Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 13:19:26 -0600 (MDT) From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> 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? Message-ID: <199708211919.NAA05734@rocky.mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <199708211803.LAA08876@hub.freebsd.org> References: <199708211803.LAA08876@hub.freebsd.org>
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> 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
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