New notebook / laptop recommendation?

[Oliver Fromme]

Hi,

Since my good old P-3-850 notebook (ASUS brand) seems to
die soon, I'm currently looking for a new one.  Have any
of you guys here bought a notebook recently which works
well with FreeBSD?  (DragonFly would be a plus, because
I would like to install it beside FreeBSD.)  I don't care
about fast CPU, 3D gfx and things like that.  My typical
applications are xterm, web browser (Opera), and some
image editing (xv, gimp).  Specifically:

 - It should be a Centrino with Pentium-M processor.
   I don't care about battery run time, because it will
   be a desktop replacement.  I'll mainly use it on my
   desk at home.  But I do care about power consumption,
   heat, and fan noise -- therefore I want something that
   is as energy efficient as possible.  Oh by the way,
   does FreeBSD support all those energy saving modes of
   a Centrino machine at all?  (I very much hope so.)

 - The screen should be at least 1280 pixels wide.
   Those "WXGA" displays (1280 x 800 or whatever) are
   fine (but of course: the more, the better).  However,
   1024 x 768 is _not_ enough for me.

 - The graphics adapter should work well with XFree86 or
   Xorg, including 2D acceleration (so moving a window
   with contents doesn't draw 100% CPU).  I do not need
   3D acceleration, DRI, OpenGL or any other fancy stuff.
   Shared video memory is fine.  Power consumption of the
   gfx adapter should be low.  I guess the built-in gfx
   of the intel chipset would be sufficient (_if_ it is
   supported by XFree86 / Xorg).

 - Audio output should work (at least) well enough to play
   stereo PCM at 44.1 kHz, or equivalent mp3 files.  The
   built-in speakers need not be high quality (I'll hook
   up a pair of external speakers to the line-out anyway).
   I don't need surround, 5.1 AC3, MIDI, what-have-you.

 - I need a fast ethernet port (100baseTX), two PCMCIA /
   PCCARD slots, and two USB ports.  Parallel + serial
   ports would be nice to have, but aren't mandatory (I
   can use USB adapters for those if necessary).

 - I don't care about pretty much anything else.  I don't
   need built-in WLAN (I have a perfectly fine PCMCIA card
   for that), modem (I have an external modem, which I
   rarely need anyway), SD card slots (I prefer CF, for
   which I do have a PCMCIA adapter), firewire (don't have
   any such devices, and don't plan to buy any), IrDa,
   Bluetooth, whatever.  I don't care about the touchpad,
   as I will be connecting my trackball anyway.  I don't
   need a DVD/CD writer (an ordinary DVD-ROM drive will
   do fine).  I don't need TV-Out or VGA/DVI output.
   Well, I guess most of today's notebooks do have all of
   that, be it supported by FreeBSD or not.  :-)

 - I don't care if it comes with Windows XP.  I won't use
   it, so I prefer that I wouldn't have to pay for it.
   But most machines seem to come with it, so there isn't
   much I can do.  I do not want to limit my hardware
   choices by excluding all Windows notebooks.

 - The price should be in the range 1000 - 1400 Euro.  The
   notebook should be available in stores/shops right now,
   preferably in Germany.

 - It would be a nice plus if it's possible to get a US-
   keyboard for the notebook without too much additional
   cost and effort.  (I'm extremely pleased with ASUS for
   exactly that reason -- I got a US keyboard for my old
   ASUS notebook at one of their service partners in
   Germany for a very reasonable price.)  That's not
   mandatory, though.

Thanks in advance for any advice or recommendation!

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

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