Laptop suggestions?

[Jeremy Chadwick]

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.

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.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |