Re: Laptop 'short list'?

> From: Mike Harding <[email protected]>
> Date: Tue,  5 Nov 2002 06:47:19 -0800 (PST)
> Sender: [email protected]
> 
> 
> I don't currently have a laptop, but I need to get one soon.  I'll
> probably be running XP/FreeBSD dual boot.  I haven't found much into
> on the web, sorry about bothering the list.  Had a few questions:
> 
> - What are some good laptops for FreeBSD?  By this I mean
>   - installs
>   - suspend and resume work (or whatever power functions, I don't know
>     if suspend to disk is supported)
>   - 3d Video is supported (maybe) meaning non-nvidia, right?
>   - The ultra-lightweights have some appeal to me, I don't know that
>     I'm looking to replace my desktop, so the really small laptops
>     seem nice, unless they're not usable for extended periods because
>     of a small screen or keyboard.
> 
> Any stores that have good stock?  I haven't really been able to look
> at laptops.  Any good deals out there?
> 
> Also, how much memory should I get for XP?  I know that it's a pig - I
> will be using powerpoint, but mostly just Office.

My group just bought new laptops late last summer. We decided that we
wanted two spindle systems with hi-res displays and as light as
possible.

We selected IBM T30s with 14.1 inch 1400x1050 displays and built-in
wireless and 10/100 Ethernet. (They have BlueTooth, too, but I have no
use for it.) It's very fast.

I love the box, even if it's not very sexy looking. It is blazingly
fast with a 1.8 GHz CPU and good I/O so that I have done a 4.7
buildworld in under 25 minutes. (Very few tests of overall system
performance are really more diverse than a buildworld.) And, at 4.5
pounds, it's not too heavy.

APM support is good with V4. I'll have to try current on it some day
to see how well the ACPI stuff works. If you create a hibernate
partition it will hibernate, suspend and resume. Power management
stuff (like performance, screen brightness, and disk spin-down all
work.

The wireless card I have (Intel branded, but actually Intersil) works
with the wi driver with no tweaks. Likewise the Intel 10/100 card
(fxp).  You can also get the Cisco WI-Fi card, but I have no
experience with it.

Sound worked with minimal kernel set-up.

X setup was easy using the -config option to the X server to create an
initial configuration. There is a bug in the ATI/Radeon driver in
4.2.1 which causes come clipping problems that can be fixed by using
the CVS drivers. This applies to ANY laptop with a Radeon card.

CD/DVD seem to work fine. I have played movies and audio as well al
installing FreeBSD from CD and burning ISO 9660 disks. I am looking
forward to support for UDF in current so I can do packet operations,
but writing UDF is not even in current yet. (This is a universal
problem for FreeBSD.)

And it's FAST!

Problems:
1. The modem in the new Agre WinModem which still lacks a driver. I
understand that support is being worked on, but I have no idea when it
will arrive. It seems that almost all new laptops are coming with this
WinModem, so I expect that someone will get it working before long,
almost certainly by building shims to the Agre supplied Linux driver.

2. BIOS settings can be partly accomplished at boot-up time, but many
most options must be set up using the IBM PS2 utility which requires
Windows, DOS, or a bootable floppy. (And the T30 does not have a
floppy and requires a port replicator to plug one in.)

3. The display and BIOS are not a very happy match. The drivers in
Windows and APM seem to interact in some manner to make things work
cleanly and I am hoping for IBM to fix BIOS so the OS need not get
involved. If the display is turned off, it will not re-sync when
turned back on. IT can be synced by switching to a text screen
(CRTL-ALT-F2) before turning off. If it has turned off in graphics
mode, switch to text mode and use <ALT-F3> to turn the display
off. Press ,Shift> to turn the display on and go back to graphics mode
(<ALT-F9>.

The latter problem is the most annoying and the one I'd most like to
see fixed, but it may be a while as IBM has to do it. Linux has made
tweaks to the APM code to work around it and I am looking at ways to
do the same thing in FreeBSD, but the APM code is VERY different and
the Linux code is far more complex, so I may not succeed.

Still, I am very happy with the box. (Did I mention that it is FAST?)

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: [email protected]			Phone: +1 510 486-8634

To Unsubscribe: send mail to [email protected]
with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message