[PLUG] It was not my destiny to own a Compaq notebook with Linux

[Phillip Anderson]

if you need a notebook
www.pcacomputers.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Schlemmer" <aschlemm at comcast.net>
To: <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] It was not my destiny to own a Compaq notebook with
Linux


> On Thursday 26 May 2005 09:35, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > I returned the R4000 after giving up trying to get the video right. And
> > simultaneously ordered an R3470. That was Wednesday. Later that day I
> > got an e-mail from hpshopping.com that my order had been selected for
> > random anti-credit card fraud scrutiny. It seems they called me and I
> > wasn't home so I didn't answer the phone, which they thought was
> > suspicious. This morning I finally got it straightened out and they went
> > ahead to process the order. And then they told me they were out of stock
> > of the R3470 and would never have any more, as it is discontinued. And
> > they have no other R3000 series notebooks with 1 Gb RAM. The only way I
> > can get a full Gb of RAM with an Athlon-64 is to buy an R4000, which can
> > be customized.
> >
> > Considering what I went through with the R4000 and now this, I can only
> > conclude that I was not meant to own an Athlon-64 notebook with Linux.
> > <sigh>
> > _______________________________________________
> > PLUG mailing list
> > PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
> > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
> Laptops can have all sorts of specialized hardware and so the best thing
you
> can do is go throughly research your laptop and find out every chip it has
in
> so you can see if appropriate Linux drivers exist for the laptop. This is
> especially true for video and WIFI.
>
> Is there anything special about having an AMD-64 laptop instead of a
32-bit
> Pentium M-based laptop or something like that? I've found that I don't
really
> need a very high-end laptop for a laptop to be useful to me. I need email,
> web-browser, news reader, IM, word-processing/spreadsheet. For hardware
> support I need decent 2D video graphics, sound,  ethernet/WIFI support,
and a
> DVD R/RW drive and that's about it.
>
> By all means if an AMD-64 laptop suits your needs then by all means get
one
> but find out the model numbers of all of the devices so you can find out
if
> Linux has native driver support for everything.
>
> I have a company issued Dell Inspiron 5150 with a 3.06Ghz P4, 1GB RAM, and
> 60GB 7200 RPM hard drive. It has an nVIDIA FX5200 adapter and does pretty
> nice 3D graphics. The downside it that this laptop is very heavy, runs
hotter
> than hell and I have to carry around a brick-like 130W power supply for
the
> thing.
>
> Initially I thought it was great having such a powerful laptop but I got
my
> own,  personal Inspiron 6000 with a 1.6GhZ Pentium M that runs so much
cooler
> and is not a boat anchor. It has more than enough power for all of the
things
> I need  a laptop for and uses a small 65W power supply and the battery
life
> exceeds 4 hours. If I need more performance and better graphics I'll get a
> desktop system as it's much cheaper than a laptop.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tony
>
> -- 
> Anthony Schlemmer
> aschlemm at comcast.net
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
>