[vox] Re: Laptop recommendations -- my final decision

[Ken Bloom]

On 8/26/05, Don Werve <donw at agentsix.net> wrote:
> Ken Bloom wrote:
> > In the end I got a compaq presario v2310us, based on the AMD Turion64
> > chip. I got it at CompUSA for about $850 after rebates, which seems
> > like an amazing deal for an AMD64. )ne of the rebates, a $150 rebate
> > only lasted 6 days, ending today, and apparently this was so popular
> > there were no more left in the 4 nearest stores to me. So I bought the
> > display model.
> 
> Work got one of these for me a few months ago; if you're happy with the
> physical configuration (I hate the widescreen layout, and the keyboard
> isn't as nice as the ThinkPad), it's not a bad machine, and they
> certainly are cheap.
> 
> You'll need 'acpi_sleep=s3_bios' to get suspend working,

Thanks for the tip.

> and ndiswrapper
> for the BroadCom internal network card -- if anyone knows of a native
> driver, I'm all ears.

No native driver yet. This is the same chipset as Airport Extreme, and
that doesn't have linux support yet (and apple users can't use
ndiswrapper), and broadcom isn't cooperative. There's a project to
reverse engineer it though: http://linux-bcom4301.sourceforge.net/.

>  With powernowd, I get about six hours on the
> extended battery, two and a half on the standard one, and mine is the
> shitty CPU (Celeron).

powernowd - good tip. thanks.

do I need to worry about this thing overheating? it seems that the
trackpad gets really hot.

--Ken Bloom