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Date:      Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:44:04 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Andrew Johns <ajohns@TurnAround.com.au>
Cc:        mestery@visi.com, Dann Lunsford <dann@greycat.com>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG, hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Recommended laptops for FreeBSD?
Message-ID:  <19990628104403.G15144@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <000701bec0fe$2b953ee0$4001a8c0@tasajohns.turnaround.com.au>; from Andrew Johns on Mon, Jun 28, 1999 at 10:35:49AM %2B1000
References:  <Pine.GSO.4.10.9906271927040.14384-100000@isis.visi.com> <000701bec0fe$2b953ee0$4001a8c0@tasajohns.turnaround.com.au>

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On Monday, 28 June 1999 at 10:35:49 +1000, Andrew Johns wrote:
> [snip]
>> On Sun, 27 Jun 1999, Dann Lunsford wrote:
>>
>>> Hi!  I need some advice (or at least some information :-)) about
>>> buying a laptop.  What brands/models support FreeBSD best, etc.?
>>> For instance, today I saw a ThinkPad 1472 (pretty sure that was
>>> the model) with 14" screen, 6.4G drive, DVD/CD, 64Meg, etc; looked
>>> real nice, just what I need for the trips I'll be making, if it
>>> only runs FreeBSD.  Will it?  I have an old ThinkPad 750C running
>>> FreeBSD now, which is why I'm looking at the 1472, but I'd really
>>> like to have peoples' opinions.
>>
>> Along these lines, does anyone have any experience with the Dell
>> Inspiron 3500?  Dell has a real nice deal now (14.1 inch display,
>> 64MB RAM, 4.2GB drive, CD-ROM) for ~$2,000.  Has anyone used one of
>> these with FreeBSD before?  I know firsthand the Dell's are nice
>> machines, as my father has one.  But I don't know if anyone's used
>> the Inspiron's with FreeBSD.
>
> None with the 3500, but the 7000's are pretty awesome - only prob we had
> was getting X running on the ATI Rage Pro LT - it was the LT that wasn't
> supported last time we looked.  Other than that it absolutely flew -
> eg:sub 2 and a half minutes for a kernel compile (mind you we had 192 MB
> RAM in that machine :)) but that was before we added softupdates...

All current Dell laptops use the NeoMagic chipset, which used to be a
problem because NeoMagic didn't release programming documentation.
They've done so now, however, and the latest version of XFree86
includes a driver which works pretty well on my Latitude CPi.  I'm
told that the Inspiron series works pretty well with FreeBSD, too.

Greg
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