On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 7:14 AM, Reinier Zwitserloot <[email protected]>wrote:
> > - where do you check if the hardware works well? It's not exactly > trivial, here's everything that needs to work just right: > google "laptop brand/model, linux distro" for success stories. (not meant to be a RTFM type answer). I've found this helpful and pretty accurate (if someone posts something bogus or easy to fix, there are usually responses helping them solve the issue). > > - Multitouch trackpad (is that even possible on linux)? > Ubuntu is starting to add support this, but I don't think it's ready yet. I've heard next Ubuntu release when they have the Unity desktop (forgot the correct term). I don't know if you can do this is current non-Mac trackpad hardware though or if you need special hardware. > > - Sleep / Hibernate mode: If you close the lid, does the system go to > sleep and does it wake back up instantaneously when you open it up? > What's the battery drain like in sleep mode? From personal experience, > windows laptops will waste the entire battery in sleep mode in about a > day. A mac takes a month to do the same thing. > I haven't tried hard to get sleep/hibernate working but the one I tried so configure this, it failed. > > - High quality keyboard that's not too noisy (biggest drawback to me > of the new-style click-entire-trackpad mac trackpads is that they are > noisy when you click down!) > I like the Sony Vaio keyboard, but not most others I've tried. I found the newest MBP kind of weird. > > - Sound, Video, wifi and bluetooth drivers. > I think this works pretty well. I just enabled bluetooth on my Sony laptop and connected my android phone with no problem. I'm pretty clueless about bluetooth and I got it to work, so it seems pretty easy. Sound and video works ok, but you may need to enable some non-ubuntu repositories to get the right codecs for different video formats, enable non-free to get flash support etc. Not a big deal for a developer or power user, but you probably want to set it up for grandma before you leave the laptop with her. It's not "just works" though but also not too hard to sort out. > > - Battery life: Can the OS properly shut down what's not being used > in order to get to the battery life that I'm used to - 4 hours > minimum. > > Like with sleep/hibernate, I haven't tried real hard, but this pretty much sucks. I'm lucky to get 1-2 hours, but then again, I usually have a database, app server, browser and IDE running which seems like that would suck some juice on anything (though I'm sure MBP is much better at power management). I guess if someone really knew how to set things up, you might be able to do better. I usually work plugged in, so it isn't a big deal to me. > None of these things show up in an advertisement for a notebook; those > just contain lots of numbers: Speed, screen size, disk size, all stuff > that's mostly irrelevant (to me, anyway). > > I'm pretty much the opposite. I care mainly about disk speed, screen size/resolution, memory etc. I just don't work in a very mobile way and use the laptop as a desktop I can carry from work to home. Lloyd -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
