Laptop choices

[Sune Wettersteen]

#Subject: Laptop choices

#Am currently trying to choose between a couple of laptops, the luck 
#winner of which will have Freebsd loaded alongside WinXP.

#Dell Latitude d600 with Radeon 9000? video, intel pro wireless
#or
#IBM R51 - Intel Extreme2, intel pro wireless.
#The main differences will likely be the video and maybe bios, acpi...?
#Can someone suggest to me whether these are both safe choices?

I am myself using a Dell 500m with an Intel Extreme Graphics 2 and a Intel
Pro Wireless. It works fine, although you should know that there is no
DRM/DRI support for the i915 chipset (which the extreme graphics 2 uses), so
I'd go with the radeon card if DRM/DRI matters to you. ACPI works fine, but
I'm having problems with it registering when I open/close the lid.
But I'm sure both laptops would work fine, just note the i915 support
problem.
Also, note down to yourself that you need to load/compile the ipw kernel
module for Intel pro wireless support (this module is NOT listed in the
default kernel .conf for unknown reasons)

#Am I better off installing 5.4 or 6.0?

I'd say you should go with 6.0. It features much better wireless support and
I'm sure theres some acpi changes you could benefit from.

#
#Thanks,  Graham/
#
#
#-- 
#Kindness can be infectious - try it.
#
#Graham North
#Vancouver, BC
#www.soleado.ca

Regards,
	Sune Wettersteen
	Denmark