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OtonVM
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 30 Dec 2005
Posts: 103
Location: Slovenia
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 Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Lloeki wrote: | | Code: | | no need for dual core, but 64bit is welcome. |
hah, if you want to save money, go the other way around. dualcore is really great, esp. under linux, and gentoo all the more, while 64bits has really no true interest as of now (like having >4Gb ram or breaking yr 2038 barrier). maybe in 3 years it'll be standard, but in 3 years, you'll certainly change your laptop.
that said, the core2 is certainly a great cpu. I run it in 32bit and it's blazing fast:
as example: genlop says:
| Code: | Fri Sep 29 16:41:52 2006 >>> kde-base/kdelibs-3.5.4-r2
merge time: 23 minutes and 7 seconds.
Wed Sep 27 02:31:34 2006 >>> app-office/openoffice-2.0.3
merge time: 4 hours, 47 minutes and 36 seconds.
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OOo would be twice less if it was using some makefile instead of a weird tcsh build script (this makes -j3 inefficient, and only one core is used. still, the score is good).
the asus w7j (my gf's) is a great laptop, dell m1210 (mine) too, if I put my suspending woes aside (search the forum) but it's certainly a stupid configuration overlook.
I had nothing but successes with linux and asus&dell laptops (5 in total). |
Hmmmm I don't know... core duo looks fast from your build times... However... Well, the thing is, I'm going to spend 1200, that's final. More seems like overdoing it without reason. The only thing I would get for more would be a better gpu and 17˝wich is too big anyway... And the best I can get for 1200 is that dell or that acer... I'm inclined to dell, to be honest. But it's also the first time I'm buying a laptop in my life and I'm used to build a pc piece by piece so I'm very unsure in what I belive is best since I'm forced to choose a complete package.
Btw, why on earth are you building Oo from source anyway??  
EDIT:
I just found a new Acer... Don't kill me now but it looks ok. http://www.mimovrste.com/katalog/product.php?product_id=2750024626&rank=250000_299999&orderby=priceasc It's in slovenian, but you should be able to understand the main info. And do you think that these tests are reliable? http://www.intel.com/performance/mobile/mainstream/ms_benchmarks_tbl.htm From those the acer cpu seems great. |
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TenPin
Guru
Joined: 26 Aug 2002
Posts: 500
Location: Kansas City
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:51 pm Post subject: |
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ThinkingInBinary can you get XV video output to work in mplayer/xine with the Intel 915 graphics card? I doubt it using just the vesa driver which means you would have to use software scaling for watching DVDs etc right? There's no way I'm getting a laptop without XV support :/
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For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching. |
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Lloeki
Guru
Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 437
Location: France
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 7:52 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Btw, why on earth are you building Oo from source anyway |
better kde integration
| Quote: | | with the Intel 915 graphics card? I doubt it using just the vesa driver |
i915 has its own x11/dri driver, which is the same as i8xx, supporting 3d accel and xv.
ThinkingInBinary was talking about console framebuffer, not X driver.
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ttuttle
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 03 Oct 2004
Posts: 131
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:10 pm Post subject: |
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| OtonVM wrote: | | Wow ThinkingInBinary! Thank you for this essay! 8O It most probably answered most questions I would have come across once I bought the laptop... And most current ones. I would only ask you one more thing... can you please post cpuinfo cat output? That way I can finally see some real specs of this cpu. |
Here is /proc/cpuinfo, with it running at 2.00 GHz (I believe the BogoMIPS are right, since I think it boots at 2 GHz):
| Code: |
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 2000.000
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 4002.97
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 2000.000
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3995.67
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And, just in case it helps, x86info says:
| Code: |
x86info v1.13. Dave Jones 2001-2003
Feedback to <davej@redhat.com>.
Found 2 CPUs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU #1
Family: 6 Model: 15 Stepping: 6 Type: 0 Brand: 0
CPU Model: Unknown CPU Original OEM
Feature flags:
fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflsh dtes acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 selfsnoop ht acc pbe
Extended feature flags:
est tm2
L1 Instruction cache:
:Size 32KB 8-way associative.
line size=64 bytes.
L1 Data cache:
Size: 32KB 8-way associative.
line size=64 bytes.
Instruction TLB: 4K pages, 4-way associative, 128 entries.
Processor serial: 0000-06F6-0000-0000-0000-0000
The physical package supports 2 logical processors
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU #2
Family: 6 Model: 15 Stepping: 6 Type: 0 Brand: 0
CPU Model: Unknown CPU Original OEM
Feature flags:
fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflsh dtes acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 selfsnoop ht acc pbe
Extended feature flags:
est tm2
L1 Instruction cache:
:Size 32KB 8-way associative.
line size=64 bytes.
L1 Data cache:
Size: 32KB 8-way associative.
line size=64 bytes.
Instruction TLB: 4K pages, 4-way associative, 128 entries.
Processor serial: 0000-06F6-0000-0000-0000-0000
The physical package supports 2 logical processors
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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As a couple of benchmarks, it builds Firefox in about 18 minutes, gcc 3.4.6-r1 in about 20 minutes, gcc 4.1.1 in about 33 minutes, and does Super PI to 1 million digits in about 28 seconds. Since it's got 2 GB of RAM, the "Updating Portage cache" part of emerge --sync takes about 30 seconds, and eupdatedb takes a similar amount of time. Spending a little extra money on RAM is almost always better than spending a ton of money on a marginally faster CPU, unless you're running very CPU-intensive programs that use very little RAM and don't access the disk often. A large disk cache is a huge asset.
| Quote: | | jimstapleton: Thank you. I also found out that the core2duo are 64bit. Maybe today that's still kind of "new" but in 3 years that's gonna be a standard... I think I need that. Not because I need 64bit support now (I run gentoo x86 on amd64) but because I fear some applications might just drop 32bit alltogether... Especially in the ms world. |
I would warn you not to use 64-bit mode, at least with Gentoo. In 32-bit mode, there is code in the BIOS that dims the display when the lid is closed. But when running in 64-bit mode, the system hangs when you close the lid instead. I assume once Vista comes out, Dell will release a BIOS update if necessary. But you should probably not try installing a 64-bit Gentoo system just yet.
| Lloeki wrote: | | Code: | | no need for dual core, but 64bit is welcome. |
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hah, if you want to save money, go the other way around. dualcore is really great, esp. under linux, and gentoo all the more, while 64bits has really no true interest as of now (like having >4Gb ram or breaking yr 2038 barrier). maybe in 3 years it'll be standard, but in 3 years, you'll certainly change your laptop.
[/quote]
Agreed. Dual core is almost a 100% increase in speed, especially when compiling, but 64-bit varies, probably under 25% increase for most things.
| Lloeki wrote: |
that said, the core2 is certainly a great cpu. I run it in 32bit and it's blazing fast:
as example: genlop says:
| Code: | Fri Sep 29 16:41:52 2006 >>> kde-base/kdelibs-3.5.4-r2
merge time: 23 minutes and 7 seconds.
Wed Sep 27 02:31:34 2006 >>> app-office/openoffice-2.0.3
merge time: 4 hours, 47 minutes and 36 seconds.
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Agreed. It's very fast.
| numerodix wrote: | | Quick question for you. I just ordered a Core Duo w/ 1GB ram a few days ago. And I know that going from Core Duo 1.73/1GB RAM to Core 2 Duo 2.0/2GB RAM is quite the added expense, easily 500 am I right? So why did you pick a model that didn't offer an ATI video card (60-70 more expensive)? I mean since you were already spending that much.. |
I don't speak Euros, and Dell doesn't offer the Core Duo on that model anymore, so I can't judge the CPU upgrade. But they charged around $150 for the CPU upgrade and $188 for the RAM upgrade, which Google says is approximately 266 Euros.
I picked the 14.1" model for many reasons... First, I don't have much of a need for heavy 3D graphics--I don't play games enough to make it worth it, and I prefer a very minimalist desktop to a fancy 3D-rendered one. Second, I wanted the smaller screen, since I like to take the notebook with me, and a 14.1" notebook is already cramped in a bus or airplane seat. Third, I wanted longer battery life, and the e1405 gets 6-8 hours of battery life with the long battery. An e1505 would have had a bigger screen and a discrete graphics card, which would both have added to power consumption, plus it would have been heavier. Fourth, I would have avoided the ATI cards (which supposedly have very bad drivers) and upgraded to the Nvidia card, which was quite a bit more expensive. Basically, the integrated graphics were just better for my needs.
| Quote: | | Also, how long did it take them to deliver? :? |
I paid $40 for 2nd day shipping. Here's what happened:
Purchased: September 9
Estimated ship date: on or before September 19
Kitted, Built, and Tested: September 10-11
Boxed: September 11-13 (apparently "boxing" involves shipping from Malaysia, where they manufacture the machines, to Nashville, Tennessee, where they package and ship them)
Actual ship date: September 13
Estimated arrival date: September 14
Actual (rescheduled) arrival date: September 15
So Dell managed to go from my order to the box being at my house in under a week, despite the "3-6 business days" build time Dell quotes and a friend's suggestion that boxing could take up to 3 days. I don't know if upgraded shipping corresponds to priority treatment of the system during the manufacturing process or not, so a system shipped with regular delivery may well take a few more days to build as well.
You should expect Intel's tests to be biased, but I can say that those appear to be reasonable. I get about a 1.5-3x increase in speed over my older Pentium M (1.7 GHz, 400 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache).
| OtonVM wrote: | | From those the acer cpu seems great. |
It's the same one in all the other Core 2 Duo laptops.
| TenPin wrote: | | ThinkingInBinary can you get XV video output to work in mplayer/xine with the Intel 915 graphics card? I doubt it using just the vesa driver which means you would have to use software scaling for watching DVDs etc right? There's no way I'm getting a laptop without XV support :/ |
Actually I haven't. It's strange. I just switched the video to xshm, which works well enough. This isn't a big issue for me, but I also hope it gets fixed.
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Last edited by ttuttle on Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:13 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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OtonVM
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 30 Dec 2005
Posts: 103
Location: Slovenia
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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ThinkingInBinary: Thanks again. I have as much info now as I can get I think... No, I won't be running a 64bit os yet, but I'm thinking about the future (and yes, not proud of it, vista).
I'm verry confused but almost decided on what to buy. Today I visided a huge multimedia center and they had like 40 laptops in this price range so I could have a look around, trying their speed and screens. They didn't have any dell laptops there, but unfortunately it seems it would be almost impossible to buy it anyway, since I couldn't have any support and dell wouldn't know where to send it anyway (speaking of italy)... And while comparing vaios, hps, apples and acers, acers was the winner. There was also a small mac that dissapointed me somewhat... I looks nice but it's sort of... fragile... Besides, I might be able to remove winxp from the acer config and change ram from 1k to 2k. And I get two years of full support free of charge. So the last choice I posted seems to be the best one.
Ufff I'm so fed up with this right now.  Well, I must thank you all again for helping me and helping me decide or at lest reduce the choices to what is best atm... |
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kopp
Advocate
Joined: 09 Apr 2004
Posts: 2885
Location: Grenoble, France
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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| From Dell, I ordered on Sunday, and got it the following thrusday, it actually took just under 4 days, and I ordered the usual way, no special shipping. No I have to wait to get home but hey, ordering the same on dell.se would have cost me 350 more ... |
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numerodix
l33t
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 743
Location: nl.eu
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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Dell told me expected delivery date is 17 days after I placed my order.
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OtonVM
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 30 Dec 2005
Posts: 103
Location: Slovenia
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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| kopp wrote: | | From Dell, I ordered on Sunday, and got it the following thrusday, it actually took just under 4 days, and I ordered the usual way, no special shipping. No I have to wait to get home but hey, ordering the same on dell.se would have cost me 350 more ... |
What do you mean? How/where did you order from? dell.com into france or stockholm? That would be usa into europe? |
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kopp
Advocate
Joined: 09 Apr 2004
Posts: 2885
Location: Grenoble, France
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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| I ordered to Dell France, but they only ship in France. Since I knew I would go back in France soon, it was OK. I checked the same config on Dell Sweden, and it's 350 more expensive thant what I got. |
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OtonVM
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 30 Dec 2005
Posts: 103
Location: Slovenia
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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| kopp wrote: | | I ordered to Dell France, but they only ship in France. Since I knew I would go back in France soon, it was OK. I checked the same config on Dell Sweden, and it's 350 more expensive thant what I got. |
Oh I see... Well I'm trying the similar thing with italy. I can give them my address in slo though. Maybe they can ship it to me anyway. But I can't make an account; it seems they have some problems with the server. |
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Kysen
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
Posts: 128
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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| System76 make laptops themselfs that work with Ubuntu Linux and only ship with Ubuntu. That way you know its going to work Gentoo, when i get my next system its going to be with them. As for shipping outside of the US they do that but i would check to make sure they can ship to your country.[/url] |
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OtonVM
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 30 Dec 2005
Posts: 103
Location: Slovenia
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Kysen wrote: | | System76 make laptops themselfs that work with Ubuntu Linux and only ship with Ubuntu. That way you know its going to work Gentoo, when i get my next system its going to be with them. As for shipping outside of the US they do that but i would check to make sure they can ship to your country.[/url] |
Very nice. Practical for us residents... I just hope this service survives. But it's too expensive to ship the laptop in the eu... |
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dbcoder
n00b
Joined: 13 Nov 2005
Posts: 47
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 9:49 pm Post subject: |
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IBM thinkpads work great under linux, and are very well built.
I can't tell you how happy I am with my laptop. It runs gentoo flawlessly, and I even have my fingerprint scanner working. The build quality on this machine is unrivaled. I've never seen a laptop so sturdy. The keyboard is amazing to. It's better than any other keyboard I've typed on.... which is kinda weird, because it's a latop keyboard. But it's nice.
If you are looking for nice graphics, look elsewhere. The nicest chip IBM/Lenovo puts in their laptop is the ATI300x iIRC.
My notebook is a t43.
It's a 1.73 ghz intel centrino w/ the ipw2200 chipset (in kernel drivers, but I like the userspace drivers better), I have a nice set up where if I'm on the go I use slap in an extra battery in the bay, and if I'm in my dorm I use the cdrom if need be.
So, I think IBM laptops are the way to go if you are looking for a speedy, but really reliable notebook. |
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CrazyFlash
n00b
Joined: 15 Sep 2003
Posts: 18
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| Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:07 am Post subject: |
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i have bought the benq joybook s73g and i love it.
i don't use gentoo anymore since 1 year. but it works fine with ubuntu (without any custom configuration), so gentoo will work too. |
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mikb
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Dec 2005
Posts: 120
Location: Sydney Australia
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| Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:38 am Post subject: |
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| dbcoder wrote: | | So, I think IBM laptops are the way to go if you are looking for a speedy, but really reliable notebook. |
I'd agree. If money is no object upfront, buy an IBM/Lenovo. It's just a lot less trouble later. They are expensive, though.
And don't settle for less than 1GB RAM, and a 7200RPM drive (take whatever is the biggest 7200RPM they offer).
My wife runs her business on a T42p (under Windows), and we've never had a minutes trouble with the hardware.
Where I work I have a Dell, running XP. Not worth the time of day - two harddrives and the motherboard replaced in 18 months. AND they were only 5400RPM drives.
I have an ASUS Z81K, with Mobile AMD64 3700+. I run it with full 64-bit OS, just to annoy the Windows folks around me. It runs rings around the Dell. I haven't used a dual core system, though.
Things to avoid:
- Broadcom wireless cards - yes, there's ndiswrapper, and now bcm43xx, but the closed firmware IS STILL A PAIN, the drivers are flaky.
- The GPUs are a pain. I don't know about NVidia, but the ATI driver drove me nuts under Fedora and Kubuntu. The open source driver is not as fast, but the up to the minute version of the R300 code has the necessary stability.
There's plenty of info available in the forums here to help you get the best out of a high-end laptop. Use it.
I prefer AMD over Intel, but as I've said, I haven't put a toe into the Dual Core water.
Even more than buying a desktop, set your budget, and buy the fastest CPU, the most RAM, and best drive (speed vs space) you can afford. Then look for lots of USB 2.0 ports, firewire, wireless (pretty much standard these days) and bluetooth. If you're not just using it as a luggable desktop replacement - check out the battery life. Heat can be an issue too. Highend CPUs and GPUs can over heat, and then you crash.
I've tuned my cpufreq config so that changes are smooth, and rapid, and I don't use more power than necessary. Keeps the fan noise down as well.
Remember laptops are hard to engineer (build quality is important), and hard to upgrade, so it matters to get it right the first time . Discard anything that feels flimsy when you pick it up. Have a good hard look at the screen, and see if you can live with it. The more resolution the better, especially under X.
Google for guides on getting your preferred distro going on your candidate hardware.
My Scorecard (from experience):
- IBM
- Toshiba
- ASUS, but pick your model carefully
- Avoid Dell
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SASHABELLA
n00b
Joined: 25 Feb 2007
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 1:46 pm Post subject: Where to go to buy a pc |
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| Where is the best place to go to get a pc and which is better desk or lap? |
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number_nine
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 136
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| Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 2:03 am Post subject: |
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To those of you with a Thinkpad T43 w/ATI graphics: do you have suspend to RAM (sleep) and suspend to disk (hibernate) working reliably? If so, could you post your kernel .config file (along with version), your xorg.conf and any modified files from /etc/hibernate?
My T43 model is 2668-89U. I'd recommend/love it, if only I could get suspend-to-RAM and suspend-to-disk (hibernate) to work consistently. Suspend-to-RAM used to work reliably, until I started trying get hibernate (software suspend2 aka swsup2) to work. Now both are a crap shoot. Usually they each work once after a fresh boot, but after that, they generally do not work, and fail in different ways.
As much as I'd like to run Linux on this machine exclusively, Windows came with it and worked reliably out-of-the-box. 
I'd be infinitely grateful of anyone who posted the magic config files that got it all working! |
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beOriginal
n00b
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 1:43 am Post subject: |
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| love a good mac, very cheap |
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