of any
> brick-and-mortar stores that carry them.
> 
>      Just to give a more balanced view (lest others think that we're all
> IBM zealots), my Thinkpad A31 is a nice, solid notebook, but it's not
> completely without issues/problems:
> 
> * The A31 does not come with a floppy.  You can get an external floppy,
>   but it's an USB floppy.  This is not an issue for me (I can still boot
>   from CDROM), but it's an issue for some.

If you buy the port replicator, you can plug a standard floppy drive into
it. (That's how I connect my floppy to my T30.)

> * If you want to dual-boot Windows and FreeBSD, and still keep the
>   special IBM software that allows you to quickly reinstall Windows from
>   an hidden partition (it's very nice), you'll have to specially-install
>   FreeBSD, as the IBM software appears to use a "boot track" instead of
>   a "boot sector".  The normal FreeBSD approach of installing a new boot
>   sector *will* screw things up (for the IBM software, not FreeBSD).
> 
>   Note that you don't have to preserve the IBM software.  You can always
>   wipe the disk clean and install FreeBSD onto the entire disk.  It's
>   only if you want to dual-boot where this becomes a problem.  And,
>   it's definitely an issue, as some (many? most? all?) Thinkpads DO NOT
>   COME WITH WINDOWS RECOVERY CDROMS.  Unless you pay extra ($20-$30???)
>   and order the recovery CDROMs from IBM (I think they're "free" if you
>   get them within the first 30 days after getting a Thinkpad), the only
>   way to "reinstall" windows is via the special recovery partition (and
>   using it REQUIRES an intact/unchanged boot sector).

For some period after you buy a ThinkPad (1 year?) IBM has shipped the
CD free on request. IF YOU GET A THINKPAD, ALWAYS REQUEST THIS!

> * With 5.0-RELEASE, ACPI is broken.  I haven't tried the latest -current
>   with the recent ACPI updates, however, although I am using the latest
>   IBM A31 BIOS.
> 
Still broken, as far as I can tell, but getting closer.

> * APM seems to work, but there are issues: I can't get the laptop to
>   hibernate (suspend-to-disk), and suspending from X11 causes the resume
>   to "hang" (LCD display becomes "blotchy" without displaying any text
>   or graphics).  The latter is possibly fixed with newer versions of
>   XFree86 (I'm using 4.2.1, and need to upgrade), and the workaround is
>   to switch to a vty before suspending.

Nope. Still broken. This is common to all ATI Radeon Mobility M7 systems
from any vendor. You can recover the display by switching to a vty,
turning the display off and turning it back on and switching back to X.

I would strongly recommend going to XFree86 4.3. The new Radeon driver
is much improved.

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