The Best Laptop

[Jesse Guardiani]

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:

> Bruce M Simpson <bms at spc.org> writes:
>> On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 12:48:07PM -0500, Jason Dusek wrote:
>> > I am in the market for a new laptop and I would like to know which
>> > laptop is the best for running FreeBSD and which one has the easiest
>> > setup.  Any suggestions?
>> The IBM ThinkPad T40 is currently rocking my world.
> 
> The ThinkPad series has a long history of bad batteries, buggy BIOSes
> and AMLs, and idiosyncratic hardware which often requires a DOS or
> Windows utility to enable / disable / configure.  I'd recommend a Dell
> Latitude (not Inspiron!) instead.

:) My co-worker just bought an Inspiron against my advice. The keyboard
was replaced under warranty a week after it arrived. You'll get no respect
for Dells from me.

My IBM A30p is alright if you're looking for a mostly-desktop-that-you-
can-take-with-you kind of laptop. It's relatively large and heavy though,
and the battery life stinks (1.5hrs on my oldish battery).

Mostly everything works on it though. Sound (including on-keyboard volume
buttons and mute), 3d GFX (not that there's really any use for that on
FreeBSD), USB, Wireless (.11b), CD-ROM/DVD-ROM, Floppy, Suspend/Resume, etc...

Things that don't work are: Modem, ACPI (but ACPI sorta worked back in 5.1-RELEASE)

Things that I can't get working, but that I *think* do work: 4 pin firewire, IrDA

My trackpoint drifts, but it's not unusable. Just tap the front of the
machine lightly with one finger and it stops, then keep doing what you
were doing. I'm personally of the mind that touch pads are for people
who lack the coordination to use a trackpoint.

Also, don't expect things to go smoothly if you're running  5.2.1 or -CURRENT.
Too many things have changed since 4.x. It'll be awhile before it's as polished,
IMO. I personally run 5.2.1-RELEASE on my A30p, but I've got a long list of
gripes that I'm not able to fix. I don't think I'll go back to 4.x though.
Lotsa great new features in 5.x to lessen the sting.

If money is no object and you don't strictly need FreeBSD then I recommend
Powerbooks. Pretty GUI with a true UNIX core (Darwin). My boss has one of
the big 17" models. They're awsome.

-- 
Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator
WingNET Internet Services,
P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605
423-559-LINK (v)  423-559-5145 (f)
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