Re: [linuxiran] laptop

[Aryan Ameri]

On Thursday 27 November 2003 15:05, Milad Niqui wrote:
> Aryan Ameri wrote:
> > On Friday 28 November 2003 00:54, Zoup wrote:
> >>On Thursday 27 November 2003 00:02, Kaveh Mousavi wrote:
> >>>--- Zoup <address@hidden> wrote:
> >>>I asked it because zoup told me that in his opinion
> >>>the sony laptops are very good (in our last
> >>>meeting)!!,
> >>>
> >>>arash did you have any problem with sony?
> >>>
> >>>regards
> >>>Kaveh
> >>
> >>Some of those Vaio's are working good with Linux , at last as
> >> longest as I've got one ! :)
> >>i have an sony vaio 3304 ( cant remember!! ) , it was well , vaio
> >> io programable working good in kernel , agp card , sound card and
> >> ... working good , even i can get WinModem working under linux
> >> with that vaio ...
>
> Could you use the Sony memory stick under linux?


Never tried. But I heard that it's doable. You had to mount it as a FAT 
partition or something like that. 

> >>sony got no support for its products , 3 year ago i have send an
> >>message to ask if that win modem working under linux or not , i'm
> >>still waiting for answer ! ;)
> >
> > That's the difference between IBM and Sony, see; I asked the same
> > question from IBM, and I received 3 mails, from 3 different support
> > guys in less than 24 hours. They were very helpful, trying to
> > locate good Linux-Laptop related documents for me, and I tell you,
> > they were all using Linux themselves, cause they knew what they
> > were talking about. One of them even asked a KDE question from me,
> > which I happily answered!
> >
> > About the modem, the conversation went to this, that it's not
> > really IBM's fault. IBM likes to have driver for it's modems, but
> > it's Lucent (Agere) who is refusing to produce them. I received all
> > kinds of apologies from the IBM guys, from this.
> >
> > As for the sony, I had a Vaio for a brief period of time, and I
> > basicaly agree with Arash. The Vaio was the worst laptop I have
> > ever touched. The worst screen I had ever seen, basicaly you had to
> > sit comletely straight across it, otherwise all you saw was a
> > negative-like screen. The keyboard also was really shaky, I wasn't
> > confident with it.
>
> The new Vaios come with Onyx-Block LCD which is a very crystal clear
> screen. It no longer has the polaroid effect that you mentioned. I
> haven't seen these kind of screens on other laptops yet.


Well, I haven't tried the new models. But as I said, the one that I had 
was so terrible, it was barely usable.

My IBM ThinkPad screen is crysp and clear. However it's no where near 
the Apple Power Book which I saw a couple of weeks ago. The Toshiba 
which I once used also had a good LCD, but nothing extraordinary.


> My colleague recently bought a Sony Vaio PCG 315S with 2.66M, 512MB
> ram, 60 GB of HDD DVD RW, with those onyx-block screens, and all that
> for 1300 Euro (which is quite cheap compared to other marks). Not
> only sony seems to be the cheapest, but also (at least until a while
> ago) was  the only one offering laptops with Athlon processor (for me
> this is a plus).

Well, see, the initial price is not all you pay. Microsoft is right 
about something, there is also another thing called TOC or total cost 
of ownership.

One of my Dad's friends (a high rank IBM manager in Dubai) told me that 
his ThinkPad once fell down from a 2 meter hight, without a single 
damage. Yeah, as I said, IBM is a tad more expensive, but for example 
the ThinkPad A series have a layer of hard titanium inside, to protect 
the contents of the box from phisical damage. No other vendor has such 
a thing. and guess what, Titanium IS expensive.

Also for example I was reading that they have developed a new technology 
(going to be used in R series very soon) that protects the HDD in the 
laptop, in the same way that an air bag is used in a car, so that when 
the notebook is on, and if you move it, it's guaranteed that you won't 
have a bad sector (common in laptops).

When I wanna buy something, I usually look at a company's R&D to see how 
innovative it is. IBM is a computer company, dedicated to producing 
good technology, rock-solid technology, and will do the innovation 
needed to keep it's products in a superior state than the competition. 
Sony, is a media company, which is playing in the notebook industry as 
a 'me-too', and basicaly doing nothing other than making untested cheap 
clones, with great external looks, which every teenager loves. 

And about Athlon, as much as I like AMD, and as much as I hate Intel, 
the Athlon XP is not a laptop processor. It's too hot in my opinion. 
While for the desktop I would choose an Athlon any day instead of 
Intel, for a notebook IMHO the only viable choice is Pentium-4 M.


> And I know that at least the RedHat installation
> goes quite smooth on a Vaio. 

It differs greatly from model to model. They are all named Vaio, or 
ThinkPad, or Pavilion, or whatever, but they all have different chips, 
which need different drivers. 

>However perhaps you are right that their
> support team doesn't know about Linux.

It's not about Linux. If I buy a product from a company with support, 
and then send them an email asking them a question, I at least expect 
to receive something in reply. (which Zope says he didn't, and 
interestingly he is still recommending this company).

But above all, I agree with Arash. It comes back to taste. I find using 
the ThinkPad trackpoint easier than using a mouse, my professor thinks 
anyone who uses a trackpoint is a freak. Well, it's our choice, and our 
different taste.

> In general if you want to run Linux on a laptop you are on your own.

Mostly yeah. this is the sad situation in an industry which enjoys the 
powerful marketing forces of a convicted illegal monopoly.

>
> cheers,
>
> Milad

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Aryan Ameri