Help me pick a CPU/Mobo

[Kristian Hermansen]

On 3/24/07, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:
> So now I'm looking for a ~15" screen, "desktop replacement" laptop
> (power/keyboard/screen more important than portable).  It would still be
> cool to go dual core 64, though, since I'm still going to upgrade the
> server soon to the same, and that way I'll be able to run the same
> kernel/packages on both. Built in 802.11g is essential, bluetooth and
> serial port would be nice.  Battery life less critical, but >1.5 hours
> would be good.  It would also be nice to not get third degree burns on
> my lap.

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.

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.

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.

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 :-)
-- 
Kristian Hermansen

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