advice for buying a laptop

Christian Baer christian.baer at uni-dortmund.de
Thu Jun 9 14:06:43 UTC 2016


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

On 06/08/16 20:29, Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff wrote:

> Make sure that the notebook doesn't have NVIDIA Optimus. It works 
> with bumblebee on Linux but I am not sure whether it does on 
> FreeBSD.

Actually, I was going to avoid that like the devil avoids holy water.
:-) My boss has one of those chips in his laptop running Suse Linux and
he says even there it totally sucks rocks. There seem to be issues with
this multi-processor concept (which reminds me a bit of big little),
however, the driver can't seem to decide on when to use which core.

> If I bought a new notebook, I would go for T4<something>0s. I
> would get a s(lim) version because they are much lighter and much
> thinner. Since you want to use it when being mobile, you should
> think about this. T4<something>0s are also much lighter than their
> T5<something> variants. The display is a bit smaller but with a
> resolution of 1900x<something> you're good to go.

I haven't looked at all the details but to me it looks as though the
T520 and T420 are very similar. They seem to have the same case and
keyboard (although the overall size may differ). The reason I went for
the T520 ist because AFAIK this is the last Thinkpad that was made with
this keyboard (and all those dedicated keys). I have worked with a T60
(somehting) in the past and I loved it, so I know what I am talking
about. This however still had the label of IBM.

In case this isn't completely clear, I'll let Louis explain what I
mean... :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doEZMNXz1JY

> My T420 is six years old and I use it everyday nearly all the
> time. It's running smooth, so quality of these notebooks is great.
> I don't know about the newer series though, but probably it's the
> best you can get out there. If I bought a new one, I would at least
> go for a T430s, maybe even a newer model.

Which model do you suggest? Isn't the T520 newer than the T420?

BTW. I will not be using my laptop "all the time". Here at work I am
sitting in front of 2 27" screens with 2560x1440 and I am typing this on
an IBM Model M keyboard. At home I had to give up my Model M because my
new computer no longer had a PS/2 port. So there I now have a Corsair
K70 with Cherry MX Blue switches. The Thinkpads may be good, but they
are not that good. :-)

> Also think about saving some money for a SSD. They're definitely 
> worth every cent.

I've already thought about it and decided to get one. May "workstation"
at home (I also use it for gaming although it has an E3 as the CPU) has
had an SSD since the beginning and I don't want to be without it
anymore. Even FreeBSD boots crazy fast. :-)

Best regards,
Chris
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux)

iL4EAREKAGYFAldZd99fFIAAAAAALgAoaXNzdWVyLWZwckBub3RhdGlvbnMub3Bl
bnBncC5maWZ0aGhvcnNlbWFuLm5ldDgzRDQzNjY2NUYzMDVBMTYxMDY0ODYwNzMy
MDIxMzQyODdFMUJGQjIACgkQMgITQofhv7LCPAD+IC/aok/Xz5SRkBLAUq4yTMbH
O5YgVQma5p34ClopaQcA/RXzw8pK3g1xrsurZsw7piNiXbNJPfhzmWEj1yVy/gw4
=sGXt
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list