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

[Lionel]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2001 17:34:43 +0800, Daniel Baldoni
<dbaldoni at iinet.net.au> wrote:

>The unit I eventually decided on was an ITC Millenium 350.  It gives me a 15"
>TFT with simultaneous floppy and CD-ROM (who needs DVD?) at a very
>reasonable price.

15" display at a reasonable price? Sounds good, have these people got a
website you could point me at?

>  Getting the on-board LAN and (HSP) modem working was very
>easy - Both RedHat 7.0 and Mandrake 8.1 correctly identified the LAN and
>video card without any prompting from me.

<grin> That makes a pleasant change on a laptop. I've had to do a bit of
tweaking on the video config of every laptop I've installed Linux on so
far - including some incredibly expensive, top of the range machines.

>My one gripe is the
>documentation - the manual doesn't include things like the refresh rates for
>the display;

This is actually one of the good things about laptops - it's next to
impossible to screw up the refresh rates, as the LCD actually refreshes
at a very low speed compared to CRTs[0], so the panels automatically
convert from whatever the video 'card' is running at.

> both text and X11 "look" okay (but would you trust the opinion
>of somebody who's classed as "legally blind"?).

On a laptop, if the display looks okay, it is okay. It is possible to
screw up the config, but you have to really work at it. ;) As long as
you get the chipset & display resolution right, you're pretty much
guaranteed to get a perfect display.

[0] LCDs have inherently greater 'persistance' than CRTs, so they don't
need to scan anywhere near as fast as a CRT does to get a zero-flicker
image.

-- 
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