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.'"

Comments

And why would I want to pay the premium

[namityadav]

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 :-(

Re:Stripped down... it's a terrible laptop.

[massysett]

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.