On Thu, 2004-05-27 at 11:40, James Gregory wrote: > So I stumbled upon the Toshiba Portege M100 which looks like a cool box.
On the road I use a Toshiba Portege 4010, which I believe is the previous years' model. [The picture looks the same] The thing about Toshiba is they are renowned for *radically* changing the chip sets from one model year/number to the next. So it's entirely possible the one you are considering has different internals. BUY A PLANE TICKET AND FLY TO NORTH AMERICA TO BUY THIS. LAPTOPS ARE STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE IN AUSTRALIA. SAME LAPTOP IN CANADA IS $2,899.00 CAD == AUD! Ok, so maybe just get FedEx to ship it ;) My specs listed here, with comments: Toshiba Portege 4010 933 MHz Pentium III Like all Toshibas, it tends to run hot. toshutils from Buzzard mostly work (ie fan works). Better yet, recent 2.6 kernels ACPI are working. There's a Toshiba extension to ACPI available - you end up with some things in /proc/acpi/toshiba that largely negate necessity to use userspace toshutils. Software suspend swsusp2 2.0.0.80 + kernel 2.6.6 works. 2 PCMCIA slots (which I never use :)). A *third* PCMCIA slot (actually slot zero) is where the 802.11b card is plugged in. Its orinoco-cs, works. Since yours is Pentium "M" that probably means you'll have to jump through Centrino hoops. 2 USB slots - usb-ohci. 10/100 Ethernet - works great. I use e100 kernel module. Winmodem - doesn't work. Maybe it will someday, but I doubt it. Fireware - never tested, sorry. SD slot - does NOT work. Chip to talk to is it totally proprietary - no one I've seen has any idea how to talk to it. 1024x768 screen. trident XF86Config module. X is fine, but not 3D accelerated. Sound is good. Nice speakers. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM is slim select bay. DVD *works* (used Totem to play a DVD movie for the first time yesterday. Woot!) Suggest you also buy: Slim select bay Secondary battery Slim select bay Secondary Hard Drive (I just use it for backups, but backups are a good thing when you're on the road for a months or two at a time <shrug>). DMA doesn't seem to work to secondary drive, which is weird, as it does seem to work (?) to CD/DVD. I've got 1024MB (which is max) memory in mine. Probably overkill, though I do a lot of compiling. 512 MB would be fine. ONE LAST THING: MAJOR PISS OFF - THE CORNERS BOTTOM RIGHT AND BOTTOM LEFT WHERE YOUR HANDS REST ARE VERY SHARP. GET THE THING ON YOUR LAP AND DO SOME EXTENSIVE TYPING. IT'S FINE. GET THE THING ON A DESK, AND YOU START STABBING YOUR PALMS. So make sure that this isn't an issue for you. Guess I should make a web page out of this and put it somewhere. :) AfC Toronto -- Andrew Frederick Cowie Operational Dynamics Consulting Pty Ltd Fixing your technology by focusing on your people and the processes around them. We improve usabilty, scalabilty, and maintainability - the keys to making technology work - through team building, implementing effective procedures, and enhancing systems performance. Contact us! http://www.operationaldynamics.com/ Sydney, New York, Toronto, London -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
