Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 09:41:37 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Dale Wharton <dwharton@alcor.concordia.ca> Cc: Jon Hamilton <hamilton@pobox.com>, FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: cheapest laptop for FreeBSD? winmodems? Message-ID: <20000803094137.P36094@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.10.10008021934160.15401-100000@alcor.concordia.ca>; from dwharton@alcor.concordia.ca on Wed, Aug 02, 2000 at 07:57:20PM -0400 References: <20000802041505.417C71D@woodstock.monkey.net> <Pine.OSF.4.10.10008021934160.15401-100000@alcor.concordia.ca>
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On Wednesday, 2 August 2000 at 19:57:20 -0400, Dale Wharton wrote: > Dale Wharton ve2ndw@rac.ca M O N T R E A L Te souviens-tu? > > On Tue, 1 Aug 2000, Jon Hamilton wrote: > >> Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 23:15:05 -0500 >> From: Jon Hamilton <hamilton@pobox.com> >> >> [...] >> >> I have one of those (Compaq 1200-XL) and while I agree that their reputation >> isn't the best as far as hardware compatibility goes, I will say that getting >> FreeBSD running on it wasn't hard at all. The built in modem is a winmodem, >> so that's useless, but aside from that everything appears to work fine -- I >> don't have any USB stuff, but the controller is detected at boot and I assume >> that would work if the need arose. The builtin sound did require a patch; >> it doesn't work out of the box yet. See www.inode.org/sw/auvia/ if you >> buy one of these and want to use sound. >> >> Having said all of that, I use mine as a dual boot machine with W98, mainly >> so my son can watch DVDs while traveling in the car :) Getting a "regular" >> W98 installed on it was a horse of a completely different color. I don't >> use Windows much, nor do I know much about it, so my progress was probably >> slower than would have been the case for someone used to Windows, but even >> so it took me 4 solid days to hunt down all the drivers and weirdo custom >> pieces I needed to run a non-Compaq supplied copy of W98. Also, beware that >> they ship with a rescue disk which is a pathetic joke -- they partition >> the disk into two volumes, and the rescue disk depends upon the stuff they >> had on the D: drive being there in order to be of any use! >> >> The screen on the compaq is noticibly better (crisper, brighter, and in most >> cases, larger) than the other laptops in the same price range at the time I >> was shopping, which was really the main reason I opted to buy it. >> >> So in summary, it's pretty good as a FreeBSD-only machine, a bit of a pain >> if you want to dual boot. Take that for whatever it's worth :) > > Jon, many thanks for your very constructive remarks. Your aside > about winmodems rang my bell (internet access is essential for > my purpose). You always have the option of a PCMCIA modem. That's what just about everybody does. > Which raises another question: how does one learn in advance if a > modem is a winmodem? The only literature that I saw, a brief spec > sheet on the Compaq Presario 1200-XL115, says simply "Modem 56kbps > with V.90 Support." It's almost impossible to get that out of the vendors. "You're not supposed to know". But I don't know of any laptop modems which are not winmodems. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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