-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Here's another 4810 experience:
I replaced the internal harddrive with a 30GB OCZ SSD that I had already formatted via USB on another Linux box, to ensure that the block sizes were "optimal" (http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/02/20/aligning-filesystems-to-an-ssds-erase-block-size/). I installed from a Kubuntu 8.10 CD and did a dist upgrade to 9.04. Everything went fine, except upon reboot the BIOS hung (didn't even get to GRUB) and then rebooted; when it came up, I went into the BIOS and changed the interface from AHCI (or whatever it was) to IDE; that fixed it. It booted without problems directly into KDM. 1. The driver was correctly identified, and the screen resolution was correctly set. Compiz was enabled by default, and the eye candy worked (mostly) fine. There were some artifacts (background windows obscured by pop-up alerts were often not refreshed correctly when the alerts were dismissed). Considering how insanely buggy KDE 4.2 is, I'm inclined to blame KDE. 2. Wireless networking started out beautifully, but at least once the connection would drop and KDE would refuse to reconnect. Again, at the moment I'm blaming KDE (see below). 3. I haven't tried bluetooth yet. 4. USB is *mostly* fine; an RF mouse with dongle worked as expected. 5. KDE wouldn't recognize a USB memory stick (again, definitely a KDE bug -- see below) 6. Within a couple of hours, the KDE panel crashed. Not a laptop issue. 7. Suspend/resume worked with no problems. In fact, it's got the *fastest* resume of any laptop I've seen -- it is incredible. 8. Haven't tried hibernate yet. 9. The "toggle the touchpad button" works, but it is a one-way trip. Once you turn it on, it won't turn off. However, I've discovered that turning it off, suspending, and resuming causes it to come back on again. In fact, turning the touchpad off, suspend, and resuming causes it to come back on again -- even if the button is lit, saying that the touchpad is off. I think this is a Ubuntu problem. 10. The SD/MMC/etc. slot works perfectly. 11. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the machine. The screen is beautiful, and bright. The battery life seems about on par with the advertised time (haven't done any strenuous testing, but my wife had it on battery for most of the day, so 8 hours wouldn't have been far off the mark). 12. The sleep button doesn't seem to be recognized by the default Ubuntu set-up. 13. The brightness keys are recognized, but don't seem to have any actual effect. 14. The audio keys are also recognized, but I haven't tested them yet 15. The "blank screen" function works beautifully -- why don't all laptops have this?? KDE was so twitchy that I installed ubuntu-destop and re-logged in to Gnome. 1. I haven't seen any artifacts related to alerts, so #1 seems fixed by this. Hence, it seems to be a KDE problem. 2. I haven't had any problems with wireless, so #2 seems to be a KDE problem, too. 3. Gnome correctly recognized the USB stick, and would let me mount it; #5 is definitely a KDE problem. 4. The battery life *seems* a little less robust under Gnome, but I'll do some timings next week-end. So, though I hate Gnome because of it's insistence on moving the order of "Ok/Cancel" buttons, it is definitely less buggy than KDE 4.2, and the laptop works much better under it. <rant>The button swap was a horrible user-interface decision. Many people are forced to use Windows at work, and the order of Ok/Cancel buttons has been a de-facto standard in UIs for years. The decision to change this order causes confusion for people having to use multiple desktop environments, and was entirely arbitrary, or based on vague, poorly-supported guesses on usability benefits. It should rank as one of history's worst UI decisions.</rant> In summary, the laptop works well under Linux. The "disable touchpad" button is a god-send under Windows, and if anybody figures out how to get it working correctly under Linux, please post about it. This touchpad is extremely sensitive, and being able to disable it is critically important -- and while that part works, being unable to re-enable it (easily) means that an external mouse is really a requirement for this laptop under Linux. - --- SER -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFKP4sDP0KxygnleI8RAiduAKCYZrm5gZCca2Umnyehy6Wi52rwVQCfWxdj VyuhjfMclWKBVc8w/pds4wE= =ipUG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~acertimeline Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~acertimeline More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
