[ale] Basic Laptop for presentations question

Jim Popovitch jimpop at gmail.com
Wed Apr 15 15:15:46 EDT 2009


On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 09:37, Richard Bronosky <Richard at bronosky.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure it was a T60. I know that is was Intel everything
> (cpu, video, wireless). My issues (from memory of early 2007)
> included:
>  hibernate/suspend

  My T60p had problems with that under Gutsy, but Fiesty and Intrepid
work out of the box.

>  power management/battery life

 Known fan issues (need tpfand for some distros).  Also you want
dynamic CPU mgmt set in the bios.

>  dual head without reboot [1] [2]

 Proprietary ATI drivers do this without any issues (since pre-fiesty
days)  And before you scream abt proprietary drivers... consider that
the hardware is proprietary.

>  finger print scanner

 I don't have that on mine (never saw the usefulness....)

>  extra/media keys

 Most distros include easy to use gui tools to set these.. I've only
seen past issues with vol-up/down, but those were easily resolved.

>  video playback weirdness after getting dual head to work

Hmmm, that I have never experienced.

> [1] Luckily at MySQLConf07 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/
> introduced me to Jeff Waugh http://bethesignal.org/about/ who along
> with Ross Burton http://burtonini.com/ and Keith Packard
> http://keithp.com/ got me working. That's a lot of fire power required
> for such a common need.

I agree, that seems excessive.  These days I'd rather ask a
college-age kid as they seem to be more up-to-date with relevant
hardware than some of the older Linux dogs. ;-)

> [2] I interviewed 70+ of Linux laptop toters are the conference and
> only 3 of them could use an external display without rebooting. JW was
> the only one who knew what he did to make it happen.

Well, did you ask them about their need to do this, how often, what for, etc?

I've used Linux on a T60 for years now doing presos and such, I don't
really recall it being a pain.

-Jim P.



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