Re: Laptop advice
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 03:48:06PM -0400, Mike Jeays wrote: On March 27, 2008 03:09:42 pm mdh wrote: --- David Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 01:53:57PM -0400, Joe Demeny wrote: In the end, the best advice seems to be indeed to take the FreeBSD CD to the brick-and-mortar store... Or you could purchase an Apple Mac Book and have a commercially supported Unix pre-installed. Guess that would take all the fun out of it? While I like Mac products and OSX is pretty cool, I still find their laptops a bit pricey. By the by, has anyone tried FreeBSD on one of those little Asus EEEpc sublaptops? A real, tiny, i386 laptop for $300 (plus maybe a bit more for an additional SD card to bump the storage some) seems like a truly awesome deal. I bought an Eee PC, but haven't tried any other software on it yet. I can confirm that the hardware is a bargain, and I used it 'as is' while travelling for ten days, and it connected 'out of the box' to the wireless service provided in each hotel. A mouse is a great help, although the built-in pad is quite usable. I had no trouble with the tiny keyboard, except for needing the light on to read the keys. What!! You're not a touch typist??!! A couple of others to look at: By HP:http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/19/hps-umpc-2133-revealed/ By KJS: http://www.umpcportal.com/products/product.php?id=130 By Dell: http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/latit_xt?c=uscs=04l=ens=bsd~tab=bundlestabdgc=STcid=27096lid=615901O By IBM: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/landing_pages/thinkpad/2008/X300?cid=us|semd|ggl|us_portable_en|t9C4|cs_kwcid=ContentNetwork|1073231341 I tried out a Kohjinsha in Japan and found that its small keyboard was pretty easy to use as well (I suppose some would have trouble with its size, but I found it fairly comfortable after a few minutes of getting used to it). It looks about the same physical size as the EeePC. It is a bit more expensive that the Eee, but it has 80GB/120 GB disk and some more other good features. The display can be turned around and used like a tablet and there are models with touch screen. I was impressed with the display too. Even though it was a 7 inch and not exceptionally high resolution, it was sharp and very readable. There is some company that is marketing a version of it with English language WinXP. I don't know if they put an English language BIOS in it. But, I find that machine very interesting. It would fit in my jacket pocket - my major size qualifier. Some comments and pictures: http://technorati.com/photos/tag/kohjinsha Japanese website:http://kohjinsha.com/models/sa/lineupsa.html Of course, Dell and IBM models are more featured, but are much larger and much more expensive. The HP model is yet to be seen, but looks interesting. jerry They are a really great innovation, IMHO. I am really pleased with mine. The wireless card may be the problem with FreeBSD. -- Mike Jeays http://www.jeays.ca ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
On Monday 24 March 2008 06:04:17 am Jason P. Thomas wrote: Joe Demeny wrote: I need to get a budget-priced laptop, such as one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101123 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114430 Does anyone have experience with these? Any suggestions for other comparable choices? From personal experience, getting a laptop to work under FreeBSD (or even Linux) is a hair pulling experience. It took me about six months of tinkering off and on to get a Broadcom(yuck!) wifi adapter to work in my HP laptop last year. In the interim, I found a work around that was about $30. I purchased a usb wifi adapter that used the rum driver. At the time, I had to run -current to get that particular driver, but I never had a problem with the computer or the adapter under -current. The most headaches I've gotten with laptops have always involved the wifi cards. Consequently, every laptop I've installed FreeBSD and Linux on had a Broadcom(yuck!) wifi chipset. Everything else has been well supported, graphics, sound, power management, pointing devices, and usb devices. I even managed to use FreeBSD to connect to the robots I had to use in one of my master's classes last year. That was pleasantly surprising. --Jay Thank you all for your advice. I am familiar with the Hardware Notes. The problem is that from the specs it's hard to tell what is in the computer. The Gateway web site lists this under the specs: Integrated Realtek 802.11b/g Wireless Networking for Wireless Network; same for the Toshiba. This is why I wondered if anyone has one of these laptops... In the end, the best advice seems to be indeed to take the FreeBSD CD to the brick-and-mortar store... -- Joe Demeny ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 01:53:57PM -0400, Joe Demeny wrote: In the end, the best advice seems to be indeed to take the FreeBSD CD to the brick-and-mortar store... Or you could purchase an Apple Mac Book and have a commercially supported Unix pre-installed. Guess that would take all the fun out of it? -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
--- David Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 01:53:57PM -0400, Joe Demeny wrote: In the end, the best advice seems to be indeed to take the FreeBSD CD to the brick-and-mortar store... Or you could purchase an Apple Mac Book and have a commercially supported Unix pre-installed. Guess that would take all the fun out of it? While I like Mac products and OSX is pretty cool, I still find their laptops a bit pricey. By the by, has anyone tried FreeBSD on one of those little Asus EEEpc sublaptops? A real, tiny, i386 laptop for $300 (plus maybe a bit more for an additional SD card to bump the storage some) seems like a truly awesome deal. Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
On March 27, 2008 03:09:42 pm mdh wrote: --- David Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 01:53:57PM -0400, Joe Demeny wrote: In the end, the best advice seems to be indeed to take the FreeBSD CD to the brick-and-mortar store... Or you could purchase an Apple Mac Book and have a commercially supported Unix pre-installed. Guess that would take all the fun out of it? While I like Mac products and OSX is pretty cool, I still find their laptops a bit pricey. By the by, has anyone tried FreeBSD on one of those little Asus EEEpc sublaptops? A real, tiny, i386 laptop for $300 (plus maybe a bit more for an additional SD card to bump the storage some) seems like a truly awesome deal. ___ _ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I bought an Eee PC, but haven't tried any other software on it yet. I can confirm that the hardware is a bargain, and I used it 'as is' while travelling for ten days, and it connected 'out of the box' to the wireless service provided in each hotel. A mouse is a great help, although the built-in pad is quite usable. I had no trouble with the tiny keyboard, except for needing the light on to read the keys. They are a really great innovation, IMHO. I am really pleased with mine. The wireless card may be the problem with FreeBSD. -- Mike Jeays http://www.jeays.ca ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
Mike Jeays wrote: On March 27, 2008 03:09:42 pm mdh wrote: --- David Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 01:53:57PM -0400, Joe Demeny wrote: In the end, the best advice seems to be indeed to take the FreeBSD CD to the brick-and-mortar store... Or you could purchase an Apple Mac Book and have a commercially supported Unix pre-installed. Guess that would take all the fun out of it? I would get ThinkPad T30 or T23 from Ebay. They will work just fine with FreeBSD. They go for $190-250. Cheers, Predrag While I like Mac products and OSX is pretty cool, I still find their laptops a bit pricey. By the by, has anyone tried FreeBSD on one of those little Asus EEEpc sublaptops? A real, tiny, i386 laptop for $300 (plus maybe a bit more for an additional SD card to bump the storage some) seems like a truly awesome deal. ___ _ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I bought an Eee PC, but haven't tried any other software on it yet. I can confirm that the hardware is a bargain, and I used it 'as is' while travelling for ten days, and it connected 'out of the box' to the wireless service provided in each hotel. A mouse is a great help, although the built-in pad is quite usable. I had no trouble with the tiny keyboard, except for needing the light on to read the keys. They are a really great innovation, IMHO. I am really pleased with mine. The wireless card may be the problem with FreeBSD. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
I would get ThinkPad T30 or T23 from Ebay. They will work just fine with FreeBSD. They go for $190-250. my T23 works fine. all devices, no problems, any OS including FreeBSD of course ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Laptop advice
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Fred C Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 4:48 PM To: Derek Ragona Cc: Joe Demeny; freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Laptop advice On Mar 21, 2008, at 6:48 AM, Derek Ragona wrote: At 04:56 AM 3/21/2008, Joe Demeny wrote: I need to get a budget-priced laptop, such as one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101123 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114430 Does anyone have experience with these? Any suggestions for other comparable choices? I would choose the Toshiba, much better quality and support. You may want to look at Lenovo's too. In a laptop I would look at the graphics if you plan to run X. In laptops you want to look at everything. If one of the chipset is not supported or badly you cannot like on a desktop change a component by an another. You want to go here http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.0R/hardware.html and search if every component of you laptop is supported. Unfortunately, it is quite common for laptop vendors to write specs that use different names than industry standard for the components, so it is difficult to figure this out in advance. What you want to do is get yourself a FreeBSD boot CD then go visit a computer vendor that has display models. Do not order a laptop online. Visit a brick and mortar vendor, and try booting fbsd on each of the display models. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
El día Monday, March 24, 2008 a las 12:29:16AM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt escribió: Unfortunately, it is quite common for laptop vendors to write specs that use different names than industry standard for the components, so it is difficult to figure this out in advance. What you want to do is get yourself a FreeBSD boot CD then go visit a computer vendor that has display models. Do not order a laptop online. Visit a brick and mortar vendor, and try booting fbsd on each of the display models. A good way is also to let it boot a Knoppix boot CD / DVD which is able to detect nearly all hardware used to assemble the laptop. Then take the /var/log/messages output of this and check it against the FreeBSD hardware notes. matthias (running FreeBSD 7.0-R on laptop :-)) -- Matthias Apitz Manager Technical Support - OCLC GmbH Gruenwalder Weg 28g - 82041 Oberhaching - Germany t +49-89-61308 351 - f +49-89-61308 399 - m +49-170-4527211 e [EMAIL PROTECTED] - w http://www.oclc.org/ http://www.UnixArea.de/ b http://gurucubano.blogspot.com/ Don't top-post, read RFC1855 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is it such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
Joe Demeny wrote: I need to get a budget-priced laptop, such as one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101123 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114430 Does anyone have experience with these? Any suggestions for other comparable choices? From personal experience, getting a laptop to work under FreeBSD (or even Linux) is a hair pulling experience. It took me about six months of tinkering off and on to get a Broadcom(yuck!) wifi adapter to work in my HP laptop last year. In the interim, I found a work around that was about $30. I purchased a usb wifi adapter that used the rum driver. At the time, I had to run -current to get that particular driver, but I never had a problem with the computer or the adapter under -current. The most headaches I've gotten with laptops have always involved the wifi cards. Consequently, every laptop I've installed FreeBSD and Linux on had a Broadcom(yuck!) wifi chipset. Everything else has been well supported, graphics, sound, power management, pointing devices, and usb devices. I even managed to use FreeBSD to connect to the robots I had to use in one of my master's classes last year. That was pleasantly surprising. --Jay ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
Id go an ASUS low end or Lenovo, I actually have never had an issue with FreeBSD on an ASUS, except for built in web cam support, dells are nice but ive experienced issues with three of them under BSD so ive been avoiding them. I do have an ASUS W5A and a IBM Z60M Lenovo Thinkpad, both run linux and BSD fine. On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 4:07 PM, Matthias Apitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: El día Monday, March 24, 2008 a las 12:29:16AM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt escribió: Unfortunately, it is quite common for laptop vendors to write specs that use different names than industry standard for the components, so it is difficult to figure this out in advance. What you want to do is get yourself a FreeBSD boot CD then go visit a computer vendor that has display models. Do not order a laptop online. Visit a brick and mortar vendor, and try booting fbsd on each of the display models. A good way is also to let it boot a Knoppix boot CD / DVD which is able to detect nearly all hardware used to assemble the laptop. Then take the /var/log/messages output of this and check it against the FreeBSD hardware notes. matthias (running FreeBSD 7.0-R on laptop :-)) -- Matthias Apitz Manager Technical Support - OCLC GmbH Gruenwalder Weg 28g - 82041 Oberhaching - Germany t +49-89-61308 351 - f +49-89-61308 399 - m +49-170-4527211 e [EMAIL PROTECTED] - w http://www.oclc.org/ http://www.UnixArea.de/ b http://gurucubano.blogspot.com/ Don't top-post, read RFC1855 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is it such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
On Mar 21, 2008, at 6:48 AM, Derek Ragona wrote: At 04:56 AM 3/21/2008, Joe Demeny wrote: I need to get a budget-priced laptop, such as one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101123 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114430 Does anyone have experience with these? Any suggestions for other comparable choices? I would choose the Toshiba, much better quality and support. You may want to look at Lenovo's too. In a laptop I would look at the graphics if you plan to run X. In laptops you want to look at everything. If one of the chipset is not supported or badly you cannot like on a desktop change a component by an another. You want to go here http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.0R/hardware.html and search if every component of you laptop is supported. -fred- -- Fred C! PGP-KeyID: E7EA02EC3B487EE9 PGP-FingerPrint: A906101E2CCDBB18D7BD09AEE7EA02EC3B487EE9 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 10:56 AM, Joe Demeny [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I need to get a budget-priced laptop, such as one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101123 Read the user comments carefully. For this laptop, you'll find, for example: --- Cons: RTL8187B wireless chipset. If you want to use a wireless connection under Linux this will give you problems. Tried several distros with no success. Was finally able to get it to work *intermittently* with Windows 98 drivers under Ndiswrapper - XP drivers would not work. --- If you plan on using wireless lan, you'll need to read the fine print very carefully to determine whether there is BSD support for the given chipset. -- Colin Brace Amsterdam http://lim.nl ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptop advice
At 04:56 AM 3/21/2008, Joe Demeny wrote: I need to get a budget-priced laptop, such as one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101123 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114430 Does anyone have experience with these? Any suggestions for other comparable choices? I would choose the Toshiba, much better quality and support. You may want to look at Lenovo's too. In a laptop I would look at the graphics if you plan to run X. -Derek -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
