Laptop suggestions?

[Danny Braniss]

> On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:17:54AM +0200, Achim Patzner wrote:
> > Drivers? Who cares. Serial port? Just plug in an USB-to-serial.
> 
> You've obviously never used a USB-to-serial adapter.  Are you aware of
> the fact that there is no serial device class as part of the USB
> specification?  (Quite a great irony, if you ask me.  Universal SERIAL
> Bus, yet no serial device class...)  AFAIK, there isn't even a draft
> proposal for such.
> 
and even more amazing, that we still have to configure the baudrate!

> You *must* have drivers for a USB-to-serial adapter.  And every adapter
> is different, depending upon the adapter chipset used, many of which are
> not disclosed in product specifications, so there's no way to guarantee
> it'll work with FreeBSD.  On -stable (I believe) some people have
> mentioned which USB-to-serial adapters work great under FreeBSD and
> Windows, while others are horrible (dropping characters, broken flow
> control, interrupt issues, and many other problems).
> 
> > It's a perfect machine for the desktop; I've forbidden FreeBSD to come
> > creeping out the server room some years ago. I need it for keeping the
> > penguins away, it's really good at that (no wonder - pitchforks do  
> > hurt).
> > But it's a pain for desktoppy things - so why shouldn't I use something
> > less useful? And the other way round: Running Mac OS X Server is the
> > most painful thing I've ever been paid for; I've been replacing a lot of
> > them with FreeBSD-based servers.
> 
> The amount of rhetoric in these two paragraphs is amazing; I literally
> cannot tell if you're trolling with anti-FreeBSD propaganda, or if
> you're trolling with pro-FreeBSD propaganda.  Congratulations, you've
> confused at least one reader.

there is an old saying,
	If Moses can't get to the hill, the hill will come to Moses
or is it the other way round?
get a serial to ethernet gadgets, or use IPMI/ILO/or-whatever-will-be-next.
I agree with Achim, I also tried to run FreeBSD on some laptops, and I lost.
The Mac has some drawbacks, sure, but it has - still - a Unix flavour, and FreeBSD
still rocks on the servers, slightly less on the descktop - nvidia ...

danny