On Tue, 17 Jul 2007, Raju Alluri wrote: > My personal experience with anything ATI in the recent past is bad (at least > until b65.) Somehow, Belenix works great but Nevada fails to set the right > resolution. Anything nVidia is okay in general. > > Regards, > - Raju
And unlike, say, Broadcom wireless, avoiding ATI graphics is easy (I think). There are lots of good "non-ATI" laptops to choose from across the entire feature/price spectrum. Eric > > On 7/16/07, Eric Boutilier <ericb at opensolaris.org> wrote: >> >> [Cross-posting to osol-discuss and indiana-discuss. Followups to >> laptop-discuss please. I've set the reply-to header accordingly.] >> >> Prompted partly by anticipation (and delight) of the distro constructor >> project being discussed on indiana-discuss recently, I bought an >> "economy model" laptop over the weekend. The point was to find a >> barebones (cheap), 32bit laptop to serve a an install/packaging/etc >> sandbox, and since I researched quite a few models, I thought I'd post >> a write-up of some of the component specs I uncovered (in this >> price-class) and related thoughts/guidance in hopes that it'll maybe >> start a useful laptop-bargain-shopping thread (wiki page?). >> >> My bargain-hunting method was the weekly-ad, loss-leader, >> in-store-purchase routine. The retail price (MSR) range turned out to >> be roughly $550-$700 USD. The price range after discount and mail-in >> rebate (though some were available w/out rebate) was roughly $400 - $450. >> >> So without further ado, and with corrections and other >> improvements highly encouraged... >> >> (courier font recommended) >> >> Key: >> PDC = Pentium Dual Core >> AMD = AMD Sempron 3500+ >> PCM = Pentium Celeron M >> >> GMA = Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 >> VIA = VIA Chrome9 HC IGP >> ATI = ATI Radeon >> Y/N = Does the optical drive write DVDs >> >> Models: >> Compaq Presario, C502US: PCM, GMA, N? >> Acer Aspire 3680: PCM, GMA, N? >> Compaq Presario T2080: PDC, GMA, Y >> Everex StepNote VA2000T: PDC, VIA, Y? >> * Toshiba Sat. A135-S2326: PDC, ATI, Y? >> Acer Aspire 3100: AMD, ATI, ? >> >> >> I wound up getting the Compaq Presario T2080 at Best Buy. >> >> The asterisk on the Toshiba means it is purported to have Atheros >> wireless. Most, or all of the rest have Broadcom. (I think that means >> the NDIS driver is required?). To narrow things down, first I decided >> to stick with GMA graphics based on something I read in >> laptop-discuss. Unfortunately that ruled out getting Atheros wireless. >> That left the 2 Presarios and the Aspire 3680, and I figured the Dual >> Core Pentium would be better than the Celeron M. >> >> The Sunday ads I perused for this were Best Buy, Walmart, Circuit City, >> Office Depot, Staples, and CompUSA. Here are the stores that I know >> currently carry each brand. This is way incomplete though... IOW, no >> doubt each brand is carried at more than the stores listed here... >> >> Aspire: Walmart, Staples ... >> Presario: CompUSA, Best Buy ... >> StepNote: Walmart, Circuit City ... >> Satellite: Office Depot ... >> >> >> Some more caveats off the top of my head... >> >> - Advertised specs are often wrong. >> - Cheap laptops are big and clunky. >> - Installed RAM was either .5 or 1GB, but I didn't keep track of which. >> - I think the HDD was 80 GB in all of them, but I'm not sure. >> - Some of these might be available for on-line purchase only. >> - I think one or two of them has a 14.x-inch screen. >> - Loss-leader shoppers are frowned upon by electronics stores, >> be prepared to be treated that way. >> >> Model names/codes can get really tricky (e.g. "Toshiba Satellite >> A135-S2326") and are probably not valid outside the U.S. So it >> might be helpful here if anybody has knowledge of equivalent >> model names in other countries. >> >> So now I have my nifty new cheapo... er... economy lappy but I haven't >> had time to do much with it yet! What I did get a chance to do though >> was download and fire up Nevada b67 via the BeleniX 0.6.1 LiveCD (also, >> I stuck with Xfce and the Realtek ethernet NIC for now) and everything, >> including LAN/WAN/DHCP discovery worked great! >> >> Eric >> _______________________________________________ >> laptop-discuss mailing list >> laptop-discuss at opensolaris.org >> > > > > -- > -- > Raju Alluri > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/laptop-discuss/attachments/20070717/6973eba7/attachment.html >
