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need help picking a notebook

S

SaintDevil

Junior Member
I'm mostly going to be using it for general use (internet, word-processing, etc.) but also a few games like WoW, and i intend to use it for software development. I'm going to be reformatting the drive and installing linux/windows, so the OS isn't important. I'd like atleast 1 gig of ram, but i've heard its cheaper to buy less ram built in, and upgrade it later. i'm looking mostly at turion notebooks, and unless presented with a really good reason to use a p-m, i don't think i will. here's the one i'm looking at right now: here

I want a good performing notebook, so i don't have to spend a lot of time waiting for things to load. any suggestions?


oh and i was thinking of building one, but i can't find any good barebones for amd. if you have any suggestions for that, post that as well. thanks!!
 
i'd say get a laptop with a nvidia gpu. i've read that the linux drivers from ati are terrible. nvidia seems to have much better drivers when using linux.

 
skunk is right. From what I hear, NVIDIA's linux support is much better.

Asus Z71v: 15.4" WSXGA+ Pentium M w/GF Go 6600 128MB

MSI MS-1029: 15.4" WXGA Turion 64 w/128MB X700

Both are barebones and can be built fairly cheap.
 
I already looked at the MS-1029, and its just too hard to find anywhere. If you know of any reliable stores that sell it, plz let me know.

Nvidia's support is better, but for some reason, i can't find any turion notebooks that have a nvidia gpu. know of any? thanks!
 
Pentium M will perform just as good as a turion and use less battery power at the same time.
either one would be good.

 
true, but i want to be able to use this comp for a while, just upgrading it as needed. a 64-bit processor allows me to do that.

The Asus A6K and the A6Km both have nvidia gpu's in them, but i can't seem to find any sites that sell them in the states. any suggestions?
 
well its not a barebone, but you might take a look at sager Text
its more of a dtr than mobile though. but it should last you a good while w/o having to worry about upgrading any time soon


 
While the Linux ATI drivers are behind the nVidia ones, they are catching up. I just installed Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" on my Inspiron 9200 which has an ATI 9700 128MB and I use the fglrx drivers to enable 3d acceleration. I also have the DVI-out on it going to an external LCD to enable dual-head.

Therefore to say that the ATI drivers suck isn't really accurate anymore.
 
hehe the sager is well outside my budget. I'm trying to shoot for something with an upper limit of around 1400. the ms-1029 works perfectly within that, and i found a place to buy it. has anyone had any experience buying from ewiz.com? I don't want to get burned.
 
Since you are going to be using Linux I suggest you do not get a Turion laptop unless you really know what you are doing. For the most part all turion laptops either use the ati radeon xpress or sis mirage platform which are not fully supported in linux yet (ie pci express graphics). I have an acer TM4402 which has a turion ml-32 and rs200 chipset and it was a pain in the ass to get dma working. Takes forever to install a distro without dma and you are going to need kernel 2.6.9 or higher to even try and get it to work. And also acpi does not work at all yet which is pretty important since you are installing on a laptop. And also the fglrx drivers are really more hit or miss than anything else. They install flawlessly on some systems while not at all on others, with the latter being the most common. Stick to nvidia for linux, their drivers are pretty much rock solid.

Ohh yeah almost forgot also have you looked at the dell inspiron 6000? Right now dell has some very nice coupons which allow you go price one with a 1.7 P-M and 128mb geforce 6800go and 1gb of ram for around $1000.
 
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