anyone have a favorite laptop?

[Bob Johnson]

On 9/25/07, Bill Campbell <freebsd at celestial.com> wrote:
> I used Thinkpads for about 10 years with various Linux systems.
> My last one was a Thinkpad 600 which I used continuously from
> August 1999 through March 2007 when I got a Mac Powerbook (now if
> only I could run OS X on a Thinkpad :-).
>
> We have used a fair variety of Thinkpads with our auction
> software for the last 10 years or so with excellent results.

Fortunately you were using Linux. For some Thinkpads, IBM arbitrarily
picked a system ID for their suspend-to-disk partition that was the
same as FreeBSD UFS (165). The result was you could not boot the
Thinkpad after you installed FreeBSD, until IBM changed the sysid and
you updated your BIOS. I ran into this about six years ago when I got
a hand-me-down Thinkpad.  Info at
http://www.unixguide.net/freebsd/faq/03.10.shtml.  This was a problem
for some new Thinkpads at least as late as 2002.

Moral: the ability to run Linux does not imply the ability to run FreeBSD.

- Bob