Help me pick a CPU/Mobo

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

Kristian Hermansen wrote:
> I have owned an AMD64 laptop for a few years now.  I have an HP
> Pavilion ZV5270US wide-screen desktop replacement.  I can say that,
> IMHO, you will pay the price for wanting a "desktop-replacement"
> laptop.  It's heavy, bulky, hot, inefficient, and loud.  I get *maybe*
> an hour of battery life under most normal operating conditions.  I
> dread carrying it around with me.  It feels like I am carrying an
> elephant on my lap.  In contrast, I love my ThinkPad T42p.  It's
> light, efficient, and very Linux-friendly.

I'm not sure of the distinction you're making.  Both of those laptops 
have the same size screens (well, +/- .5"), according to Google.  The HP 
is about 2 pounds heavier though.

I do want a ~15.4" screen, and I need a desktop replacement, because 
that's what it is.  Three years ago, before I bought my current Thinkpad 
T42 laptop, my server in the office was also my workstation, and I did 
everything on it, and I had to compromise on what it could do as a 
server because of that.  Now I have the laptop, which spends 90% of its 
time on a table in my bedroom room.  When I want to take it somewhere, I 
throw it in my laptop backpack, so weight is not a concern.  Being able 
to do whatever a desktop can IS a concern.

> And I hate the wide-screen.  When you watch movies it just great, but
> the other 95% of the time when I am writing code or browsing the net,
> I really wish I had more vertical screen real estate.  Be warned!
> This is just from my experience, but I also have a few other friends
> with wide-screen laptops that have admitted to making similar
> mistakes.

Well, what are you calling wide screen?  The Levono site is calling 
15.4" "wide screen".  To me, wide screen is anything bigger than that, 
usually 17", which means your laptop can double as a surfboard.

> Also, ensure that you don't have a Broadcom chipset for wireless if
> possible.  It's nice when all your hardware works out of the box
> without any additional configuration hassles.  I encountered many
> intermittent issues with the 64-bit Broadcom wireless drivers.  But I
> have been running 64-bit Ubuntu Feisty since January with no other
> major issues.

Yah, I'm getting the idea that 64 bit is sweet for a server with 
straightforward hardware and not much in the way of end user software, 
but I'm better off sticking with 32 bit.

> So, in conclusion, I highly recommend that you stay away from an AMD64
> laptop as a desktop replacement.  I would, instead, recommend a more
> modest choice of hardware.  And how often are you going to be encoding
> movies, or otherwise burning the CPU?  Save those ops for overnight,
> since you won't usually be waiting around for it to finish anyways.
> But this is just from my own experience, knowing both sides and
> talking with many fellow luggers.  YMMV, as always :-)

Thanks.


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