Laptop recommendations?

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:31:35 +0200, Matthias Apitz wrote:
 > El día Sunday, June 26, 2011 a las 05:36:27PM +1000, Ian Smith escribió:
 > 
 > > On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 21:17:08 +0200, Matthias Apitz wrote:
 > >  > 
 > >  > I run a bunch of laptops/netbooks, all with some older 8-CURRENT or now
 > >  > 9-CURRENT (head):
 > >  > 
 > >  > Acer Aspire One D250
 > >  > Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M1437G
 > >  > Asus EeePC 900
 > >  > Dell M4400
 > > 
 > > How well does suspend/resume work on these?  An absolute must for me.
 > 
 > I don't use suspend/resume, can't say anything about;

Ok thanks.

 > >  > the best way, if youd dealer allows it, would be to boot the laptop in
 > >  > question with a recent Knoppix DVD to see in detail what is in the box
 > >  > and then check the FreeBSD man(4) pages if it is supported;
 > > 
 > > The PC-BSD 8.2 memstick might be a good option for that sort of testing.  
 > > Unlike the FreeBSD memsticks it's a full DVD-sized image on a proper MBR
 > > slice, so you can write eg a verbose dmesg.boot and sysctl -a to another 
 > > slice for later evaluation on an 8GB+ stick, from the fixit boot.
 > 
 > Knoppix (a Linux derivate) works better to detect hardware; ofc you can
 > put it as well on an USB key;

Indeed.  An advantage of (also) booting FreeBSD is seeing how it does, 
though most laptops are probably going to need some tweaking or other.

 > > I suppose that's not a problem as long as it then behaves ok on battery. 
 > > I've never much fancied Dells but with the demise of 'proper' IBM/Lenovo 
 > > laptops, I'm trying to keep an open mind to others.  How's that Fujitsu?
 > 
 > It's outdated (from 2006) but works very well;

Ta.  The T23s are 2002 vintage and work very well, but sadly no longer 
so well on 8.x .. maybe I'll try a 9 snapshot before giving up on them.

cheers, Ian