[lug] notebook compatibility

[jkarns]

On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Johnston, Bernard L wrote:

>Concerning putting Linux on a notebook, I happened to come across
>this link last night:
>http://home.earthlink.net/~dstwins/1721.html 
>
>It looks like it's worth reading carefully if you're about to do it.
>
>:-)Bernie

Also see:

Subject: IBM introduces Red Hat laptop

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2333928,00.html

(more below)


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tim Fredrick [mailto:fredrick at acd.ucar.edu]
>Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 3:57 PM
>To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
>Cc: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
>Subject: Re: [lug] notebook compatibility
>
>
>> ...
>> Compaq has had a lot of problems with compatibility in the past, but I
>> don't know anything about their laptops these days.  I'd recommend the
>> IBM ThinkPads quit highly (I've had 3).  The Sony Vaio is pretty sweet
>> too, at 2.9 pounds.  Kevin has a Toshiba that he likes quite a lot.

I just bought a Compaq 1687 and installed SuSE 6.2.  All seems well,
except for the fact that the (Synaptics) touch pad cursor jumps around the
screen sometimes while in X.  Seems to correlate with disk access; i.e.
jumps around (mostly to the upper right corner) when the cursor is being
moved and the system accesses the HD.  Anyone have similar experience, and
maybe some information about how to remedy this?  It seems to be the
biggest annoyance right now regarding running Linux on this machine.

Also has an RJ-45 jack, but evidently no guts behind it, as nothing gets
detected in the way of a NIC by Linux or W98.

In contrast to the P133 Presario 1070, PCMCIA starts and stops without
hanging the system, and the system doesn't frequetly hang on shutdown
before dismounting the file system.  It uses the ATI RagePro graphics
chip, which I have configured to use the Mach64 x-server.  


>> If I were to get a new one, I'd be looking at the Vaio quite seriously
>> as an alternative to the new ThinkPads.  Shaving another 1.5 pounds off
>> the lightest ThinkPad would be nice.

A matter of personal taste I suppose, bit I prefer "heavy" to swapping CD
drive for floppy.

>> Whatever you do, get something with the NeoMagic video chipset.

The ATI RagePro chip is reputed to have been plgued by overheating
problems during its development, so the NeoMagic chips may run cooler, I
don't know.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
John Karns                                       jkarns at atlas.csd.net