Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 09:08:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug Ambrisko <ambrisko@whistle.com> To: freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: High-resolution displays Message-ID: <199709051609.JAA24556@crab.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <199709041536.IAA00947@austin.polstra.com> from John Polstra at "Sep 4, 97 08:36:00 am"
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John Polstra writes: | I want to set up a laptop running FreeBSD to use when I'm working out | of town. My main use for it will probably be to connect to my office | network using PPP and access my e-mail. I want to run X11 on it, and | I'd like to have 1024x768 or better resolution (ideally), or at least Well, here I'm the maintainer of the laptop. It is a NEC 6030X and does 1024x768. We went for the second battery pack which gives us ~4 hours without being attached to anything. (Nice for doing work outside on the patio) or just taking the machine home at night and leave the power at work. Disadvantage is that the NEC can have either a second batter, floppy or CD in the option bay. But it is not usually a problem since I usually use the network to get things in and out of it. I'm running 2.2-beta & PAO with some hacks for the PCMCIA controller. The hacks shouldn't be needed with more current PAO stuff. I've tried to get -current up a couple of times and have failed on the network card. I definitely like the 1024x768 since it lets me have 4 80x25 windows open without overlap. Compute power is okay since it is PCI based so scrolling the screen doesn't slow it down. It uses the C&T graphics chip which is well supported and now 16bpp is pretty fast (before it really slowed down the machine). Since this was an early XGA laptop it has the 12.1" screen which is okay but now they seem to be moving to 14.2 with 13.3 common. I don't like touchpads, I prefer sticks. The pad is more of a two hand operation for cut & paste, however it isn't worth the extra $1000 for an IBM or Toshiba for me. We had one trouble with the charge circuit and got that fixed pretty quick. I've been thinking about a personal machine and have been looking at the Chembook 2700 type (most of the clone shops repackage an OEM version and the www.chemusa.com site gives gory details on the chipsets!). I like this machine since it is 200Mhz, 32M, 3G, 14.2TFT is just under $4000 and uses the Intel mobile triton II chipset (which is supposed to be faster then all others). The negative is the video is Trident and I'm nervous about XFree support but I've been seeing some success stories. It's also big, but seems to be a good desktop replacement. Also Intel is about to release the 200+ P5 laptop CPU. This should extend battery life and get rid of the fan inside. Doug A.
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