Notebook recommendations

[Christopher Hilton]

Thanks for the advice. In this case I'm trying to replace my Gateway  
450ROG. That had a 1.4 GHz Pentium M and (a 4.5 hour battery life) as  
well as an ipw driven 802.11b card. Everything worked pretty well   
but I hated the build quality of the machine.

If the new intel wifi chip isn't supported that's not too bad. I  
would have bought an atheros based card anyhow because that's the  
only thing I can get to work reliably with kismet. I really should  
have said that a real serial port is a requirement. I forgot that I  
don't want to buy a usb GPS when my Garmin 12XL works just fine.

Thanks again
  -- Chris


On Jul 27, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Kevin Oberman wrote:

>> From: Christopher Hilton <chris at vindaloo.com>
>> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 10:50:46 -0400
>> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
>>
>> Well, my notebook was stolen last night so after 3 years with my
>> Gateway it's time get something new. I'm looking for recommendations.
>> The features I'm looking for are:
>>
>>
>>       XGA graphics at a minimum of 1280 pixels horizontal and 960
>> pixels vertical. 1400x1050 is perfect
>>
>>       Pentium M processor for battery life 1.6 GHz ~ 2.0 GHz
>>
>>      Ability to do 3D Video acceleration would be a plus but isn't
>> strictly necessary. XDAMAGE would be a double      plus.
>>
>>       A real serial port is a plus as I occasionally have to boot the
>> odd sun workstation.
>>
>> Any suggestions are welcome.
>
> I have not specific recommendations, just some things to be aware of.
>
> Many new laptops have High Definition Audio (HDA) which is not yet
> supported by FreeBSD (although several driver patches have been  
> floated
> that work on some systems and not others).
>
> Get at least a Pentium-M or, better still, a Core-Duo. Much better
> performance and battery life than older Intel chips. I have no
> experience with AMDs in laptops, but I believe the newer Turions might
> be pretty reasonable, too.
>
> The odds of a working modem are pretty slim. Wireless is also a  
> problem
> as many systems including any with "Centrino" A/B/G support are
> probably Intel 3945ABGs which are currently unsupported. Most  
> laptops that
> are ordered (as opposed to bought at a store) are available with
> Atheros wireless which works very well. b/g cards are often  
> supported by
> iwi which requires at least -stable to have a good chance of working
> properly.
>
> Other common wireless cards are Broadcom which can usually be cajoled
> into working with ndis.
>
> Serial is often available on "port replicators" or mini-docks, but is
> very rare on the base unit. USB-Serial devices work well and are  
> fairly
> cheap (about $25US.)
>
> Graphics can be a problem. DRI can be especially difficult on newer
> systems. Radeon is pretty well supported, but you need to install
> radeontool from ports to deal with turning the display on and off.
> nVidia support is a bit less stable and often VESA mode seems to be  
> the
> only good way to use them.
>
> In general newer laptops are likely to work best with -stable or
> -current, but current is NOT for the faint of heart. It just gets new
> device support sooner than -stable.
> -- 
> R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
> Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
> Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
> E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
> Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
>