What laptop do you recommend?

[Norberto Meijome]

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 08:56:22 -0800
Jim Pazarena <paz at qcislands.net> wrote:

> freebsd at meijome.net wrote:
> > hi everyone,
> > I'm looking for a new, gruntier laptop. What laptop is known to work
> > WELL with freeBSD? e.g.:
> > 
> > ACPI with no problems (and as many features as possible)
> > PATA / SATA with no problems
> > all other basic stuff (graphics, NIC, Wireless g, sound,
> > touchpad ,etc ) should work too, of course
> > 
> > Looking into either Intel duo Core or AMD64 chips.
> > 
> >>From what I've read, IBMs seem to have quite good support, so do
> >>DELLs
> > (though they seem chunkier than other laptops). I usually get
> > Toshiba, but I don't think they are so well supported.
> > 
> > Thanks in advance for any advice you can share :)
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Beto
> 
> can you recap what you have learned from this thread?
> I am also in the market for a "good" laptop.
> 

Hey Jim et al,
I ended up getting the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad Z60m , model 253044M, (with
the titanium cover). It's chunkier than toshibas i've been using
(tecra A2, Satellite 2300), specially due to the larger battery pack,
which protrudes a couple of cm. at the back, but affords over 4 1/2
hours of (normal) work (reported 2 1/2 when building kernel). The specs
read 6 1/2 hours (though the highest I've seen it when completely idle
after just unplugging it was about 5 hours and something).

Specs :
http://www-604.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=4611686018425060077&storeId=10000036&langId=036&categoryId=4611686018425008262&dualCurrId=1000089&catalogId=-36

(prices may appear in AUD)

Anyway. It's about 3 kg, but that's OK w/me. it's got quite enough
grunt for what I need.

ACPI works great thus far. 
Had to disable DRI to be able to suspend from X - will have to test
passing the events to devd and making it switch to ttvy0 before suspend
with DRI enabled.

wireles, NIC, DVD burner, all good (I absolutely hammered the DVD
burner, no problems at all).

Sound card (Intel high def audio) - tried OSS drivers, but it makes the
kernel panic due to irq conflict (I believe that's the reason).

I had a problem with the HD
( http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2006-April/118040.html )
but getting a DOA from IBM was a very reasonable thing, support was
very good.

I also got an IBM docking station, but I have stopped using it due to
certain issues:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-mobile/2006-March/008125.html

Haven't tried yet:
 - IRDA : gets detected ok.
 - fingerprint scanner - gets detected as ugen0 (i doubt it'll work,
but it would be fun :-) )
 - pccard (gets detected ok)
 - SDcard reader - gets detected too (Ricoh something or other -
writing this on my fallback laptop).

Why not other brands?
 - Toshibas seemed to pack more value per $, but I haven't seen any
reports of ACPI working ok in them.
 - DELL - haven't heard anything horrific about them...but nothing
extremely encouring either.
 - HP - i stay away from them.
 - others : considered going ASUS , sony, fujitsu ,
pioneercomputers.com.au / others... but i just haven't got the time /
will to research each component in advance to find out whether it'd
work,etc.

And pretty much everyone with a thinkpad in the lists said they were
v.happy with them... :)

HIH,
Beto