Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:04:17 -0400 From: "Jason P. Thomas" <jthomasp@gmualumni.org> To: Joe Demeny <jd1987@borozo.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Laptop advice Message-ID: <47E77CA1.9000401@gmualumni.org> In-Reply-To: <200803210556.50743.jd1987@borozo.com> References: <200803210556.50743.jd1987@borozo.com>
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Joe Demeny wrote: > I need to get a budget-priced laptop, such as one of these: > > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101123 > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114430 > > Does anyone have experience with these? > > Any suggestions for other comparable choices? > > From personal experience, getting a laptop to work under FreeBSD (or even Linux) is a hair pulling experience. It took me about six months of tinkering off and on to get a Broadcom(yuck!) wifi adapter to work in my HP laptop last year. In the interim, I found a work around that was about $30. I purchased a usb wifi adapter that used the rum driver. At the time, I had to run -current to get that particular driver, but I never had a problem with the computer or the adapter under -current. The most headaches I've gotten with laptops have always involved the wifi cards. Consequently, every laptop I've installed FreeBSD and Linux on had a Broadcom(yuck!) wifi chipset. Everything else has been well supported, graphics, sound, power management, pointing devices, and usb devices. I even managed to use FreeBSD to connect to the robots I had to use in one of my master's classes last year. That was pleasantly surprising. --Jay
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