139 lines
7.3 KiB
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139 lines
7.3 KiB
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
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<title>Buying A Laptop Issue 24</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<center>
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<H2>Buying A Laptop</H2>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu">Joel Jaeggli</a></H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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Having just read Micheal Shappe's review of the Fujitsu Lifebook 420d in
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the Nov issue of LJ I thought I would relate a similar experience I had in
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purchasing a new laptop for my organization. Academic User Services at the
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University of Oregon provides support for end users on timeshare systems
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running Digital Unix, VMS, Solaris, and Linux. We have a wide variety of
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desktop hardware including PC's running Linux, FreeBSD, NT, 95 as well as
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DEC Alphas, Sparcs, SGIs and Macs. We needed a portable computer to send
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with people to do workshops, attend conferences and demo software for
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people. Because our members use a number of varieties of Unix but only a
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little better than half of them use Windows in the course of their work,
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solid UNIX support of some variety was imperative.
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<P>
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Our requirements were that it should have sufficient space to dual boot
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Windows95 and Linux, more over all the subsystems should work equally well
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under either Windows or Linux. The Laptop needed to provide support for an
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external display at 24-bit color depth as well as have support for an
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external keyboard and mouse. It should above all meet those goals and be
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relatively inexpensive as well as reasonably compact and durable.
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<P>
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We eventually settled on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 220cds. The Toshiba has a
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complete compliment of ports on the back, PS/2, serial, parallel, IRDA,
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VGA, docking station and interestingly enough, a USB port. It comes with a
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Pentium 133 processor, 16mb of ram and 2mb of dram to drive the 12.1"
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passive matrix display at 8, 16 and 24 bit color. It has a small but
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sufficient 1.4gb disk. The audio jacks and the volume control are located
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on the front of the case. The satellite pro 220cds is over all similar to
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it's more expensive cousins the 440cds and the 460cds which will
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undoubtedly replace it eventually. They are distinguished by having active
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matrix displays, larger hard disks and in the case of the 460 an internal
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modem.
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<P>
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The keyboard is quite large, the feel is closer if anything to a desktop
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keyboard than anything that you would expect to find on a laptop except
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for the travel of the keys which is fairly short. The Toshiba laptops have
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a ThinkPad style trackpoint-pointing device rather than the ubiquitous
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trackpads that seem to be on almost all portables these days. It does not
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regrettably have a third mouse button like the new and very expensive
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ThinkPad 770; but the buttons are located on top of each other rather than
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adjacent to each other as on most trackpads. This makes them easier to
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press and hold down with your thumb while moving the trackpoint with you
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index finger, so you can drag a scrollbar in X for example without using
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two hands.
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<P>
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Once I got over the fact that windows95 osr2 uses a fat/32 filesystem
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which cannot be modified by fips, I used partition magic, a utility by
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Powerquest to resize the windows95 partition I was able to install Redhat
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4.2 without trouble. The alternative would have been to repartition the
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disk by hand using fdisk and then reinstall Windows off of the supplied
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CD-ROM. I choose to partition the disk 800MB for Windows and 600MB for
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Linux since I needed to install some large Windows applications such as
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Adobe Frame and Microsoft Office. Rather than have separate var / and home
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filesystems I opted for a single large Linux partition. A 64MB slice
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reserved for swap, this made sense since I didn't expect var to grow too
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much. The computer wouldn't be serving to much and that everyone using the
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portable under Linux would be logging in as the same user.
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<P>
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The Toshiba 220cds uses a Chips and Technologies 65555 chipset for the
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video display. While AcceleratedX and MetroX support this chipset it is
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also well supported by XFree86's SVGA X server. If you choose to run the
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free server you can expect to get 640x480 or 800x600 on the internal
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display at 8 16 or 24 bits per pixels. Because it has 2MB of video memory
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you can drive an external monitor at up to 1280x1024 in 8-bit color.
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<P>
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Networking was actually easier to configure under Linux than it was in
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windows. The 3com Elink 3 ethernet card and megahertz 33.6 PC-card modem
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that we purchased were detected by Redhat's install disks which was
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fortunate because I installed Redhat 4.2 via NFS using the network card.
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Because It is a portable I haven't configured it with a static-ip, rather
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I DHCP the portable under both Windows and Redhat which facilitates
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dragging it back and forth between subnets on our campus a great deal. The
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python based Redhat network control panel is particularly well suited to
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adjusting your network configuration on the fly.
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<P>
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Configuring sound support turned out to be a pretty interesting exercise.
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I chose to use the commercial OSS-Linux sound driver to support the Yamaha
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olp3-sa chipset that the portable has. OSS-Linux could not auto detect the
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settings of the sound chipset as it had done with my desktop Linux
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machine. It worked fairly well once I figured out which irq's and memory
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addresses were in use by the sound chipset, which was pretty easy using
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the windows95 system control panel.
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<P>
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The Toshiba 220cds is not by the standards of the current high-flyer in
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the laptop world an exceptionally fast machine, It is however full
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featured and even given all the accessories that we added extremely cheap.
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The laptop itself can be had for as little as $1600. The cost of a 3com
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network card and a Megahertz modem were $120 and $220 dollars
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respectively. A spare lithium-ion battery an additional $199 and an
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additional 16MB of ram was $90. In all the fully configured laptop cost
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less than $2300.
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<P>
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I have been very happy with how well the new laptop has worked out. It is
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a compact and elegant package, which is similar in function and design if
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not performance to the cream of the Toshiba notebook crop such as the
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Tecra 740. The moderate sacrifice in performance results in a great
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machine at a fraction of the cost. I would recommend such a device to
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anyone looking in to run Linux on a laptop.
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Joel Jaeggli<BR>
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Published in Issue 24 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, January 1998</H5></center>
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