Suitability of Sony VAIO laptop for FreeBSD?

[Thomas Beer]

I ran 4.x for years on a Vaio PCG-Z600NE serving me well. Ok, audio had 
a bypass after two years, but that was the only problem. 
Sony customer service was correct & fast. 
However, I now switched to IBM. 

Cheers Tom


On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:37:51 -0800 (PST), David Wolfskill
<david at catwhisker.org> wrote:
> Last Saturday, my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 5000e) apparently stopped
> working for the last time.  (Ugly mode of failure -- won't stay powered
> up (even via AC adaptor) to complete a boot sequence; usually doesn't
> even get as far as illuminating the screen.  I suspect either thermal
> stress on the CPU, a crack in teh system board, or bad RAM -- and I
> tried swapping the RAM, to no avail.)
> 
> I see that Fry's is advertising a Sony VAIO with the following
> characteristics (none of which is a model ID, of course) for $1100:
> 
> * 2.8 GHz P4 CPU
> * 15.4" WXGA screen ("TFT With XBRITE Technology")
> * 512 MB DDR SDRAM
> * 60 GB disk
> * CD/RW/DVD-ROM combo drive
> * Integrated 802.11g
> * 10/100 NIC & v.90 MODEM
> * ILink (1394) & Memory stick slot
> * Some M$ "software" that I fully intend to ignore
> 
> I suspect that it also has a plausibly reasonable audio component,
> though that isn't critical for my primary intended uses.  The
> illustration that accompanies the ad shows a "touchpad"-type pointing
> device, which should serve OK for me.
> 
> I do tend to do a lot of "make buildworld" (and friends) type things on
> a laptop; that may have contributed to the demise of the i5ke mentioned
> above.
> 
> One of the "scarce resources" that I tend to value in a laptop is screen
> "real estate" -- my eyes work reasonably well, and I prefer
> higher-resolution screens.  The 1400x1050 of the i5ke was OK, but a
> little cramped.
> 
> I would expect that with a 2.8 GHz P4, it would suck a battery "dry"
> rather quickly; this would be a rather negative attribute.  The ad
> didn't indicate the number or nominal run-time for batteries.
> 
> Any warnings as far as running FreeBSD 4.x or 5.x (or 6) on such a
> beast?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Peace,
> david
> --
> David H. Wolfskill                              david at catwhisker.org
> I resent spammers because spam is a DoS attack on my time.
> 
> See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for public key.
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