OT: notebook shopping

[Kurt Granroth]

Vaughn Treude wrote:
> The finalists:
> Dell Inspiron 1520 - with all the options I want it's around $1500. (But 
> one of the reviewers claimed its physical construction was flimsy.)
> Toshiba Tecra A9 - also around $1500 with options.
> Lenovo ThinkPad R61 - the fully-loaded version is on sale for around $1200.
> Mac Book Pro - the 2.4GHz 15" version, with the high-speed drive option, 
> is $2100, a bit out of my range. I _could_ set it up triple-boot with XP 
> (and Linux, of course) which would bring it up to $2200. But I've always 
> admired the Mac's design, the fact that OS X is based on Unix, and the 
> Mac's excellent video-editing software. (I've been unhappy with the 
> hassle of setting up this kind of stuff on Linux.) So I'm still 
> considering it, but don't know if it would be worthwhile.
> 
> At the moment I'm leaning toward the Lenovo. As far as I can tell, its 
> primary drawbacks are relatively short battery life, and the fact that 
> it is (IMHO) one butt-ugly machine. The battery isn't that big of a 
> problem, as I have two externals I bought for my ailing Sony, and I can 
> live with ugly.
> 
> Any comments or relevant experiences any of you could share?

I've had a number of iBooks, Powerbooks, Thinkpads, and other laptops 
throughout the years.  Right now, I have both a Powerbook and a Thinkpad 
which are used very regularly.  Which do I think is better?

Absolutely no question at all: the Powerbook.  And this is an older 
Powerbook, even.  A new MacBook or MacBook Pro is so much better that 
it's barely any comparison at all.

At this point, I use my Thinkpad solely for development work.  Mind you, 
it makes a great development laptop and if there was no Powerbook or 
MacBook, it would even be a great laptop overall... but since it doesn't 
exist in a vacuum, then I can't possibly recommend it.

A lot of this has to do with just using a laptop as a laptop.  You can 
get things like suspend and the like to work under Linux... but it 
doesn't work well.  For instance, on my Thinkpad T43, I had suspend 
working when I closed the lid initially, but it stopped working a year 
ago and I haven't been able to fix it since.  I can suspend directly 
through the openSUSE K-Menu, though, so no big deal.  But even then, it 
takes a good 15 to 30 seconds to suspend and another 15 seconds or more 
to resume.  I don't even have to *think* about suspending and resuming 
with my Powerbook.  It just works and it works seemingly instantaneously.

Oh, and my T43 also has some weird barely supported PATA-to-SATA bridge 
for the DVD drive.  It works, but DMA doesn't.  Which means that I can't 
watch DVDs on that drive and all disk access spikes the CPU.  YMMV may vary.

The ATI chipset on my T43 works well enough.  I got one version of Beryl 
to work with 3d-goodness, even.  Lately, though, compiz is far too slow 
to use on it.  Dunno why.  Heck, one version of the ATI driver even 
refused to work in anything higher than 1280x1024 (a non-supported 
resolution).  And even when the driver does work, it's buggy and prone 
to crashing.

It goes without saying that the Powerbook is rock-solid reliable and 
Leopard 3d-goodness works without any muss or fuss.

I could go on and on...

Linux works well for me as my primary desktop, as my development 
platform, and as my servers... but I will never use it willingly as a 
consumer laptop OS.  It just has waaaay to much work needed to be done.

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