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Date:      Thu, 3 Aug 2000 09:41:37 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Dale Wharton <dwharton@alcor.concordia.ca>
Cc:        Jon Hamilton <hamilton@pobox.com>, FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: cheapest laptop for FreeBSD?  winmodems?
Message-ID:  <20000803094137.P36094@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.10.10008021934160.15401-100000@alcor.concordia.ca>; from dwharton@alcor.concordia.ca on Wed, Aug 02, 2000 at 07:57:20PM -0400
References:  <20000802041505.417C71D@woodstock.monkey.net> <Pine.OSF.4.10.10008021934160.15401-100000@alcor.concordia.ca>

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On Wednesday,  2 August 2000 at 19:57:20 -0400, Dale Wharton wrote:
> Dale Wharton  ve2ndw@rac.ca   M O N T R E A L   Te souviens-tu?
>
> On Tue, 1 Aug 2000, Jon Hamilton wrote:
>
>> Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 23:15:05 -0500
>> From: Jon Hamilton <hamilton@pobox.com>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> I have one of those (Compaq 1200-XL) and while I agree that their reputation
>> isn't the best as far as hardware compatibility goes, I will say that getting
>> FreeBSD running on it wasn't hard at all.  The built in modem is a winmodem,
>> so that's useless, but aside from that everything appears to work fine -- I
>> don't have any USB stuff, but the controller is detected at boot and I assume
>> that would work if the need arose.  The builtin sound did require a patch;
>> it doesn't work out of the box yet.  See www.inode.org/sw/auvia/ if you
>> buy one of these and want to use sound.
>>
>> Having said all of that, I use mine as a dual boot machine with W98, mainly
>> so my son can watch DVDs while traveling in the car :)  Getting a "regular"
>> W98 installed on it was a horse of a completely different color.  I don't
>> use Windows much, nor do I know much about it, so my progress was probably
>> slower than would have been the case for someone used to Windows, but even
>> so it took me 4 solid days to hunt down all the drivers and weirdo custom
>> pieces I needed to run a non-Compaq supplied copy of W98.  Also, beware that
>> they ship with a rescue disk which is a pathetic joke -- they partition
>> the disk into two volumes, and the rescue disk depends upon the stuff they
>> had on the D: drive being there in order to be of any use!
>>
>> The screen on the compaq is noticibly better (crisper, brighter, and in most
>> cases, larger) than the other laptops in the same price range at the time I
>> was shopping, which was really the main reason I opted to buy it.
>>
>> So in summary, it's pretty good as a FreeBSD-only machine, a bit of a pain
>> if you want to dual boot.  Take that for whatever it's worth :)
>
> Jon, many thanks for your very constructive remarks. Your aside
> about winmodems rang my bell (internet access is essential for
> my purpose).

You always have the option of a PCMCIA modem.  That's what just about
everybody does.

> Which raises another question: how does one learn in advance if a
> modem is a winmodem? The only literature that I saw, a brief spec
> sheet on the Compaq Presario 1200-XL115, says simply "Modem 56kbps
> with V.90 Support."

It's almost impossible to get that out of the vendors.  "You're not
supposed to know".  But I don't know of any laptop modems which are
not winmodems.

Greg
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