Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 11:34:09 -0500 From: David Gilbert <dgilbert@dclg.ca> To: Jamie Bowden <ragnar@sysabend.org> Cc: David Gilbert <dgilbert@dclg.ca> Subject: Re: The Best Laptop Message-ID: <16492.17537.88046.18340@canoe.dclg.ca> In-Reply-To: <20040401072434.S6723-100000@moo.sysabend.org> References: <16491.12742.928696.205559@canoe.dclg.ca> <20040401072434.S6723-100000@moo.sysabend.org>
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>>>>> "Jamie" == Jamie Bowden <ragnar@sysabend.org> writes: Jamie> On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, David Gilbert wrote: >> I've been using a Dell Latitude D800 for some time now. As laptops >> go, it's on the fairly high end. It's a Centrino 1.7Ghz with a 60G >> drive and 1G of memory. Most spectacularly, it has a nvidia >> chipset supporting a 1920x1200 screen.... which makes for excellent >> movie watching. I also got the DVD+RW drive. Jamie> Have you tried using it via the USB cable? The floppy drive Jamie> causes a panic; haven't tried the DVD/CDRW via USB. I do know Jamie> the machine won't boot off the floppy drive, even with the BIOS Jamie> set to allow for it, but that's an issue me and my Dell Jamie> rep. are going to discuss. I have used both the floppy and the cdrom over the USB. They work fine as long as you don't have 'ehci' in your kernel. >> One interesting point for the Dell is that it includes both a >> touchpad and the little joystick... so you can have your cake and >> eat it too. Jamie> I don't like either personally, and just keep a USB MS Notebook Jamie> Optical Mouse in my bag. Logitech makes a nice small optical Jamie> USB mouse with a short cord as well, but Best Buy didn't have Jamie> them in stock when I picked this one up. 'Labtec' has an even better solution. It's a wireless mouse with a small dongle that plugs into the USB port. When not in use, the dongle tucks into the mouse for storage. >> The ACPI isn't stellar. Suspend isn't working yet (although it's >> been awhile since I worked on it). I have some patches for the >> DSDT that make it work better. The USB also only works in 1.1 >> mode, not 2.0. Jamie> EHCI works fine for me on my D800. I had to strip it out of Jamie> the kernel in order to boot in the D/Port, as ehci would panic Jamie> when probing the hub built into the dock (but last I heard, Jamie> this was expected, as ehci didn't support hubs yet, has that Jamie> changed?). I have not found a USB2.0 device that works with my D800 yet. EHCI can be in the kernel ... and 1.1 devices will work ... but EHCI devices (like a CD or floppy) halt the EHCI controller. If you boot with an EHCI device plugged in, you crash or hang (depends). If you plug in an EHCI device after boot, it simply halts the EHCI controller. There is a PR on this. >> But the nvidia hardware drivers run well and 3D performance is >> pretty slick. I currently use it as both a desktop replacement and >> a portable unit to use on the train. It's a little heavy, but I >> don't think that can be avoided with all the features I have. Jamie> The nvidia driver doesn't work in OGL for me with recent -C (my Jamie> last CVSup was Monday, but it hasn't worked since libmap.conf Jamie> became necessary for it to even load). You have to do the opposite thing to make the nvidia driver work ... you need to map everything to libc_r.so rather than everything to libpthread. Dave. -- ============================================================================ |David Gilbert, Independent Contractor. | Two things can only be | |Mail: dave@daveg.ca | equal if and only if they | |http://daveg.ca | are precisely opposite. | =========================================================GLO================
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