[TriLUG] Laptops

[Mike Johnson]

John Franklin [franklin at elfie.org] wrote:
> 
> I bought myself an iBook.  I love it.  OS X rocks.  They claim a six
> hour battery life, it's closer to five.  No PC Card slots, but there are
> two USB and one FireWire, 10/100, modem.  The airport card fits under
> the keyboard so you're not likely to snap off the antenna by setting it
> down at odd angles.  The screen only does 1024x768.  The 14" screen is
> very readable, tho.  

Veering dangerously offtopic, I'd like to toss in a vote for an OSX
based laptop.  I -love- our TiBook.  The battery life is long and the
screen is just insane (in a good way).  Note that 'normal' iBooks come
with a 12" display that runs at 1024x768 (very usable - OSX text
rendering is quite crisp), but that the 'big' iBooks come with a 14"
display that also runs at 1024x768 (to your text is much larger,
comparitively).  The batteries on all the current Apple laptops have a
little button you can press (on the outside) that will light up a small
LED bar to tell you how much battery life you have left (handy when the
laptop is asleep or suspended).

As for the expansion:  there's very little you'll need to add that you
can't find in a USB interface or firewire interface.  Harddrives, cd/dvd
burners, even sound mixing devices are all available in USB or firewire.
But if you must use a PCMCIA interface, the TiBook has one TypeII slot
(not a TypeIII!).
> 
> The dev tools (included with OS X on a separate CD) has gcc.  There are
> some extra flags for linking to "Frameworks" (OS X's shared library
> package, includes headers and libraries), and most gnu software builds.
> There's a ton of packages already built (http://www.versiontracker.com).

Don't forget Fink!  http://fink.sourceforge.net/

Mike
-- 
"Let the power of Ponch compel you!  Let the power of Ponch compel you!"
   -- Zorak on Space Ghost

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