laptops?

[Ken Moffat]

Bruce Marshall wrote:
> On Thursday 01 May 2008, Ken Moffat wrote:
>   
>> Thinking of Toshiba or Lenovo, but open to others.
>>     
>
> Just bought a Toshiba U405-2830    3GB ram   250gb HD.
>
> Came with Vista which I used for a day.   Yuck.
>   

I see SP1 is out for Vista. Might help bugs, but still, Vista is too heavy.

> I had already bought a copy of XP that I planned to put on it so I tried to 
> install that.   At first it wouldn't even see the HD's because they were in a 
> new mode  AHCI?  that XP could use.   Set the HD to compatibility and then XP 
> installed.
>   

Shared computer... I told them they would be stuck with Vista, so that's 
that.

> Tried to load some drivers for the Intel chipset and had all kinds of 
> problems.  (this is all under XP)   Long and the short story is that I can't 
> get the wifi to work under XP but the LAN works after finding a driver for 
> it.   (Marvell Yukon LAN chip....  which many laptops seems to be using these 
> days)
>
> Linux had a bit easier time.    It saw the HD's in AHCI mode....  and I 
> installed Kubuntu 8.04.   This time the wifi worked without much fussing but 
> the LAN doesn't work.  (just the opposite)

Good news, but will need the lan and wireless working. Might get by with 
Vista for a while if forced.

I like the Toshiba screens.

I'm curious about Lenovo linux compatibility.

Asus is interesting also.

I hear HP is not up on quality, but not sure.

Ken