Slashdot Mirror
Linux Laptop from R Cubed Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge (Also owned by VA) has a short writeup on R Cubed's latest laptop, the LS1250-L Linux laptop. From the article: 'My test machine came with Fedora Core 5, the GNOME desktop, OpenOffice.org 2.0, the Firefox browser, and Evolution mail client. The lineup also includes the normal assortment of multimedia players, administration tools, and games. If you prefer, you can choose SUSE 10.1, various flavors of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and even Microsoft Windows XP.'"
just shy of $1500 doesn't seem that high, it's only £812, which is pretty cheep really, although as they mention in the article, the premium is mainly for the lack of weight in the system. Although if the XP model doesn't cost any more there is also be a MS premium built in, which would be a shame - because everyone will want FC5 ; )
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Why don't the no-name revolutionary linux laptop makers understand that unless they sell their laptop for lesser than a similarly spec'd Dell Inspiron, people are going to buy the Inspiron and install Ubuntu instead.
:-(
Yes, I know it's easier to have a pre-setup laptop and not have to worry about searching for ndiswrapper etc for wireless, but the community that the linux laptop makers are targetting actually loves such challenges.
Okay, now I'll get back to trying to figure out how the heck this BCM4318 is going to work
This article made me think of the overall lack of commercial systems sporting pre-loaded Linux operating systems. It's funny that it would take such a relatively small company as this to even attempt it. In particular, I am surprised that boutique companies like Alienware don't offer their models with Linux or with a Linux-Windows dual-boot. People who are willing to shell out thousands for an SLI notebook are (relatively) likely to be interested in Linux. And if you dual-boot with Windows, what's the loss?
One of the biggest reasons why Linux has not reached a wider audience is the difficulty of installation and configuration, which involves partitioning, potentially compiling drivers, and other things that can take some time. It also requires a decent amount of technical knowledge. If Linux came pre-installed, casual users would be a lot more inclined to give it a try.
My guess is the reason they are charging so much is that a laptop preloaded with Linux is very much a novelty, so they can.
Am I seeing right? Are they targeting Linux users with a two button mouse latptop instead of three? This would be pretty much ridiculous.
Seems like the most important thing to you is playing games. If that is the case, why buy a Linux based laptop? Why dont you apply the same criticism to the OS.
All these arguments show why it's not a good laptop for you, but that doesn't make it a "terrible laptop." First, you're wrong about the lack of OpenGL support. Intel chips do support OpenGL, and what's more, they do it with fully open-source kernel drivers. Compare that to nVidia or ATI chips which require proprietary kernel modules to get the same support.
Second, the graphics memory is shared, but so what? That does matter if you're playing heavy duty games, but if your laptop use consists mainly of Web browsing, email, and Vim usage (as is true for my usage) then it doesn't matter if your memory is shared. If that's a real concern, throw an extra 512MB of RAM in there, which is still cheaper than going for a dedicated GPU.
Third, yes, the screen is only 1024x768, but that also means it's small. The laptop is light and fits easily in my bag. Compare that to 1400x1050, which means widescreen and it means having a bigger panel. It's fine if you want that, but to some people portability is more important than screen real estate.
Fourth, happiness might be doubling up on 9-cell batteries, but to me, happiness is not having to carry two batteries. Weight, weight, weight.
In short, the laptop is made for someone with basic computing needs who values portability over power. It's not a gamers' notebook. That doesn't make it a "terrible" notebook, it just makes it a notebook not suited to everyone's needs. The same is true of one of those XPS monsters with a huge screen, high resolution, and dedicated GPU: it's a hulking machine that weighs several pounds more. That doesn't make it a "terrible" notebook, even if it does make it a notebook that I wouldn't buy.
Penny - plain text accounting
I thought the slowest Pentium III that Intel ever made was 450 MHz. That's the one I bought for my first PIII anyway. I remember at the same time having the 'fastest' PII made, which was 450 MHz.
And I'm typing this on a Dell Optiplex with a PIII 500MHz processor, with NetBSD 3 on Mozilla. (under FVWM, etc.) Go figure. I'm cheap and refuse to waste ANY more money on 'horsepower' when if I have a processor-hungry computing task I can pull another Dell PIII machine out of storage and hang it off a free port on the KVM switch.
I only have one 'fast' machine for my limited interest in 'gaming' and that's just a shitty Sempron (one of those motherboard/processor combo at Frys for $79).
Yea, your right, your gonna run Winblows 98 better than Gnome on this laptop w/ 32mb of RAM... Linux is awsome with resorces, but lets face it, it's much more advanced than Win 98 and that needs to be taken into consideration.
I think the basis of comparison here was more towards the current operating systems, i.e. Win XP
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER