On Thu, 2002-05-02 at 18:14, Sam Storie wrote:
> I am in the market for a laptop and these days I am using Linux (Debian) 
> as my primary OS.

Like Erik and Lorry, I went to Dell for my laptop.  I've got a 4100,
which I got because it's relatively inexpensive and Dell offers a
1600x1200 UXGA screen with it.  (I know a lot of people cringe when they
see a resolution like that, but remember that you can almost always
increase font sizes, and LCD panels are *much* crisper than CRTs)

I've got almost all of the hardware working on it.  The winmodem works
with a proprietary driver (well, mine works.  some people apparently
have a different chip than I do), and the ATI video card I got works
unaccelerated with XFree86 up to 4.1, and accelerated video works with
4.2.  I haven't been able to get the XVideo extension working, and
TV-out is a no-go as well, but those are the only remaining problems for
me.

However, you should be warned that it has a crummy AC'97 audio card that
only does sound output at 48kHz.  44.1kHz audio (a much more common
sample rate) has to be interpolated and have extra samples generated to
bring it up to 48000 samples/sec..

If you feel like getting one, I'd recommend getting an extra battery.  I
barely ever use the DVD drive, so may as well not let the drive bay go
to waste.  Also, note that Dell systems have problems when APIC
(advanced programmable interrupt controller) support is enabled in the
kernel -- something Debian does by default in 2.4.x kernels.  You'll
have to recompile to have a 2.4.x system work right, but 2.2.x works
fine.

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   Any philosophy that can be
/ \/ \(_)| ' // ._\  / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__   put in a nutshell belongs
\_||_/|_||_|_\\___/  \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)  there
[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]
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