Re: [SLUG] Athlon 64 Laptop

From: Derek Glidden (dglidden@illusionary.com)
Date: Fri Jun 25 2004 - 18:21:05 EDT


On Jun 25, 2004, at 2:00 PM, Levi Bard wrote:
>
> Just funny that the athlon64 is portrayed as an oversized, overheated
> chip, but then someone suggests mac hardware. Which is amusing,
> because the G5 isn't so dissimilar. But you're right, I forgot that
> there's no G5 laptop yet, although not from lack of trying on apple's
> part.

Well, I think that the idea of putting a 3Ghz G5 in a laptop is about
as silly as putting an Athlon64 into a laptop. i.e. very. However I
wouldn't have a problem with either of them sitting on my desktop.
Very few people need anything much faster than 1Ghz anything in their
laptop, and the ones who "need" it probably really don't. (I suppose I
could be thinking of columnist Rob Enderle and his "Ferrari-branded"
laptop that makes "Vroom vroom" noises when it boots up....)

I was more suggesting that if the original poster was looking more for
a nice laptop that didn't run windows, apple has some really nice ones
that very much don't run windows. And since OS X is BSD-based, a lot
of that linux experience carries right over and it's a hellofa lot
easier than finding a laptop that will easily run linux.

It's the sad state of laptop hardware that makes me even mention it. I
spent several months shopping for a new laptop that I could run linux
on and still wound up with a Dell that locks up about twice a day for
no particular reason. It's not that any of the hardware isn't
supported; in fact all the hardware in it is extremely well supported
by linux. It's just that it's a PoS laptop. Maybe I should have known
better with Dell, but as it was, it was one of three models that a) I
could afford and b) had hardware that was fully supported by linux.
Everything else was either ridiculously expensive or had some component
(firewire, USB, PCMCIA, video) that was some oddball manufacturer/model
that made me doubt I could get linux running on it reliably or at all.

And yeah my powerbook was more expensive than the dell, but after the
fact, when I consider the amount of time I've spent unsuccessfully
trying to get linux stable on the Dell, and the amount of stress it's
caused me considering how much I did spend on it, and how it still
locks up randomly whenever it feels like it, I wish I had just bought
the powerbook to begin with.

Not that any of it is the problem of linux developers - it's just the
same old sad old story we're all familiar with, "As long as it runs
windows...." The difficulty in getting a laptop running linux anymore
was more than enough to drive me to Apple. And frankly, I really like
my powerbook and OS X now that I've used it for a while.

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