OT: Laptop feature matrix?

Hi,

Will be starting a new job next month so will be in the market for a) child nanny robot; b) new laptop for the 3-hour round train trip.

Sadly a) doesn't exist.

But for b, anyone know of any good feature-selector matrix for current laptops?

In particular, I'm after a decent res display (1400x1050 or better), not too big but big enough for a real keyboard, must run linux perfectly (I can check linux-laptops after the fact for that). SSD would be nice, but without it being a fliddy little thing like the EEEPC.

My current machine is an HP NC 6220 which I really like, except one hinge has fractured (see rough use), short of RAM, disk is dodgey and the aux sound port micro-pcb needs changing as the headphone socket is dead. And the battery is shot.

All of those are eminently fixable but would probably cost more in parts than a new machine.

Haven't had much luck googling, but as there are feature-matrix sites for things like digicams, I feel I may have missed something...

Cheers

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts
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down a bit, you can pick and choose to your heart's content :-)

Reply to
Jeff Gaines

Jeff Gaines wibbled on Thursday 29 July 2010 23:18

Very nice - thank you sir!

That will give me an idea of what's available.

Cheers

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

try and avoid intel graphics. Acers seem to like Linux. Mine popped up no sweat, and everything seems to work. If I used it on battery, I'd play around with the power save settings though.

Not sure really.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The Natural Philosopher wibbled on Friday 30 July 2010 00:05

Yes, I agree with that. My HP has one and it is the weakest point. Poor video performance and a tendency to crash out completely - though Ubuntu

10.04 seems very solid there - only took them 4 years to work around the duff chip!

Noted.

Cheers,

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

For linux I try to avoid anything *except* Intel graphics ... performance isn't great for 3D or video playback, but it works with no faffing.

Reply to
Andy Burns

Andy Burns gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

nVidia on several laptops here - just _works_ perfectly under Ubuntu. OK, so you have to click on the nice friendly little automatically-popping-up dialogue box that says "Would you like the closed-source drivers?" but that's not exactly a hardship. Full 3d Compiz whizzy-desktop at native

1920x1200. Utterly reliable.

Especially compared to the fact that one of 'em has no drivers available for Win7 at all...

Reply to
Adrian

I'm sure they work if you choose a distro (like Ubuntu) that is friendly to them, but closed source drivers count as "faffing" in my book.

Reply to
Andy Burns

well that's interesting because I had many problems with my onboard chipset, slow and when later versions got it speeded up, buggy behaviour.

Its generally reckoned to be pretty poorly supported.

As I discovered when I went looking.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Nvidia issues are well known. Non free drivers work VERY WELL. On 32 bit anyway. Not sure on 64bit.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Theey shouldn't. It merely means a package that doesn't fall under Gnu whatever and for which no source is available.

When did you last compile linux source for a driver anyway? Or a windows one.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Four years ago to get WiFi support on a laptop before distro had the driver.

A couple of years ago to fix interlaced PAL output for Radeon graphics that a distro upgrade broke

A couple of years ago to re-enable SKY2 ethernet support that Redhat/Centos had spuriously disabled.

A year ago to fix a PCI BAR bug affecting a DVB capture card that only appeared under Xen.

I *do* value availability of source code ...

I'm 13 years out of writing windows drivers, and glad of it.

Reply to
Andy Burns

Well, it *is* an NT reccomendation. Generally speaking, whatever he says, the opposite is the sensible thing to do.

Reply to
Huge

Laptop or desktop?

From what I understand:

Intel 945: OK, but have performance problems in Ubuntu 9.04 (possibly now solved). Possibly limit on maximum panel size. nVidia G-Force 5200 (ancient): works nicely with closed-source drivers, but took about 4/5 years to get stable in Ubuntu Intel GMA500: no experience, but hear lots of problems

My tip would be to go for something that isn't an Atom. The amount of CPU grunt you get from a Pentium-class processor is definitely worth paying a little extra for. My Centrino 1.6GHz from 2004 is quicker than my Atom N270

1.6GHz from 2009 (and about the same advertised battery life too, though the Centrino is a 14" laptop and the Atom a 9" netbook)

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

the bigger the screen the shorter the batteries will last.

[g]
Reply to
george [dicegeorge]

Depends if the large screen versions use the same battery packs as the small screen versions, or not.

Some of the latest wide screen laptops are too wide to use comfortably in an airline seat, which may or may not be a consideration.

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

george [dicegeorge] wibbled on Friday 30 July 2010 14:42

True, and there's another rub: I don't actually want widescreen format - I have no use for it. But most are now widescreen.

I find my 14" just right keyboard wise, doesn't take up more than its fair share of table space on the train (sitting at a table for 1:25, it's important not to piss off your fellow commuters)

But my screen is good on resolution at 1400x1050 and I wouldn't settle for less, which rather put me off the non pro Apple laptops which have IMO pathetic resolution.

The other rub is ideally I'd like an SSD disk of my choice - the markey is limited there too. I'd be happy with a diskless, but might buy the one with the tiniest disk and sell it. Only need 60-odd GB but shakeproof with good speed and nearly no latency would make a huge difference.

Reply to
Tim Watts

I always feel I'll be no help, but possibly add something a bit off the wall. By design and by ebay accident, I've bought a couple of very, very cheap laptops within the last few months. Both current or almost current models, being used to get nowhere trying to find out why audio is so dire on various Windows 7 machines. See a previous posting of mine.....

First, you can't trust the specs of the online retailers about anything but the most banal features. I think most of them have no idea about anything like ExpressCards, Firewire etc.

Second, beware of specs from Indian websites. The machines sold there seem to be better specced than the same models sold in the UK.

Third, if you want to be able to Skype or anything like that (and I find it really useful for communication about technical problems), watch out for lunatic design decisions on the machines. Both my Acer 5536 and Lenovo G550 have cameras and a mic mounted behind the keyboard in the main body of the machine just above the HD and near the fan. Both use noise reduction so dramatic that no-one can understand a word being said. Switch the NR off and the far end hears rumblefizzbuzz with occasional hints of speech in the background.

Neither of these have a high resolution, but the machine I'd take on a train is my slightly older end of line 12.1" Acer 2920. Lovely compact machine, good keyboard, but I need my glasses to read it (old age?). Much, much, much better than the not much smaller Tosh Netbook, but far far better for a similar price.

I couldn't make the wifi work on Ubuntu on the Lenovo. Not sure why. Must try again when I have time.

Reply to
Bill

Ah, another convert. Mostly I run out of depth before height as well. I discovered that Linux X windows is capable of driving a sideways turned screen.

Yup. back it all up on the server so its no big loss if it gets nicked.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Lots of progress on wifi recently. Latest kernels have better support and it may be the Lenovo chipset is now 'in' Once its 'in' its usually pretty much plug and play.

Old ACer Aspire is definitely my 'easiest to run Linux on' machine of all. Just needed a bit of broadcom WiFi firmware from 'non free' IIRC.

Screen came straight up. everything worked.64 bit Linux too. Battery has expired however. so its on the shelf pending getting a new one.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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