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LinuxCertified LC2430 Laptop Review
Anonymouse writes "OSNews posted a comprehensive review of the made-for-Linux LinuxCertified LC2430 laptop. They found that all its components are fully compatible with Linux, except with ACPI in recent kernels (which actually affects many laptops recently). The laptop is a desktop replacement with strong performance and some good extra features: Firewire port, 3-1 card reader, combo drive, SXGA+ TFT screen and an ATi Radeon 3D card. Four Linux distributions were tested with it."
Linux certified laptop with an ATi videocard? Great!
It looked like then "special" price was higher than the "normal" price, then I looked again:
The price appeared as $1099 (struckout) and $1699 as the "special" price. I guess "0" and "8" look similar if they have are struck through.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is a joke, right? Linux-certified laptop, no ACPI support?
ACPI support is absolutely essential on a laptop.
In other words, it tries to be just as big, hot, and power hungry as a desktop.
Huh? I thought all that means is that it would replace main _function_ of a desktop system, while providing the benefit of being portable. But without completely sacrificing ergonomics, or reasonable performance. Just like mobile phones can be replacements of regular wired phones.
I think you may have read too much into that one sentence there.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
It feels to me that this review is a little biased. For example, the authoer says that this notebook shuts down "sometimes without warning" if the batteries get too low, and he says that this is a good thing! I can't imagine this "feature" succeeding on a more mainstream laptop...
Although I totally get where you're coming from, there IS a market for "desktop replacements". For starters, the gaming community.... Even if your laptop is a "brick", it's magnitudes of order easier to take it to and from LAN parties than lugging around a tower case with seperate display, keyboard and mouse.
Another group of buyers are folks who don't really travel much, but simply want the ability to use their computer in "non-traditional settings". Many of these people are trying to completely get rid of a desktop system and have something portable that compares favorably in overall system performance to their former desktop PC. Power-hungry isn't that much of an issue if you're just going to sit on the couch in the family room, or temporary set up the system on a kitchen counter while you're fixing dinner....
I had this whole debate with one of my best friends when I chose an Apple Powerbook 17" and he chose (for about the same price) a Sager "desktop replacement" laptop. Eventually, he sold the Sager - and has decided to go back to an old Dell Inspiron he owned before. The graphics capabilites on the Dell make it unsuitable for some gaming, but I think he finally realized what I kept trying to tell him. When I'm doing things that require hard-core CPU power (whether it's gaming or video editing from camcorder footage or what-not), I'm more comfortable just sitting down at a desk, in a good computer chair, anyway. I'd rather have my portable be as portable as possible (without sacrificing too much screen real-estate, which is why I still went with the 17" PB).
I have a dell 'desktop replacement' and bought it because it was marked down to a point I could easily justify the purchase. Its a 8.something lbs monster that gives me MAYBE 60 minutes (around 45 of light use and 30 of hard use) of battery life.
What the grandparent is saying is that the shif away t from the portable low power and lightweight laptop which gets battery life just sucks. I see people dragging their 7-9lbs monsters all the time, most of them have a desktop at home and don't need a 'desktop replacement,' what they need is a lightweight laptop that wont burn them. In fact, you almost never see term 'laptop' anymore. They are just too hot to use on your lap, ironically.
Thankfully, there's been a shift away from this recently and we're seeing lighter laptops. The pentium-m is a great low power CPU and computers are cheap enough where you can have a desktop or two at home and still afford a laptop. No need for the magic one-in-all solutions which you can't really upgrade. No need to buy a couple docking stations. And no need to freak out if one of the kids drops it or if you spill something on it. You still have your desktop and if you're smart you do backups on it.
Then instead of being impressed with these 'reasonable' prices for a system with a free OS compared to one with a non-free OS, wouldn't it be more surprising that they don't offer them at lower prices since they didn't have to pay anything for the OS, lowering their costs?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Pardon me, but this is utter tripe.
It's kinda difficult to take seriously someone who claims that Office (be it Open or MS) is a serious competitor to Tex based publishing in science.
I'm a science type and I moved from the rubbish that is windows to linux precisely because of Lyx, and Latex. And these days I find Kile to be a superb latex environment as well. And I have no problem with Sixpack or Pybliographer either, not to mention the fact that they don't try and lock the references I've collected over the years into a prorprietary format.
I haven't used End-Note in a while, but when I did use it, it was clear that the whole program was a clumsy flat-file type database, which anyone could have made themselves in Access or Filemaker Pro, with a couple of shoddy macros linking it to Word and some online databases.
Perhaps it's improved a little now. But comparing these programs on Windows to Tex based systems on *nix is simply vacuous.