[lug] Laptops again

[John Karns]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, Nate Duehr was reputed to have said:

> I've always had good luck with Toshibas.  Some people don't like the
> rubber eraser mouse joystick thing, but I hate hitting my thumbs on the
> touchpad-equipped laptops when reaching for the spacebar.

All a matter of personal preference of course, but those things really
drive me nuts (or maybe it's all the hours in front of CRT's, LCD's and
using cel phones which are the real culprit ;-^) ).  Admittedly the T
pad's can be frustrating when a finger unintentionally makes contact, but
I've more or less learned to avoid it.


> Be careful when you purchase your PCMCIA network card also.  SOME cards
> are not supported.  (I have an Intel CardBus 10/100 card from work that
> probably still isn't supported, but the card runs fine in WinNT.  Ugh.)

Yes, I have an SMC 8020BTM EtherEZ with modem card that won't function as
an Ethernet card under Linux (ok with W9x).  This card is listed as
compatible in the PCMCIA doc's.  Apparently there are some mutant cards
out there - hmmm sounds like a theme for a sci-fi novel.  At least the
modem has a full uart and works with Linux.


> Stick to regular old 10 or 10/100 cards from 3com and you'll be fine.
> Stay away from multi-function cards.  They're just a waste of power
> anyway... plug in only cards you need to use.

Well, if the machine has only 1 slot, there isn't much of an option - but
even with 2 slots there are times when I want to have ethernet. modem and
SCSI for example. 

I've also had good luck with Xircom - have been using an ether / modem
card for about 4 years that keeps on ticking.  I recently bought the
10/100 ether version and I've hod no problems with that either.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
John Karns                                              jkarns at csd.net
Bogota, Colombia                                  Voice: 57-1-341-0300