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Laptop musings
My current personal laptop is four years old in August, and it might be getting towards time to replace it. (Heavier than I like, extended battery makes it a weird shape, not great screen resolution, occasional hardware problems with the wireless dropping out, but otherwise works fine.) The current candidate, for a couple of reasons, is a Lenovo T400. Around hardware and Windows issues I tend to live in a cave until I really care, though, so can the greater interwebs help answer a couple of questions?
Q: Any general hardware or quality problems with this or other new-model ThinkPads?
Q: In the abstract, does it run Linux? (I'm fairly sure I want the "discrete graphics" option, which implies a current ATI chipset, which implies the fglrx driver, with its particular host of issues.)
Q: My primary use case for a Windows side is gaming. On one of the possible configs I can get 64-bit Vista as a free upgrade; will it cause problems?
Q: Speaking of gaming and mostly living in Linux, is current virtualization technology good enough that I can get good performance running 3D games in Windows on a VM on Linux? (Any configuration details I should keep in mind?)
Q: The ones I'm looking at come with 2 GB of RAM standard, an upgrade to 4 GB is $85. Is there any particular reason to want it or not?
Q: Will I use an integrated camera? The fingerprint reader? Bluetooth?
Q: There's an option for integrated mobile broadband, which is inexpensive and kind of a neat concept, but I'd also need to commit now to a provider. Do I want it, will I use it, will I have to pay twice if I have both a cell phone and a laptop?
Q: They now have three battery sizes. How huge are the larger batteries? (The extended battery on my T42p at work is fine, on my home laptop it sucks.)
Q: Four different 802.11 implementations. Do I care?
Q: DVD-ROM vs. DVD-recordable vs. Blu-ray Recordable. Do I care?
(I'm inclined to take the extra memory, the camera, Bluetooth, the largest battery, and the cheapest wireless Ethernet and CD burner, and pass on the mobile broadband. Oh, and take a 250 GB hard drive, and the highest-resolution screen even if that limits some of the other options I don't really understand.)
Q: Any general hardware or quality problems with this or other new-model ThinkPads?
Q: In the abstract, does it run Linux? (I'm fairly sure I want the "discrete graphics" option, which implies a current ATI chipset, which implies the fglrx driver, with its particular host of issues.)
Q: My primary use case for a Windows side is gaming. On one of the possible configs I can get 64-bit Vista as a free upgrade; will it cause problems?
Q: Speaking of gaming and mostly living in Linux, is current virtualization technology good enough that I can get good performance running 3D games in Windows on a VM on Linux? (Any configuration details I should keep in mind?)
Q: The ones I'm looking at come with 2 GB of RAM standard, an upgrade to 4 GB is $85. Is there any particular reason to want it or not?
Q: Will I use an integrated camera? The fingerprint reader? Bluetooth?
Q: There's an option for integrated mobile broadband, which is inexpensive and kind of a neat concept, but I'd also need to commit now to a provider. Do I want it, will I use it, will I have to pay twice if I have both a cell phone and a laptop?
Q: They now have three battery sizes. How huge are the larger batteries? (The extended battery on my T42p at work is fine, on my home laptop it sucks.)
Q: Four different 802.11 implementations. Do I care?
Q: DVD-ROM vs. DVD-recordable vs. Blu-ray Recordable. Do I care?
(I'm inclined to take the extra memory, the camera, Bluetooth, the largest battery, and the cheapest wireless Ethernet and CD burner, and pass on the mobile broadband. Oh, and take a 250 GB hard drive, and the highest-resolution screen even if that limits some of the other options I don't really understand.)