Help me pick a CPU/Mobo

[Robert L Krawitz]

   Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:26:15 -0400
   From: "Kristian Hermansen" <kristian.hermansen at gmail.com>
   Cc: discuss at blu.org

   On 3/24/07, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:
   > So now I'm looking for a ~15" screen, "desktop replacement" laptop
   > (power/keyboard/screen more important than portable).  It would still be
   > cool to go dual core 64, though, since I'm still going to upgrade the
   > server soon to the same, and that way I'll be able to run the same
   > kernel/packages on both. Built in 802.11g is essential, bluetooth and
   > serial port would be nice.  Battery life less critical, but >1.5 hours
   > would be good.  It would also be nice to not get third degree burns on
   > my lap.

   I have owned an AMD64 laptop for a few years now.  I have an HP
   Pavilion ZV5270US wide-screen desktop replacement.  I can say that,
   IMHO, you will pay the price for wanting a "desktop-replacement"
   laptop.  It's heavy, bulky, hot, inefficient, and loud.  I get
   *maybe* an hour of battery life under most normal operating
   conditions.  I dread carrying it around with me.  It feels like I
   am carrying an elephant on my lap.  In contrast, I love my ThinkPad
   T42p.  It's light, efficient, and very Linux-friendly.

It's more than a little dated, but I'm very happy with my Dell
Inspiron 8200 with a 2.2 GHz P4-M CPU.  It has a particularly nice
screen (15" UXGA -- UXGA screens are still quite rare), it's very
serviceable inside, it can take up to 2 GB memory (it officially takes
1 GB, but it can actually take 2 GB), and it has a lot of
configurability.  It's also fully supported by Linux off the shelf --
no need for any proprietary drivers (including 3D graphics -- the ATI
M9000 graphics card that's available for it gives full acceleration
with XF86 7.1).  Battery life's good (over 3 hours with a pair of
batteries), and it runs cool.  They're plentiful on eBay, as are parts
for it.

The mini-PCI wireless card built into mine is an older one, but you
can get an Atheros card for it.

Of course, it isn't 64 bit.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

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