Am currently trying to choose between a couple of laptops, the luck winner of which will have Freebsd loaded alongside WinXP. Dell Latitude d600 with Radeon 9000? video, intel pro wireless or IBM R51 - Intel Extreme2, intel pro wireless. The main differences will likely be the video and maybe bios, acpi...? Can someone suggest to me whether these are both safe choices? Am I better off installing 5.4 or 6.0? Thanks, Graham/ -- Kindness can be infectious - try it. Graham North Vancouver, BC www.soleado.ca -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.5/177 - Release Date: 11/21/2005
On Wed, 23 Nov 2005 11:42, Graham North wrote:> Am currently trying to choose between a couple of laptops, the luck > winner of which will have Freebsd loaded alongside WinXP. > > Dell Latitude d600 with Radeon 9000? video, intel pro wireless > or > IBM R51 - Intel Extreme2, intel pro wireless. > The main differences will likely be the video and maybe bios, acpi...? > Can someone suggest to me whether these are both safe choices?I'd say the Dell's video is more likely to work (even 3d).> Am I better off installing 5.4 or 6.0?I'd try 6.0 myself. -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20051123/27b24c5f/attachment.bin
On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 05:12:46PM -0800, Graham North wrote:> Am currently trying to choose between a couple of laptops, the luck > winner of which will have Freebsd loaded alongside WinXP. > > Dell Latitude d600 with Radeon 9000? video, intel pro wireless > or > IBM R51 - Intel Extreme2, intel pro wireless. > The main differences will likely be the video and maybe bios, acpi...? > Can someone suggest to me whether these are both safe choices? > Am I better off installing 5.4 or 6.0?AFAIK there are still some issues with suspend-to-ram with the Dell (and I never liked the way they wrote their ASL, but it's more a style issue ;) On the other hand, I don't remember if the IBM R51 do have the same kind of issue with suspend-to-ram, though I'm pretty sure suspending to ram work for almost IBM thinkpads under FreeBSD. -- Bruno Ducrot -- Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? -- Don't know. Don't care.
Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2005-Nov-23 11:59 UTC
ACPI problems with Dell laptops (was: Laptop choices)
On Tuesday, 22 November 2005 at 17:12:46 -0800, Graham North wrote:> Am currently trying to choose between a couple of laptops, the luck > winner of which will have Freebsd loaded alongside WinXP. > > Dell Latitude d600 with Radeon 9000? video, intel pro wireless > or > IBM R51 - Intel Extreme2, intel pro wireless. > The main differences will likely be the video and maybe bios, acpi...? > Can someone suggest to me whether these are both safe choices? > Am I better off installing 5.4 or 6.0?I've had both Dell and ThinkPad (no longer IBM). I prefer Dell, despite their attempts to convince me otherwise. However, we currently seem to have significant ACPI problems with Dell laptops. I'm writing this on an Inspiron 6000 running 7-CURRENT, but the same problems occur with 6.0: if I enable ACPI, timing goes to hell, and some things just time out. There was a similar message a couple of days ago from an owner of (I think) the latest Latitude machine, which sounded even worse. My requests for feedback about how to solve the problem have so far not been resolved. If you're otherwise tending towards Dell, I'd suggest you watch this space until there's some indication that the problems will be resolved. Nothing of this says that ThinkPads will do better, of course. I don't know what the situation is there. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers
#Subject: Laptop choices #Am currently trying to choose between a couple of laptops, the luck #winner of which will have Freebsd loaded alongside WinXP. #Dell Latitude d600 with Radeon 9000? video, intel pro wireless #or #IBM R51 - Intel Extreme2, intel pro wireless. #The main differences will likely be the video and maybe bios, acpi...? #Can someone suggest to me whether these are both safe choices? I am myself using a Dell 500m with an Intel Extreme Graphics 2 and a Intel Pro Wireless. It works fine, although you should know that there is no DRM/DRI support for the i915 chipset (which the extreme graphics 2 uses), so I'd go with the radeon card if DRM/DRI matters to you. ACPI works fine, but I'm having problems with it registering when I open/close the lid. But I'm sure both laptops would work fine, just note the i915 support problem. Also, note down to yourself that you need to load/compile the ipw kernel module for Intel pro wireless support (this module is NOT listed in the default kernel .conf for unknown reasons) #Am I better off installing 5.4 or 6.0? I'd say you should go with 6.0. It features much better wireless support and I'm sure theres some acpi changes you could benefit from. # #Thanks, Graham/ # # #-- #Kindness can be infectious - try it. # #Graham North #Vancouver, BC #www.soleado.ca Regards, Sune Wettersteen Denmark
At 2005-11-29 10:19:17+0000, "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" writes:> On Thursday, 24 November 2005 at 11:17:41 -0500, freebsd-lists@dclg.ca wrote: > > > > On the [Dell] warrenty... I'm hard on equipment and I depend on my > > equipment. I've been impressed that if I put my foot down and "say" > > that I believe something needs replacing, then without much fuss, > > they do it. The next day onsite service is cool. > > You obviously have better experience than I do. My Inspiron 6000 was > apparently used: it arrived without the usual plastic coating on the > lid, with scratches which couldn't have come from transport instead. > Also the ejector for the PC Card fell apart shortly after I got it. > It took them over 3 weeks to get a replacement lid to me, by which > time I had left for Europe. By the time I get home I will have had > the machine for 6 weeks, too long to return it, and only then will I > be able to fight the Dell service department about the ejector. Only > some time after then will they be able to replace the lid.Yeah. The "next day on-site service" for my wife's Dell took *two weeks* to arrive (and replace the motherboard, which we had diagnosed as the source of the fault after about 10 minutes). Never again. iBook on order. Nick B