ideal laptop recommendations?

[Peter Radcliffe]

Darryl Okahata <darrylo at soco.agilent.com> probably said:
>      I've had it since mid-January or so.  Sorry, I don't know of any
> brick-and-mortar stores that carry them.

I got my X30 in early January and don't know of any physical stores
that carry them either.

> * 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.

I believe you can use the Ultrabay 2000 floppy with the T20 cable on
an A31, just as you can on the X30, to get a real external floppy
drive rather than the USB one plugged into the parallel port.

> * 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).

Huh. I didn't work out how to keep the IBM recovery software and
didn't care too much about it since I got recovery CDs for it.

>   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

The day my X30 arrived I called IBM, told them it didn't come with
recovery CDs and I wanted a set. They arrived at my door two days
later completely free of charge.

> * APM seems to work, but there are issues: I can't get the laptop to
>   hibernate (suspend-to-disk),

I can, at least with the X30 and several others. You have to create a
suspend to disk partition with the IBM version of phdisk in the right
place (below 8Gb on disk).

You can use the standalone floppy to do it;
  http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-4PESMK.html
or the program itself;
  http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4HT3R8

from 'Message-ID: <20030105090529.GJ17859 at pir.net>' I sent to -mobile;

] I used the seperate floppy version of this (which is just their
] version of phdisk) to create a suspend to disk partition on my X30.
] 
] I resized the XP NTFS partition down (with partition magic 8), created
] the suspend partition with the floppy from IBM (the utility put it
] right after the NTFS partition and I made it big enough for the full
] 1gb of memory the machine can take) and then installed FreeBSD from
] CD.
] 
] It now dual boots XP in NTFS on the first partition), 2nd partition is
] suspend to disk, 3rd partition is FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE. I'm even using
] the XP bootloader to boot FreeBSD ;)
] 
] FreeBSD suspends to memory and disk fine, as long as there isn't a
] compact flash card in the CF slot (if there is it makes a be-boop
] noise and just turns the screen off). It doesn't use the default BIOS
] save to disk screen, it has a snazzy thinkpad screen ... and writes
] out to disk a lot faster than my Z505 ever did.
] XP suspends to memory and disk fine, although it still uses it's own   
] hibernation file in the NTFS partition so I've wasted a bit of disk.   
] Eh.


>   Andx 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.

Hmm, what graphics chipset is that machine ?  The Intel I830MG in mine
goes through suspend/resume fine with XF86 4.3.0 (latest version of
fixes from ports).

> * Under WinXP pro (ick), there is a feature where the laptop will go
>   into hibernation (suspend-to-disk) if it's been in suspend mode
>   (suspend-to-RAM) for a specified period of time.  This seems to work
>   only if the suspend mode was entered while the battery was being used;
>   if the suspend is entered while on AC, the hibernation does not occur
>   (but, it does seem that a forced hibernation does occur when the
>   batteries are just about drained).

That may be changable in the BIOS (there is a BIOS setting for if it
should go to hibernation while suspended and when) or with the ps2.exe
utility.

P.

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