LinuxCertified.com offers a solution for the users who require ultimate mobility: the LC2100 laptop loaded with the Linux of your choice. For more info and screenshots/images, read more.The laptop weighs only 4lbs (it’s lighter than the 12″ Apple Powerbook which weighs 4.6 lbs) making it an excellent mobile powerhouse. It is equipped with a Centrino CPU at 1.6 GHz with 2 MB of cache, making it a real speed demon. In fact, we were happy to see LinuxCertified.com including a speed stepping utility by default, where the CPU would vary from 600 Mhz to 1.6 GHz depending on how much CPU power it’s needed at each given time. The machine crunched 325 fps on glxgears *without* 3D acceleration.
Other hardware characteristics include 512 MBs of RAM, an 855GME Intel graphics card (dynamic allocation of VRAM), 40 GB of hard drive, a combo drive, a 4-in-1 reader, a pcmcia port, on board modem and ethernet card, a firewire port, USB 2.0 ports and more. The screen is beautiful 12″ wide-screen LCD, with a resolution of 1280×800. The screen has better angle/quality/brightness than my 12″ Powerbook’s. The machine also came with a mini-PCI wifi card, while it has the ability to expand itself with an optional Bluetooth module (picture one of the laptop, and picture two of the laptop and the powerbook next to each other).
The LC2100 arrived with Fedora Core 2 pre-installed. LinuxCertified told us that Fedora Core 3 will get pre-installed on the laptop later in 2005 after further testing will take place in their labs. The laptop came with preconfigured SoftwareSuspend2 (suspend to disk, via LinuxCertified’s own kernel version). It takes about 25-30 seconds to wake up the laptop after suspension. Unfortunately, instant sleep/awake does not work. Regarding durability, the laptop’s battery time with Linux is about ~3 hours.
Synaptics and XBindKeys, Java and Flash, Mplayer and XMMS mp3 capabilities are among the extra packages LinuxCertified is pre-installing to their laptops, so users don’t have to do extra work on their FC installations.
Another great feature of this laptop is its dual function as a portable multimedia center/player: it comes with a Embedded Linux and PowerDVD. Instead of turning on the laptop using its power button, you press the little “P” button next to the power button and instead if loads in seconds Embedded Linux. Then, you insert a PhotoCD, a CD, a VCD or a DVD, and the embedded software can play those immediately, while you can always keep an eye to your battery level. And with the widescreen LCD, it makes the experience truly pleasant. Check the screenshots to see how this embedded environment looks like (screenshot three, screenshot four).
Now, two things that bothered me with the product, are both in the software side of things: No hardware Alsa mixing (so only one app at the time can use the sound), a problem that it has been discussed here. Apparently, the Alsa developers said that they need more programmers to join Alsa and implement software mixing on the Alsa side, transparently to the apps. Hopefully, someone will step in to help them.
The second problem is 3D support. The distro didn’t come with 3D accelerated support, and an attempt to install a binary snapshot of the i915 2D/DRI/DRM modules from freedesktop.org failed with unresolved symbols (it seems that it required the latest version of Xorg to work). The problem will go away either when LinuxCertified starts selling the machine with FC3, or if they take the time to compile the newly introduced i915 module for FC2.
From the hardware side, I have absolutely no complaints. The laptop just works great, as expected, and as advertised. The keyboard feels good, the touchpad feels good, the peripherals worked fine. It’s the Linux software that needs more maturity regarding laptops in general (e.g. better ACPI support, software mixing etc) and this is coming with Linux slowly but steady.
Overall, this laptop is a must-buy, especially if you are into the hunt of a very compatible, sexy, truly mobile Linux-compatible laptop. The LC2100 won’t disappoint you.
Detailed hardware PCI configuration of the laptop:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Host Bridge (rev 02)
00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Memory I/O Control Registers (rev 02)
00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Configuration Process Registers (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 83)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4) Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC’97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC’97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
01:03.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
01:07.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Intersil ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette] (rev 01)
01:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
01:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
Related reading: LinuxCertified LC2430 Laptop Review.
This laptop is what every laptop should be.
Fast, light weight and pre configured out of the box.
However
Why Fedora? Why? SuSE is much better than Fedora. or even why not gentoo. Since it is a linux certified laptop & Gentoo is faaast. Why not gentoo?
Because Fedora is the most popular distro out there, we like it or not (at least in US). LinuxCertified is a company. This means, that they put there whatever people ask more for, not whatever they personally like or dislike. Besides, there IS the option to install Debian or SuSE in there if you ask them.
BTW, this laptop is the exact same model as AlienWare’s Scentia laptop (both companies get it from the same manufacturer): http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/sentia/sentia_feature…
It’s just that Alienware’s version has a different “top” decoration, it doesn’t come with Linux, and it’s a bit more expensive.
Have you seen the spec?
It is too expensive for that kind of laptop, you can have a powerbook for this price…
It seems that the cost of the microsoft license goes into the pocket of the sellers.
Too bad.
Well, not exactly. It’s a bit cheaper than the 12″ Powerbook, but:
1. It’s much faster than the 12″ Powerbook in cpu power.
2. It has better quality LCD than the Powerbook.
3. It has bigger resolution than the Powerbook.
4. It has a 4-in-1 reader.
5. It has a PCMCIA reader.
6. More memory installed by default.
7. It’s a bit cheaper.
8. It’s a bit lighter.
Now, the Powerbook on the other hand has:
1. Faster graphics card.
2. Bluetooth installed by default.
3. WiFi installed by default.
4. Dual screen support.
5. 60 GB of drive instead of 40 GB.
Remember, I have both, and I can compare them better than anyone else. I love my powerbook, but it’s not the answer to world hunger, it has its flaws too (most notably it’s LCD screen not being the same league as the 15/17″ powerbooks which sport better model LCDs than the 12″). So, depending on your needs, you go for the one or the other. But you can’t say that “for that price I can get a powerbook”, because they don’t have the exact same capabilities.
I wonder though, what’s the deal on upgrading? I presume that the Fedora/Debian installation is a custom one. Do they allow you to buy their customised FC3 off them?
It sounds good enough except for the power management, waiting 25 seconds for your laptop to wake up is a bit pathetic. Also, the sound and no 3D acceleration sucks too.
But, it is nice with the Embedded Linux and also with the preinstallation of Java, Flash and multimedia software! Hopefully more and more companies start to really preinstall Linux on their computers (by really, I mean that they test the Linux installation and make sure that it works 100% with ALL of the hardware).
1. It’s much faster than the 12″ Powerbook in cpu power.
How can you say this? Have you made rigourous benchmark tests to prove that the Centrino is faster than the G4 or did you just think it was because the GHz of the Centrino is a bigger number than the G4’s?
The Centrino is a much more modern CPU than the G4. When it runs in full speed, the G4 is just not possible to follow up: not with Centrino’s 2 MBs of cache and faster memory bus anyway. It’s not about “Mhz”. It’s also about the fact that centrino carries a newer architecture, the huge cache, and the faster memory. You don’t need “benchmarks” to figure out all that, it’s common knowledge.
How can you say this? Have you made rigourous benchmark tests to prove that the Centrino is faster than the G4 or did you just think it was because the GHz of the Centrino is a bigger number than the G4’s?
From experience, the Centrino CPU’s smoke the G4 CPU by far. I have a 12″ PowerBook + Dell 8600c. Note also that Centrino CPU’s should not be measured in GHz either, the whopping 2MB L2 cache and pipeline improvements give it comparable performance to Pentium4 and even Athlon 64 CPU’s at higher MHz rates..
-fooks
Exactly.
This must be an amazing laptop! Of course I can only judge by your words, Eugenia, but assuming they’re true (no reason to believe they aren’t), this laptop certainly has something to it. Not that I’m going to buy it (just bought a new iBook, money don’t grow on trees), but I’m itching
However, one thing that I’m interested in: it comes pre-installed with Fedora Core 2. Now, I’m not a very big fan of Fedora (quite the contrary), so have you tried to install other distributions on it? If yes, did that function properly?
No, I haven’t tried any other distro because I am leaving soon for Europe and I need to give back the laptop soon (as it is simply a review unit, not mine).
I expected that a linux-certified notebook would correctly suspend via the ACPI/BIOS combination. That would give the users more freedom and less headaches, when upgrading to a newer version of the kernel.
(I would suggest APM, which works for me, but I know APM is not being used anymore in new models).
No, the ACPI project has a lot of problems currently, especially after 2.6.4 version of the kernel. Many laptop ACPI supports have been broken the past year, that used to work before. Until these problems are fixed in the future, most laptops out there won’t work with “suspend to RAM”. So, “Software Suspend 2 (to disk)” is your best bet for now, with most laptops out there, and for that, you will need patched kernels.
No, I haven’t tried any other distro because I am leaving soon for Europe and I need to give back the laptop soon (as it is simply a review unit, not mine).
Ah, makes sense. I figured you bought the machine. Anyway, I’ll keep my eyes open on the net to see if others have tried
.
Unless you have a laptop, where suspend works via APM
(like mine ibm thinkpad x20 or dell latitude c640)
No, APM is an ancient protocol. The LinuxCertified laptops only support ACPI.
The Laptop in question is a Uniwill 223ii0 rebranded under the “LinuxCertified” brand.
-Uniwill is the ODM ( original design manufacturer ) aka builder.
-LinuxCertified is the OEM (original equipment manufacturer)aka the customizer.
*****
-The 12″ Powerbook as 167MHz system bus , the LC2100 400 MHz FSB Cache.
-The 12″ Powerbook as an XGA screen ( resolution of up to 1024 by 768 pixels). The LC2100 as an WXGA ( resolution of up to 1366 by 768 pixels.)
“The Centrino is a much more modern CPU than the G4. When it runs in full speed, the G4 is just not possible to follow up: not with Centrino’s 2 MBs of cache and faster memory bus anyway. It’s not about “Mhz”. It’s also about the fact that centrino carries a newer architecture, the huge cache, and the faster memory. You don’t need “benchmarks” to figure out all that, it’s common knowledge.”
I don’t agree with you, I think centrino is faster than G4 overall, but when a program use altivec, I think G4 smoke centrino
Has it a 4-Pin or a 6-Pin FireWire port?
I wonder why all the PC laptops (at least all I know) have a castrated FW port.
I mean if you have a nice FW harddisk you have to plug it either in the USB 2.0 or you have to use USB power and the FW for data.
They could either leave the FW out and put one more USB port in or use a full
FW port.
IMHO
/Markus
I rather have a graphics card then shared memory.$1700 isn’t a bargain altogether.A amd64 based laptop with geforce 5700GO graphics card would be more like it.
My tests suggest that about 70% of hardware will work with ACPI suspend to RAM now. The main problem is still video initialisation – once that’s sorted a bit more, it ought to be up to 90% or so. Only a small amount of hardware is utterly broken at this point, and most of that is VIA based…
For what it’s worth, the next release of Ubuntu should support suspend to RAM out of the box (though it probably won’t be enabled by default)
Keyword *when*. Most software isn’t optimized for Altivec. Hence in most cases, the Centrino will spank the G4. While I like my Powerbook, the G4 processor isn’t the most modern around and Intel really did something amazing with the Centrino.
However, if software were finely tuned to altivec (like FFTW), no one has a chance of touching the G4s and G5s. Realistically however, it’s quite impossible to optimize all software like that. This alone coupled with the G4’s hobbled 167 MHz bus means that the Centrino will be faster most of the time.
I whant to make a very precise observation about why Dell notebooks will be sold hundreds of thousand more then this model this holidays.
– ” Financing offered by CIT Bank to qualified U.S. residents”
most people will buy with a paiement plan.
http://www.cit.com
It might look off topic but its another reason why people dont buy Gnu/Linux Laptop.
I speak about altivec because Eugenia doesn’t.
I know that most softwares aren’t optimized for Altivec, but I think that with Tiger and gcc 3.5 that optimize the code for altivec, the G4 will be more efficient.
Also, as you say, the G4 is an old processor, but I think it didn’t say his last word 🙂
Surely a Linux machine should have Nvidia graphics.
Eugenia, don’t forget that you have a first-gen 12″PB. I’d bet that a new 12″ PB with a 1.33GHz G4, better video and lots of RAM would have no problem keeping up with this laptop. (No contest CPU to CPU, though.)
The problem is that there’s lots of kernel patches around that haven’t made their way into the mainline kernel yet. It seems that LinuxCertified has done a pretty good job of wedging swsusp2 into the FC2 kernel. I’ve found that there’s no better magic for Centrino machines than the -cko patchset (with reiser4, vesa-tng, fbsplash, swsusp2, lirc, etc). This has Con Kolivas’ staircase process scheduler rewrite and the cfq i/o scheduler. Get it here:
http://kem.p.lodz.pl/~peter/cko/
Patch right on top of vanilla 2.6.9 from kernel.org. ACPI has been a charm for me since 2.6.0-test6, and this is a Dell Inspiron with serious BIOS issues. Framebuffer console has been pretty buggy, but vesa-tng fixes that.
Sound synthesis/mixing is one area where FOSS is truly lacking at the moment. Artsd development is heading for a dead end; who knows what those Enlightenment hippies have been cooking for the past 4 or so years of E17 development, especially now that GNOME dropped the ESD. We have ALSA attacking the problem from the bottom and GStreamer from the top.. who knows where they’ll meet. Freedesktop.org is rooting for GStreamer, although I’ve personally never gotten it to work, even under GNOME 2.8. But open source is all about sex appeal, and the ALSA project hasn’t had any since they merged into the kernel source tree.
It’s great you guys are doing these Linux laptop reviews!
Seriously.
The ABE-ESL-GED program for which I am an IT computer support specialist is seriously looking into purchasing laptops, or at least having them donated, for its program to more rural sites.
If you guys know of sources that sell low-cost units, refurbish, or recycle laptops, I am at least looking for a minimum of three, let me know.
Nice to see Linux & Laptops still evolves. It’s been an interesting evolution in the last year, not only on desktop.
Sorry not really impressed by the stats and price. I have seen more appealing deals in a Dell catalogue. I have a Dell and have everything on it working in Gentoo other than the 56K (not worth the hassle). The principle of “Linux Preloaded” is the winner here. Free “Upgrade” to 5400RPM hard drive?? Is this a typo? I didn’t realise there was any slower nowdays.
Would it be possible to get detailed specs of that laptop? Linux certification might be übergreat, but it’d be interesting to know if everything is compatible with NetBSD and other systems.
While not an actual test, output of ‘lspci -v’ would be a start.
Quentin Garnier.
What’s wrong with buying a usual laptop that isn’t Linux Certified? A careful choice will be worth it, because there are SO MANY notebooks out there and I find it hard to believe that NONE of them could be made running Linux reliably. I bet most of them will do just fine. It’s Linux that should be improved then, not the notebook – more drivers, better suspend support if needed et cetera.
Other than the sleep function, Ubuntu should work fine on a present day iBook, which starts at 999$… So, in other words, I myself am not totally convinced that this laptop is worth its money– however, it’s a damn nice machine and for people who aren’t into Linux, installing alt. Os and all, this laptop is perfect.
A great plus, in my opinion, is the widescreen lcd.
Sorry not really impressed by the stats and price. I have seen more appealing deals in a Dell catalogue. I have a Dell and have everything on it working in Gentoo other than the 56K (not worth the hassle). The principle of “Linux Preloaded” is the winner here. Free “Upgrade” to 5400RPM hard drive?? Is this a typo? I didn’t realise there was any slower nowdays.
I agree. I was not impressed with the price here. I also think that most people who are going to use linux wouldn’t think it’s neccessary to pay more money for a laptop just to have linux pre-loaded.
A few things about this laptop:
1. Would really like it to have better graphics. Intel Extreme 2 just won’t cut it next to a real graphics chip (like the one in the PowerBook). For me, even though a G4 may be slower, the graphics capability is much better.
2. I believe PCI express is “right around the corner” with units scheduled to start shipping in late December and Q1 2005. Those should really improve on the HW side of things. Plus, they might ship with ATI X300 chips which would also improve the graphics. Just guessing here..
3. This looks a lot like the Powernotebooks 3:12
http://www.powernotebooks.com/specs/PowerPro/c3-12.php
which is about $100 cheaper. IMHO $100 is a good deal to have it preconfigured with the distro of my choice.
ultimate in mobility my a$$, it doesnt even have wireless… What a cop-out for that price. I get more functionality out of my inspiron, and I paid less for it. Just because they say it works in linux, and its linux certified, and all that bs crap that means nothing, doesnt mean other laptops wont work in linux, in fact most others do. Just keep that in mind before handing your cash over.
and I wouldnt call it fully function when it has that video card either, IT HAS SHARED MEMORY! Try to use any 3d apps or games on it, I dare you. The laptop is crap, and you can get anything else with a processor like 1 ghz faster, with a decent video card, and WIRELESS, for the exact same price, if not cheaper. This is a rip, and one should not buy it.
ps: about it being pre-configured, chances are, if you even care about linux, you have some idea at least how to install it yourself, so I would hardly say that THATS worth the extra $100.
Without data, I’m just another A**h*** with an opinion.
Do a real bench mark between the Powerbook and this laptop.
RJ
roger roger wrote:
> -Uniwill is the ODM ( original design manufacturer ) aka
> builder.
>
> -LinuxCertified is the OEM (original equipment
> manufacturer)aka the customizer.
Quite right, Roger – and this is standard industry procedure, used (if less frequently) even by the biggest names in the PC business.
But it should be noted that what “customization” involves may be quite substantial, and go beyond what processor/motherboard is used. Investigating forum discussions on the difference between this same machine as offered by Alienware and ibuypower.com, I read that the LCD display used by Alienware is quite high quality, but that is something Alienware itself installs. That’s obviously a big difference in the quality of machine that you get, and Eugenia was right to note the performance of the LCD.
Also, this is the first time I’ve heard of this machine coming with the Cyberlink media-viewing firmware installed. Those giving opinions on the bang-for-the-buck of this machine seemed to have overlooked that this feature was included by LinuxCertified.
“I speak about altivec because Eugenia doesn’t.
I know that most softwares aren’t optimized for Altivec, but I think that with Tiger and gcc 3.5 that optimize the code for altivec, the G4 will be more efficient.”
Altivec is just a vector processing engine. It only has some very narrow uses. It won’t speedup every program and it certainly is not easy/possible for any compiler to automatically extract all the paralellism out of source code. Besides that, Intel has SSE which is comparable to Altivec.
Eugenia puts up these reviews of pre-loaded linux laptops every once in a while, and the common theme is always that they are way overpriced for what you get.
I can only see a very niche market for these things, and that is a corporate customer that needs something fast. The home guy will just install linux himself on the better price/performance of a Dell or something else, and most businesses will just have an IT guy install linux.
hehehe wrote:
“ultimate in mobility my a$$, it doesnt even have wireless… What a cop-out for that price.”
But in the early paragraphs of the review, Eugenia wrote:
“The machine also came with a mini-PCI wifi card, while it has the ability to expand itself with an optional Bluetooth module (picture one of the laptop, and picture two of the laptop and the powerbook next to each other).”
Im actually in the market for a laptop, so this review was pretty handy.
However, the one think ive wondered, how good is the linux wifi support on most laptops? Im looking for a fairly inexpensive laptop with wifi(either internally or by pcmcia card). This one seems a little expensive, but ive googled around a bit, and i can’t find any site that has much info on wifi under linux. Anyone got any idea?
Mike Moran
“Free “Upgrade” to 5400RPM hard drive??”
laptops typically come with either a 4200 or a 5400 rpm drive. there are 7200 rpm laptop hard drives but they are rather expensive compared with 4200 and 5400.
with laptops you get 4200, 5400, or 7200, with desktops this compares to picking between 5400, 7200, or 10000 respectively.
I recently bought this laptop, and with LinuxCertified’s help loaded SuSE 9.2 on it. I have to say, the system is simply *great*.
The greatest feature is suspend support. I work at three places …. this helps me take context of my work from one place to another seamlessly.
Wifi is still an issue with Linux. If you want something that might work out of the box then stick with prism or orinoco based chipset cards.
I’ve got a realtek 8180(I think) chipset card and I’m using Ndiswrapper. Not an ideal solution, but it works.
1Ghz G4
1Gb ram
Radeon 9000 (DRI works)
WiFi (airport, not extreme)
Debian/SID
————
Everything i need!
even standby works fine
Support suspend to RAM out of the box but it won’t be enabled by default?
So, er, what’s the difference between that and *any* 2.6-based distro out there right now? I mean, boot with acpi=on and do: echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep . That’ll TRY and do suspend-to-ram. You never know, it might even work
. (it does on my ancient Sony Picturebook…)
Does SuSE 9.2 have 3d accel support for this laptop? Some time on Google seems to indicate that it is possible using recent Xorg versions. I’m thinking of buying this laptop, and would like BASIC ( >=Geforce2go speed) 3d support under linux.
The price and specs for this laptop, with the special they have currently, seems to be pretty decent when compared to other similar systems. Dell’s 700m looks to be a bit cheaper with the same specs, but apparently has a shorter battery life and a few other issues from the reviews I’ve read.
Good review and all, but I don’t know what 4 lbs are, and having to convert to metric units is anoying.
That’s why God made Google, and it was good.
Stick in “4 lbs in kg” and it will convert it for you.
God was late. We had ‘units’ in *nix a long time before google was around.
units
4lbs
kg
there ya go.
for the guy asking about wi-fi under Linux – *buy an 802.11b PCMCIA card*. Unless you absolutely need 802.11g speed (which you probably don’t). Almost all 802.11b cards are working under Linux, these days. A lot will just work out of the box on recent distros. 802.11g is a crapshoot.
Too bad… I was sold til I saw that damned Windows key. I buy Thinkpads cause there ain’t no stinkin’ Windows key on the keyboard!
Big deal if it has a Windows key. You are making an issue out of nothing, you are whining for no reason.
The laptop is sold to several OEMs who then customize it. LinuxCertified is putting linux in there, Alienware puts Windows. Obviously, the Windows key must be there for these other OEMs. It is cheaper for the Taiwanese manufacturer to have one “body” for all its clients and not customizing everything. If they do that, the price has to go sky high, and the consumer would lose money for no good reason.
agree with Eugenia. It’s just a fricking key. Take the keycap off and paint a penguin over it if you must. Heck, it always seemed kind of silly not to have a key there, and there’s nothing to stop you using it for something *useful* in Linux. Surely you can think of something.
Nice review. The comparison to Apple notebooks came up a few times; it’s not unfavourable side by side though.
A few obvious omissions get me though. 3D acceleration… what were they thinking?? Surely if you were going to sell a Linux certified notebook you’d make damn sure that worked as a priority?
What exactly is the good of calling it Linux certified if something like that doesn’t work?
dmix would have been a nice addition too. Not that I’m using it – my desktop does hardware mixing, and my laptop only really needs XMMS making noise anyway.
And a final point of complaint – I’m not sure it really benefits from the wide screen. It looks like a 4×3 ratio would have used the space a bit better.
That was all a bit negative anyway; it is great to see Linux being sold with computers, not just expecting users to do it all themselves.
Just do what I do: Paint over it with black paint, then use a stencil to paint a white penguin (or a red BSD demon, or whatever you fancy) on it. After all, the key itself is still functional. I have mine mapped to launch Firefox under Ubuntu.
Besides, we all know the real reason to buy Thinkpads. They are simply awesome laptops! If I wasn’t so dead set on getting an iBook, I would have bought a Thinkpad by now.
why the heck do you *want* 3D acceleration on a 12″ laptop? What for? You don’t buy a machine like this to play Doom 3 on.
3D acceleration isn’t only used for games. If you work with 3D plots (particularly with GNUPlot), hardware acceleration can be a real time saver.
So having an integrated video card, with no 3D acceleration at all is a big drawback, IMHO.
You don’t buy a machine like this to play Doom 3 on.
Why not? Eugenia earlier mentioned the review machine is also original equipment for an Alienware machine. Alienware’s target audience is gamers. You might be surprised to learn that some gaming laptops put all but the highest-end desktop systems to shame.
As for 3D gaming in a PowerBook: If I were a gamer and I had a PowerBook, I’d bump up the RAM to 1GB, install Ubuntu or Yellow Dog linux in a dual-boot config, and play every 3D game ever ported to OS X or PPC Linux, with the exception of the upcoming Doom 3 port (G5 minimum).
Since I’m not that much of a gamer, I’ll probably end up with an iBook which should suit my needs out-of-the-box.
yes, SOME gaming laptops do. 17″ widescreen monsters with Athlon 64 CPUs and high-end mobile GPUs that weigh 8lb and have half hour battery life. Not 12″ thin and light ultraportables.