Laptop suggestions?

[Achim Patzner]

Am 31.07.2008 um 12:08 schrieb 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.

Wrong; I'm using them all the time. Initial kneading of serious
Cisco stuff still didn't get into the 21. century. My tool of
choice is an ExSys EX-1372 (ExpressCard, but that's just a fancy
packaging for USB) which is - using the Mac OS built-in driver
or Windows > 2000 - working out of the box and interrupt delivery
is good enough to run Auerswald's Java application for their
PABX systems (which is so timing-dependent that it is refusing
to work with quite a few "real" serial ports).

> 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.

I don't care. It just *works*, even with off-the-mill Prolific trash
(although those will not suffice for my telefone).

I won't even get into typical Mac-user's creature comforts like using
Bluetooth serial devices (just power it on and the Mac magically sprouts
a /dev/cu.Bluetooth-dongle-name.subdevice plus /dev/tty.<the same>
which will even do fancy stuff like automatic speed and parity settings.

> so there's no way to guarantee it'll work with FreeBSD.

Which is true for so many things. Which I can buy off-the-shelf for
Mac OS. No hassle, no hacking, no sweat. For me a desktop machine is
a tool; I won't give it more consideration than a screwdriver. It
has to do its job which (again: for me) is delivering a usable front-
end for servers and writing documentation (and bills!) plus doing
all the communication stuff I need to be able to work wherever I am.
It boils down to: Unix, no Linux, Word (They make me need it...),
VMware.


>> 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.

Wrong on both counts. I'm just using the appropriate tools for the jobs
that need to be done. And on the desktop FreeBSD just plain sucks in
comparison to Mac OS. And after all, Mac users need FreeBSD - who else
should provide them with all the nice things from ipfw to the user land?
Would you really expect Apple to do it all on its own?

Face it: The real difference between servers and desktops is the "who
has to bend over"-question. Servers are adapted to the software they
are going to run while on "personal computers" the software has to adapt
to the machine ("I want that shiny Sony. I don't care if the hardware
sucks, it's beautiful."). And Chuck is quite definitely lacking at  
bending
over...


Achim