[TriLUG] Shopping for new laptop...

Tim Jowers timjowers at gmail.com
Thu Jul 12 13:55:35 EDT 2007


>From the companies who actually do focus on Linux (specifically not DELL).
I'm not impressed. And even less impressed with DELL.

System76, $1650: "Serval", Fiesty, Intc Duo 1.8, 2GB, 80GB 7200, DVD, nVidia
GeForce 7600 256MB
PenguinComputing: no notebooks
EmperorLinux (DELL whitebox): $5591: FC6, Ubu, etc. Rhino M90, 2.33 C2D,
17",4 G,160,Blu-Ray Disc
LinuxCertified (IBM whitebox): $2598: FC6 etc., 2.16 C2D, 2GB, 100GB, etc.
nextcomputing: portable workstations (that's more what I need as a SW dev.
Laptops slow me down.)

  Here's a good list of notebook systems vendors. Be sure to scroll down for
the real list.
http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/laptop.html

   The hard truth is nobody in the USA (and I'm fairly sure DELL and Gateway
too) really makes hardware. They do assemble hardware. And do make custom
cases. No matter who you buy from it has largely the same components. I
think the system board manufacturer is the most variable component. Is that
correct? HP,IBM,Sun do make servers. How much of the hardware technology in
an Apple computer is actually made by Apple? DELL? Imagine if the auto
companies simply bought a standard chassis kit from China and added their
custom bodies and seats.

TimJowers



On 7/12/07, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday 12 July 2007 09:54, Warren Myers wrote:
> >
> > On 7/12/07, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > > On Thursday 12 July 2007 09:24, Warren Myers wrote:
> > > > true - and with 4800 and 5400 rpm drives still fairly standard (espy
> on
> > > > cheap laptops), drive access will *always* be the slowdown.
> > >
> > > Tell that to my prime number generator :-)
>
> > of course - it's swapping to disk :P
>
> Not for the first hundred million or so. It basically lays out an array of
> bits (not bytes) in memory, and checks off each one whose subscript is a
> multiple of a smaller number. So if I have 1.5GB of RAM, and let's say 1GB
> is
> available, I can test numbers 0 to 8billion without swapping.
>
> I have another version that pages ranges in and out, enabling it to find
> billions of primes. Pages are stored on disk, but the disk is not the
> bottleneck by any stretch of the imagination.
>
> You can see these and other algorithms here:
>
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/codecorn/primenumbers/primenumbers.htm
>
> SteveT
> --
> TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ  : http://trilug.org/faq/
> TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
>



More information about the TriLUG mailing list