Can you help me choose my ultraportable?

T

Treppiede

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 12, 2003
Messages
184
What's up guys?

I have had a little dilemma for a while now... some of you might have seen my other thread that describes how I am pushing my good little Satellite to its limits, but I am in need of some good mobile power now, and I think it's time for the little Satellite to become my only official wardriving machine anyways. ;)

Long story short, I may soon have a respectable amount of cash to blow on a Laptop. I would prefer to remain under $1500, but if necessary I can stretch that a couple hundred bucks. The problem is that I am looking for something very specific and I doubt it even exists! Here's the perfect laptop for me:

- Ultraportable! Possibly under 4 lbs, but willing to stretch to 5lbs with battery. I like these new 1280x800 LCDs that are equipping most ultraportables nowadays. I don't care if Optical drive is external or integrated, although integrated is a plus.
- Pentium-M 533MHz BUS based
- any nVidia GPU (NOT ATI)

That's all I ask! So far I have found many ultraportable laptops with all those characteristics except for the GPU, which always wound up being an Intel Extreme. The reason why I would prefer some sort of nVidia is simple: I may play some games seldomly, and I would like them to run decently. ATI is not an option for two reasons:
- ATI doesn't support Linux/BSD
- I never liked ATI

Just for you guys to understand what I am looking for... something like the ASUS W5A would be perfect if it had an nVidia GPU. A Thinkpad X40 with Sonoma and nVidia GPU would be perfect as well...

Ahhh... it's so tough. I guess I will have to settle for an ultraportable with Intel Extreme GPU, but if you guys know of any nVidia based alternative, please let me know. Also, I will be swapping the HDD with a 7200rpm one as soon as I get it, so the HDD it comes with is no concern to me, unless it's a barebone in which case it will save me a step.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Walter
 
Thanks for the reply... I like AMD, I need to catch up with their mobile offers though...

Spectre said:
This is not true. Many people have run linux on Actius laptops.
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Running Linux and taking advantage of the GPU power are two different things. nVidia offers updated and optimized drivers for lots of platforms, even FreeBSD which ultimately is my OS of choice (although I am not sure I want to use it for my new laptop when I get it). ATI basically told the open source users to go screw themselves because they are not planning on investing developing efforts on alternative OSes like Linux/BSD.

;)

Walter
 
Treppiede said:
Thanks for the reply... I like AMD, I need to catch up with their mobile offers though...

Running Linux and taking advantage of the GPU power are two different things.
Click to expand...

You aren't going to find much GPU power in the ultraportable market to take advantage of ;) . But it is up to you. If you get interested in the Actius line I'll be around.
 
Treppiede said:
ATI basically told the open source users to go screw themselves because they are not planning on investing developing efforts on alternative OSes like Linux/BSD.

;)

Walter
Click to expand...

One other thing though this is why the open source community is great. You an still get drivers even if they aren't official. I have some for VooDoo offerings made after VooDoo stopped. Then there are the Omega drivers.
 
Spectre said:
One other thing though this is why the open source community is great. You an still get drivers even if they aren't official.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply Spectre. See, the problem is not that I would not be able to run my Linux/BSD OS on an ATI laptop. There are plenty of Generic drivers available that will allow me to run decent resolutions, however the problem is another one. The community can't do much more than developing a generic driver and try to offer decent resolutions out of a GPU. It is a very complex task probing hardware to develop a driver that is stable and that takes advantage of ALL the potential of a device - in our case, a GPU - therefore all the ATI drivers you find around for Linux/BSD will never bring the GPU to its full potential. nVidia's approach is much different and I commend them for one more good decision.

Now, please let's get back on topic! :p
What ultraportable laptop do you guys recommend me?

Regards,

Walter
 
Treppiede said:
Also, I will be swapping the HDD with a 7200rpm one as soon as I get it, so the HDD it comes with is no concern to me, unless it's a barebone in which case it will save me a step.
Click to expand...


You won't be doing that with an IBM X40. It only supports 1.8" hdds...so you can't get the 7200rpm drive for it.


Alternatively, you -could- get an IBM X31 or X32. This would be an ultraportable, would offer the use of a 7200rpm drive...but is an ATI Radeon 7000 chipset. While I know you don't want ATI, I did have it working in Fedora Core 1.
 
NecessaryEvil said:
You won't be doing that with an IBM X40. It only supports 1.8" hdds...so you can't get the 7200rpm drive for it.
Click to expand...
Good to know... I was mainly thinking about the W5A when I wrote that anyways.

Alternatively, you -could- get an IBM X31 or X32. This would be an ultraportable, would offer the use of a 7200rpm drive...but is an ATI Radeon 7000 chipset. While I know you don't want ATI, I did have it working in Fedora Core 1.
Click to expand...
Now, that is some interesting news. If IBM would release an X31-2 with nVidia my laptop reseach would end. Do you think they will ever consider that?

Thanks for the info,

Walter
 
doubtful. They would have to have nVidia on the T series as well. The T41 and x31 could use the same install image.
 
Good luck finding an Ultralight with something other than Intel Extreme(ly crappy :p) graphics or an ATi IGP. nVidia seems more content to provide graphics for the DTR segment.
 
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