[Linux-aus] Re: [SAGE-AU] SUMMARY: Laptop recommendations

[Sam Johnston]

> To those who suggested a number of the Toshibas or iBooks, sorry 
> folks - but
> I really do need the larger screen and "touchpad" style of mouse.

I was one of the iBook people. It's worth noting that what was already 
fairly decent value just got better with the jump to 100Mhz system bus 
from 66Mhz and to 600Mhz from 500Mhz. I had to crack the top of mine and 
shuffle around 1/2 a dozen surface mount resistors to get it running at 
600/100 but it absolutely flies now, esp with 10.1 (which is available 
as a 'free' upgrade to 10.0.0-10.0.4 users and which is almost certainly 
shipped standard now). I haven't played with the sound or modem but the 
NIC/video works fine and I understand the sound support works nicely 
when you jump on the I2C bus and tell it to fire up (this is a bit of a 
hack at the moment but no doubt sound support will improve over the next 
little while). Airport is apparently also supported under Linux and of 
course if you use MacOS 10.1 or 9.2.1 (supplied) then eveything will 
work with minimal effort. If you can handle a 12.1" screen then at ~$3k 
the iBook really is hard to beat. Whether the TiBook is as competitive 
with its PC counterparts I'm not sure - it weighs in at just over $5k.

  - samj (happy mac convert)

--
Sam Johnston
Australian Online Solutions
1300 132 809