Okay, i am not going to invest in the same laptop as you guys, but i am going to invest in one with the same graphic card.
The problems you are talking about is it a problem in mplayer is a mplayer problem or is it a problem in general when showing movies? (I normally use Xine and Fluxbox).
I know that the graphic card is using the memory on the computer, how much will be necessary to run X with a couple of applications? Right now i have looked at one with 512Mb of ram.
Thanks for the answer.
update: I have chosen not to insert the built-in CD-rom drive (I save $100), so i have currently no plugin media, so its gonna be fun to find alternatives to the gentoo cd install

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Laptop: Zepto 2314W, Pentium M 730, 512 Mb Pc-3200
Server 1: Athlon XP 3200+ | Asus A7V880 | 768 Mb DDR Pc-3200
Server 2: Pentium III Coppermine | Unknown MB | 64 Mb
All running Gentoo
www.hyggenet.org - IRC-Network for the pleasant atmosphere.