From owner-freebsd-mobile Thu Aug 21 12:19:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA13520 for mobile-outgoing; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 12:19:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rocky.mt.sri.com (rocky.mt.sri.com [206.127.76.100]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA13494; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 12:19:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nate@localhost) by rocky.mt.sri.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA05734; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 13:19:26 -0600 (MDT) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 13:19:26 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199708211919.NAA05734@rocky.mt.sri.com> From: Nate Williams MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: grady@scam.xcf.berkeley.edu Cc: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org, freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: recommendation for FreeBSD laptop configuration for sound production? In-Reply-To: <199708211803.LAA08876@hub.freebsd.org> References: <199708211803.LAA08876@hub.freebsd.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.29 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > To summarize, I'm looking for recommendations for a laptop with: > > good sound card > >1G disk > SCSI > reasonable # of external ports I'm partial to these three manufacturers: 1) IBM - They are IMHO the best built laptops on the market. The 560E model would be my choice. Pros: * Well built * Good support * For the 560, it's light, and has the *best* keyboard I've seen on a laptop, and some FreeBSD hackers own them, so support exists. :) Cons: * Sometimes IBM tries to do things a bit different, but generally speaking they're pretty well supported in FreeBSD * Expensive 2) NEC - I have an older Versa that works great. Newer models are reported to also work great. Pros: * Use standard components. Nothing funky to cause you support grief. * Great performance. They almost always rate as one of the top 5 fastest notebooks in tests. Cons: * Expensive * Heavy 3) Digital (the HiNote Ultra II looks nice) Pros: * Use standard components. Nothing funky to cause you support grief. * People who own them love them. Cons: * I haven't heard from anyone lately who owns them, so I don't know well they work with newer FreeBSD kernels. (I don't suspect you'd have problems, but you never know...) * Digital isn't one of the 'big players', and haven't upgraded their laptop line in a while. Personally, if I had to buy a laptop *today*, I'd probably buy the IBM 560E ThinkPad. However, my second choice would be the DEC. I'm biased towards lighter boxes since I travel alot, and my box is a beast to lug around. (I had a Toshiba Libretto 50 for awhile, and although it is pretty light at 1.8lbs, the keyboard makes it useless for real work.) I'm in the market for a laptop now, but so far nothing has been *that* much better than my old P75 NEC that I want waste my laptop budget on a new one, so if anyone has any suggestions on a 'gotta have' laptop I'm all eyes/ears. As far as 'sound-cards' go, it appears that most of the newer laptops use sound-blaster clones, so I doubt you'd have any luck getting a laptop with a card that's any better/worse than it's competition. The biggest issues for laptops I see are: 1) Screen size 2) Disk size 3) Keyboard 4) Size 5) weight 6) Compatability/speed I'd stay away from the newer 'CardBus' machines, simply because I don't think there is any support in FreeBSD for them yet. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, since I haven't done any laptop hacking in months.) Nate