The Best Laptop

[Jamie Bowden]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, David Gilbert wrote:

> I've been using a Dell Latitude D800 for some time now.  As laptops
> go, it's on the fairly high end.  It's a Centrino 1.7Ghz with a 60G
> drive and 1G of memory.  Most spectacularly, it has a nvidia chipset
> supporting a 1920x1200 screen.... which makes for excellent movie
> watching.  I also got the DVD+RW drive.

Have you tried using it via the USB cable?  The floppy drive causes a
panic; haven't tried the DVD/CDRW via USB.  I do know the machine won't
boot off the floppy drive, even with the BIOS set to allow for it, but
that's an issue me and my Dell rep. are going to discuss.

> One interesting point for the Dell is that it includes both a touchpad
> and the little joystick... so you can have your cake and eat it too.

I don't like either personally, and just keep a USB MS Notebook Optical
Mouse in my bag.  Logitech makes a nice small optical USB mouse with a
short cord as well, but Best Buy didn't have them in stock when I picked
this one up.

> The ACPI isn't stellar.  Suspend isn't working yet (although it's been
> awhile since I worked on it).  I have some patches for the DSDT that
> make it work better.  The USB also only works in 1.1 mode, not 2.0.

EHCI works fine for me on my D800.  I had to strip it out of the kernel in
order to boot in the D/Port, as ehci would panic when probing the hub
built into the dock (but last I heard, this was expected, as ehci didn't
support hubs yet, has that changed?).

> But the nvidia hardware drivers run well and 3D performance is pretty
> slick.  I currently use it as both a desktop replacement and a
> portable unit to use on the train.  It's a little heavy, but I don't
> think that can be avoided with all the features I have.

The nvidia driver doesn't work in OGL for me with recent -C (my last CVSup
was Monday, but it hasn't worked since libmap.conf became necessary for
it to even load).

Jamie Bowden

-- 
"It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold"
Hunter S Tolkien "Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur"
Iain Bowen <alaric at alaric.org.uk>