BSD laptop

[Greg Troxel]

  Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with Lenovo or ThinkPad
  laptops?

On most Thinkpads (Lenovo or IBM - I have seen no real changes), BSD
runs fine.  I or friends have had good experiences with

  760ED
  600
  600E
  T22
  T30
  T42
  T43(p)
  X31
  R51

I know have a T60, and it is basically ok under NetBSD current, with
minor annoyances

  no ACPI suspend (NetBSD)
     (T60 has no apm support)

  ATI graphics not supported by X, so using vesa driver, which works

  intel gige chipset PHY a bit odd, but I think that's being fixed.
  Works fine at gige, ok at 10 Mb/s after forcing, lame at 100.

  of course the winmodem doesn't work

  disk controller "AHCI" not supported, set in BIOS to 'legacy' and it
  looks like PIIX and works fine.

  after exiting X or switching back to text console, it's in some
  large font that lets me see only the upper left corner of the
  screen.

  switching to external display

  audio works, but is a bit funny - azalia(4) support is still
  improving.  Not sure if mic is ok, but someone just gave me hints.


So dual CPUs, disk, DVD drive, atheros wireless, USB, all work fine.
Order it with atheros ("IBM a/b/g") instead of Intel.   While the
above sounds negative, I'm glad I got it.

I expect the X60 is similar.  I have one at work and should try again
- NetBSD current is a lot better on X60/T60 now than it was last
spring when I last tried the X60.

I don't know anything about the low-end non-thinkpad lenovo line.  I
would not conclude that they are as nice as thinkpads compat-wise, but
I also don't have any particular reason to think they are trouble -
just never tried and appears to be different lineage.

Lenovo/Thinkpad service is still great.  I bought 9 T43p systems and
have had some fan failures (but these machines have a demanding work
environment).  The normal repair is still call, explain (day 1), have
mailer arrive, send back (day 2), fixed (day 3), fixed unit arrive
(day 4).