Slashdot Mirror
IBM ThinkPad T22 w/Linux Review
Augustus writes: "LinuxHardware.org has just posted the first review of IBM's ThinkPad T22 with the LinDVD software DVD player that was mentioned on Slashdot back in April. The T22 should finally be available to consumers and it's a fine piece of hardware at a decent price. The review covers the basics: software, support, price, and especially the hardware."
Eeek!! and that's not even the worst of it! First, LAN isn't even a standard feature. Second, this puppy comes preinstalled with "Caldera Openlinux", later on referred to in the article as "Corel Openlinux". <shudder/> Which is worse, the laptop being reviewed or the half-assed job of reviewing it?
Funny how the review bellyaches about a Winmodem as a resource hog and a pain in the neck. I remember way back when (oh, maybe 6 months or a year ago?) if the modem was a winmodem, you didn't even bellyache about it being a resource hog. It just plain didn't work.
One thing I wonder about, though, is what kind of support comes with this laptop? Normally you don't get support from Corel unless you bought the product over the counter, and I wonder if IBM will give it's (Linux) laptop buyers the same kind of support as its desktop buyers. A lot of established Linux users scoff at using customer support, but that is the sort of thing that convinces businesses to buy, say, 500 units for their sales force.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
I have pretty mixed feelings about IBM.. I bought an IBM laptop (390) about a 18 months ago and within 2 months, the hard drive failed. I got it replaced on warranty but half a year later, it failed again. Meanwhile, I had bought an IBM hard drive for my desktop computer, and a few months ago, that one failed too. So three IBM drives in just over one year. I know I've had extremely bad luck, but with an experience like this, you can understand that I won't recommend IBM laptops and/or drives to anyone. Well, the laptops themselves are *very* nice, but the hard drives.... :/
The most ironic thing is that I bought an HP 6000 Omnibook to replace my IBM laptop about half a year ago, and guess who the maker of the hard drive in it is; IBM. DOH! If that one fails within a year or two, I'll never buy IBM again.
Debate over the modem/LAN specification aside, if you're swapping a $400 (retail) M$ OS/office suite for a $30 (retail, with discs) Linux distro, then you've just bought yourself $370 of retail margin right there to spend on goodies, or to leverage at point of sale.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
For those of you wondering as to whether the site actually goes down during a slashdot effect or not, I just thought that I'd let you know that the server has never died during a slashdot posting and that I simply do not have enough bandwidth on the site. We are currently looking for a hosting site to increase the available bandwidth from the measily 500kb connection we have now to at least enough to handle a slashdot. If you know of a hosting faqcility (preferably in the Atlanta area) that would be willing to donate bandwidth to the site please have them contact me at augustus@linuxhardware.org.
Thanks,
Augustus (LH.o Site Manager)
Alright, so the site is slashdotted. I've found a short LinuxHardware article about LinDVD on ThinkPad in Google's cache. Here are the specs of that T22 beast on IBM's site.
... You know, I realize we'd need a Karma Whore moderation for certain posts, that mods the post up without giving the poster karma. Just an idea...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Is the distribution choice. I just plain do not like caldera :) I'd prefer something else (without being specific what).
I am also disappointed that I cannot buy lindvd yet, separate from the laptop.
And the winmodem...well, ok, fine, it works, but geeez. How much more is it per unit to just use a normal modem?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Ugg, talk about speaking out of your ass. Because the gui is the same means that everything else will be? Why would that be again? Speaking from first hand experiance (I was on the lsdvd team) the underlying code is entirly differenet. Heck other then the "skin" on the gui it to is probably a re-write too. There are many many spisific things that Linux is a part of that affects the end result that have nothing to do with the fact that it "has the same ui" The entire unerlayer (unless they ported direct show) is different then what was there before.
Where are the test disk? Motion menu's? Subpics? Stream tests? This is not a DVD player review by any means.
There is bit all about scsi vs ide. This is a very very moot point. It may be an issue under windows, but not linux. There is nothing special about saying that it can do both. Kinda like me saying I can boot off of both. Woopie.
The all important LinDVD performs quite well but not perfect. With most DVDs you will notice no difference from that of a standard hardware decoder but there are a few points on some "action-packed" movies that will skip a bit. Keep in mind that this is still a software DVD player on a laptop and the first iteration of the Linux version.
This is no excuse. They are running 2.4, A 900mhz machine and they are using video acceleration. Cough my 450 cough... Unless the problem is with pthreads (which it might be if they didn't fix that) I would say that they have some work to do.
So here are some real questions that I want to know about. How about macrovision? Is it there? Can you take screenshots? Is there an video out? How about the kernel. Does the dvd player use a spesific kernel to run? Can I upgrade to 2.4.9 without it blowing up? What about changing distrobution? Will it blow up then? Are only Cakdera linux 2.4 binaries provided? What about the defacto red hat 6.x?
What about CSS, I presume it is kernel mode. Does that app barf when you run gdb on it? Did you test out the player with a large number of dvd's to see if any of them would fail? What about region changing. How well does it support that? Do you have to mount the drive before playing? How much cpu does it use while watching your average film? Can it play files? Can it play vcd's? How about SVCD? Does it do Kariokee mode? Can it play regular pcm (wav) file streams? How does the audio sound on the laptop? Can you pump it out to real speakers? Can you run more then just the DVD player at once? Does the ui play frendly with the rest of the desktop (kde, gnome, etc) How fast can you fast forward it? Can you make it go slow? Can you frame advace? Do multiple angle's work? Can it handle cool things like the Ghostbusters msk3000 subpic overlay and not loss performace? Can it handle non-css content (i.e. porn). Can you use 2 cpu's?
Sigh this isn't a review this is just a add for linuxhardware.org
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
If they are using the same codebase as the windows team then they had to have ported Direct X to linux. Under MS's OEM clause all DVD players that want to be certified have to be using Direct X. An OEM wouldn't use one that isn't certified. If they did in fact to this and did it in a clean room way then they could release it open... But that is another topic. On the SCSI thing I am ruff on this ( my systems are now ide ), but I recall having no issues with working with SCSI or ide to access the drive. (But I could be wrong on this and if so then I can be spanked with a thousand nodles...)
Hehe, looking at the article again you are right, I guess I should have thunk about it for a sec. My appologies, sorry. It is much more a hardware review then a lindvd review. The title on the slashdot article made it to be a lindvd review more then a laptop review. I would be happy to write a review of of the lindvd player for you. I have about 400 dvd's I can test with(i.e. I cover all of the different things a dvd can do) here to test out the system fully. Just about anything you would want to test out on a dvd player with. Combined with my previous dvd development experiance I can dig up quite a bit for even the hardcore linux folks.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
So the table says Caldera openlinux 2.4 and the paragraph on software says Corel openlinux 2.4. I think there is a typo, I think it shoudl be Caldera.
Unfortunately for me right now it is priced a little to high. I need a laptop for under 1000. Preferably around $500 would be awesome, and I could live without dvd for now.
Only 'flamers' flame!