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Date:      Thu, 30 Mar 2000 16:03:46 -0500
From:      "Sean O'Connell" <sean@stat.Duke.EDU>
To:        FreeBSD mobile <freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Vaio vs Portege plus modems
Message-ID:  <20000330160346.L12557@stat.Duke.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10003301542050.13430-100000@richard2.pil.net>; from up@3.am on Thu, Mar 30, 2000 at 03:48:38PM -0500
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.10003301542050.13430-100000@richard2.pil.net>

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up@3.am stated:
> 	
> I'm looking into getting a laptop that I can run FreeBSD on, and I've
> narrowed my choice down to (in order of preference):
> 
> Toshiba Portege 3110CT (about $500-$600 cheaper)
> Sony Vaio Z505HE
> 
> My main concern at this point is the modem.  Neither of their websites
> indicate whether the built-in modem is a Winmodem or not, nor could I find
> a conclusion in the archives of this list.
> 
> Can anyone tell me from experience if this is the case?
> if not, recommended alternatives?
> Would PAO be needed in either case?
> 
> TIA,
> 

James-

Both (i believe) are the evil winmodems.  Sony used to use real 
modems (for instance, the one in my 505TR is real).

As far as I can tell, the portege still only uses svga on the
video front (i find that to be a bit too constrainng much prefer
xga on my machine even on the same size screen), but it does have 
built-in ethernet.   the Sony n505's give you xga (on a 10.4"), alas
no enet.  the z505's are slightly larger and have enet also and 
a nice 12.1" screen (based on a z505r that i have setup).

also, it looks like Sharp recently rolled out the Actius A290 which
has xga on an 11.3" screen, builtin enet and a 9gb hdd all at around
3#'s ... looks pretty exciting from a spec standpoint.  it most likely
has a winmodem.  also, not sure about availability on these things.

I would strongly recommend using 4.0 releas unless you plan on using 
a parallel port zip driver.  this is broken at the moment, and I
haven't seen anything to suggest it has been fixed (i could be wrong).

S

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sean O'Connell                                Email: sean@stat.Duke.EDU
Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences Phone: (919) 684-5419
Duke University                               Fax:   (919) 684-8594


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