Re: suggestions wanted

On 2004-12-11T11:12:44-0500, Jules Gilbert wrote:
> I am in the market for a new laptop.  I am particularly interested in a 
> 64-bit AMD based product, which a friend of mine now has on trial. 
> 
> I want 1920 pixels (wow!, it is truely movie quality, too.)  Too bad I 
> am too busy to watch 'em...  Still, who wants not to have a DVD.  Not me...
> 
> I want something I can run FreeBSD on, WITH good support for both 
> "hotspot" type cards and also I expect to purchase a deal from either 
> Sprint or Cingular for use with one of the service deals they offer.
> 
> So I want a 64-bit (fast!) laptop with hi-res graphics, and support for 
> 802.11x hot-spot style cards, (builtin being better than PCMCIA cards,) 
> and also a PCMCIA adaptor to accept an as-yet undetermined long-distance 
> cell-tower connection. 
> 
> The rest is pretty usual, sound card, no floppies, etc... 
> 
> Laptops seem to be moving to power supply arrangements which make it 
> impossible to run a laptop off of a car battery.  (Now one needs a power 
> inverter.)  I guess I am old-fashioned, I like the cigarette lighter as 
> a source of power.  If I have to drop something, I'll take a 32-bit 
> system.  But computing power is pretty important to me.
> 
> I have a preferrence of dealing with vendors that can deliver machines 
> WITHOUT windoz.  And will pay someone a little more for such equipment 
> if necessary.

I had just been running a similar thread on the amd64@ list and had a
couple of replies.  My first inclination was towards the Acer Ferrari
3400, which received a favorable response.  However, after spending many
hours researching, I decided to go with the Sager 4750-V, which I
ordered yesterday.  For the money, you can't beat the features.  I
bought it from discountlaptops.com.  I would have bought it from
pctorque.com if they were outside Florida, but since they are here in
Florida with me, I would have been nailed with sales tax.

AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.2GHz with 1MB L2 cache)
1GB DDR SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9700 (M11) with 128MB
17" WSXGA LCD
8x DVD+-RW (dual layer even!)
Realtek gigabit LAN
Gigabyte (Atheros Super-G) WLAN
Bluetooth
4-in-1 media card reader
TV tuner (overkill, but what the hell...)
1 Serial port, which is becoming rare in laptops (needed by me big time)
..misc other stuff you can find online

-- 
Michael W. Oliver
[see complete headers for contact information]

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