From owner-freebsd-mobile Mon Dec 6 16:15:10 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Received: from lariat.lariat.org (lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F312B15057 for ; Mon, 6 Dec 1999 16:15:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: from mustang (IDENT:ppp0.lariat.org@lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by lariat.lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA26269 for ; Mon, 6 Dec 1999 17:15:02 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.19991206161653.03e8cdf0@localhost> X-Sender: brett@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 16:34:11 -0700 To: mobile@freebsd.org From: Brett Glass Subject: Latest laptop recommendations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org My old ThinkPad 760E is just about to go out of warranty, and given the number of times it has been to the shop it will not pay to maintain it the next time it malfunctions. It also has a number of serious design flaws. It's cursed with a power management system that doesn't work very well; even Windows won't survive a suspend/resume, though it's supposed to. The docking station ("Ultradock II") must have been designed by a hand surgeon who wanted more carpal tunnel work; it lifts the keyboard nearly 4 inches off the desktop. The thermal design is ludicrous; in the dock, the heat pipe which is supposed to cool the machine rests against the dock and gets no air circulation. The hard disk rests against the back of the RAM module and can overheat it. The machine contains an MWave DSP that serves as both sound chip and modem and does neither well (it doesnt function at all under FreeBSD). The Trident Cyber display adapter provides virtually no acceleration under X Windows. Finally, it can't hold both a floppy drive and a CD-ROM drive at once, and swapping is awkward. I'm therefore looking for recommendations for a replacement. The new unit should have a 15" LCD, and should have hardware that's compatible with FreeBSD, XFree86, and OSS. Many new systems have Rockwell or Lucent "lobotomodems" that only run under Windows, or sound chips like the ESS Maestro which don't do SoundBlaster emulation without a special companion chip that's being left out of many machines now. (I hear that the commercial version of OSS supports the Maestro only partially. It doesn't provide wavetable MIDI, making it much less useful for music.) Some display chips, such as NeoMagic's, don't seem to have good X support, and I want to avoid these. I'd also like to find a system with a dock or port extender that really works, as well as suspend/resume that is compatible with FreeBSD. So far, the best candidate I've found is the Gateway Solo 9150 -- not their latest model, nor their fastest (the 9150 has a 333 MHz Celeron). But it seems to use supported chipsets. Does anyone have experience with this model? With others that are worth considering? --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message