The Best Laptop

[David Gilbert]

>>>>> "Jamie" == Jamie Bowden <ragnar at sysabend.org> writes:

Jamie> 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.

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

I have used both the floppy and the cdrom over the USB.  They work
fine as long as you don't have 'ehci' in your kernel.

>> 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.

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

'Labtec' has an even better solution.  It's a wireless mouse with a
small dongle that plugs into the USB port.  When not in use, the
dongle tucks into the mouse for storage.

>> 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.

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

I have not found a USB2.0 device that works with my D800 yet.  EHCI
can be in the kernel ... and 1.1 devices will work ... but EHCI
devices (like a CD or floppy) halt the EHCI controller.  If you boot
with an EHCI device plugged in, you crash or hang (depends).  If you
plug in an EHCI device after boot, it simply halts the EHCI
controller.  There is a PR on this.

>> 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.

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

You have to do the opposite thing to make the nvidia driver work
... you need to map everything to libc_r.so rather than everything to
libpthread.

Dave.

-- 
============================================================================
|David Gilbert, Independent Contractor.       | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:       dave at daveg.ca                    |  equal if and only if they |
|http://daveg.ca                              |   are precisely opposite.  |
=========================================================GLO================