Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 10:17:31 -0500 From: fkittred@gwi.net To: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> Cc: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: using a laptop as a main machine Message-ID: <200211081517.gA8FHI418810@valen.gwi.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 07 Nov 2002 10:24:24 PST." <200211071824.NAA20180@dreadnought.cnchost.com>
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On Thu, 07 Nov 2002 10:24:24 -0800 Bakul Shah wrote: > I am getting very tired of enegry wasting hot desktops with > noisy, dusty unreliable fans, and the need for a separate UPS > and all that and think it is past time to switch to laptops > almost completely. I am sure a lot of you have gone through > the same transition! So some questions for people who mainly > use a laptop and lug it around everywhere: what features do > you find most useful? I am not looking for specific model > recommendations but it would be nice to know just how well > your current laptop meets your needs and what would you > change to make it better. Synopsis: By and large, I am very happy with a Thinkpad A20m... Most of the answers seem to be from people who use laptops while traveling. My sense from the way you ask the question is that you would mostly use your laptop as a replacement for a desktop. This is the way I use mine. I switched to a laptop a few years ago so that I could have the same environment at work and at home. In this scenerio, battery life is less important. At work and at home, as soon as I get in I plug my Thinkpad A20m into a port replicator. I do find it handy to have a laptop battery during those times when I am feeling like working at the kitchen table, reading in bed, lying on the couch. However, it is unusual that I will do so for more than an hour. In my case, what is most important is that the suspend/resume work well as I usually suspend/resume twice a day. With the Thinkpad A20m, I have really mixed feelings. However, I should point out that I only upgraded from Windows 2000 to FreeBSD 4.7 in early October. I probably don't have an optimal configuration yet. Over all, I find FreeBSD a much more productive environment than Windows 2000. FreeBSD suspend and resume, when it works for me, is *far* faster than Windows 2000. However, some times it seems to wedge. I also really like that I can close my laptop at work, go home and for a few hours, come in the next morning and my NFS mounts from work take up without a hitch. What drives me up the wall is that I use a Lucent 803.11b wireless card (wi) at home and the built-in 10/100 interface at work. With Windows 2000, DHCP would just handle the switch between environments. With FreeBSD, I have never successfully gotten DHCP to recognise the change in environment. Each time I try to use the network at home, it takes about 15 minutes of fiddling by hand to shut the 10/100 interface down, and get the wi0 interface up. I have been unable to locate canonical instructions on how to configure FreeBSD to do this automatically, so perhaps it is not possible. regards, fletcher To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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