laptop recommendations

[Mark J. Dulcey]

Bob BLU wrote:
> At 01:09 PM 11/2/2005, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
> 
>>AAMD 64-bit chips are faster ... 
>>
>>HP laptop model numbers that are certified for Linux.
> 
> 
> What exists at the intersection of these two statements?

HP Compaq does make some Turion 64 notebooks. I have one of the Presario 
V2000z series machines. It works well running Linux for the most part, 
including power management right out of the box. The ATI integrated 
graphics require a proprietary ATI driver (free from ati.com, but not 
open source) for full support. I have not been able to get the Broadcom 
wireless LAN interface to work. (I have the one without Bluetooth 
support. The one with Bluetooth is a different chipset, which may work 
better or worse with Linux.) There's no native driver, but it's supposed 
to be possible to get it to work with the Windows driver and 
NDISWrapper; I just haven't taken the time to fuss with it yet.

AMD-based notebooks run 64-bit code infinitely faster than any currently 
available Intel-based notebook system, other than desktop-replacement 
systems using Pentium 4 chips. Intel has no 64-bit support in Pentium-M, 
and no immediate plans to add it.

Performance of Turion 64 running 32-bit code is about equal to Pentium-M 
systems of the same clock speed. I certainly haven't been disappointed 
by the processor performance of my system. 3D graphics are far from 
state of the art, but this is a bargain notebook with integrated 
graphics, not one with a high-end graphics accelerator.

The down side of Turion 64 is that it can't match the battery life of 
Centrino. It's not terrible; my system gets about 2.5 hours with the 
standard battery, or 5 hours with the big one. But it's not perfect; a 
similar Centrino system from Compaq (same case, display, and batteries) 
runs about 20% longer.

I have no idea whether my system is actually certified for Linux. It 
certainly doesn't say anything about it on the case, and it's primarily 
sold as a consumer product, not a business product, so probably not. But 
it does work, aside from the wireless. I have SUSE 10 installed natively 
(dual-boot). I also have Ubuntu installed to run under VMware hosted by 
Windows XP, which is what I use when I want to use wireless networking.