Laptop recommendations

[invalid at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 11:00:31AM -0400, Duane Morin wrote:
> 	- ACPI versus APM.  I get hangs when I try using ACPI.  Shuold I 
> be able to make this thing sleep or not?

Is it supported by Linux's ACPI?  Lots of machines aren't due to buggy
or undocumented BIOSes, etc.  Making laptops sleep in Linux is
notoriously tricky business.  From APM/ACPI issues, to X Windows
drivers which don't deal with ACPI...  It's a bloody mess on many
machines.

> 	- Sound.  Although it appears to work I will often and 
> unpredictably get "device or resource busy", even when I have freshly 
> booted the machine and run no new apps

You're probably running into issues with some sound mixing daemon like
artsd or esd, or some other program that grabs the soundcard.  This is
very normal and not limited to laptops by any means.  This is rather
unfortunate, but managable if you take the time to look into the
issues...  While it's possible, this is probably not the fault of the
hardware.

> 	- heat.  The thing runs amazingly hot, to the point where I wonder 
> if my fans are working properly (although they are, I can hear them).

Yeah, this is a problem with many laptops running newer, faster
processors.  Those suckers run hot.  It's a difficult problem to
solve, because there's a lot of heat, and only so much space for
ventilation...  My toshiba is like that, too; and it has only a 1.0
GHz processor.  If I'm going to use it on my lap, I'll often turn the
fans on permanently to keep it cooler.  But if you're on battery
power, that'll shorten your life, so by default the fans are a bit
conservative in how often they run.

> 	- video.  Although I have the nvidia driver and it works, I dont 
> love having to recompile and install it everytime I change kernels :).

Well, depending on which model, you could always run without the
NVidia drivers... But you'll lose acceleration.  You can't have
everything...  This is not the fault of the hardware.  IIRC that
NVidia driver doesn't deal with ACPI either, so you may as well 
give up on suspending...  But this may have changed (somewhat)
recently; I haven't been keeping up with NVidia driver updates.

> 	- lockups.  Originally I had some lockups when I ended up 
> attributing to poorly seated memory.  

Human assembly error, not bad design.  Could happen to any machine...

> Lately I have had 2 spontaneous lockups after switching from my PCMCIA 
> wireless card to the USB. 

This could be the card, the driver, or some totally unrelated software
(i.e. kernel) problem.

> Not to mention things like the keyboard layout is horrendous.  Who puts ~ 
> way in the upper *right* corner among F12, Pause, and what appears to be a 
> windows menu key??

These days it's hard to find a laptop with a "normal" keyboard layout.
Dell was one of the only companies that had one (on a model I was
interested in buying), last time I was looking at them.  There are too
many keys to cover, and not a lot of keyboard real estate on a laptop.
My Toshiba puts tilde in the bottom row, which I think is even
stranger than where you describe...  Windows users rarely use ~, so to
most people, this just isn't an issue.  Given the choice, it's about
the most sensible key to displace...

It's been a while since I've looked at laptops, and since I've looked
into most of these issues, so my information could be outdated or
simply wrong...  :)  But if my memory isn't failing me, and things
haven't changed too much since last I was looking, it seems to me that
your complaints are mostly either problems common to most laptops, or
probably unrelated to the hardware.  Maybe no laptop realy would suit
you...

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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