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Laptop Pentium IIIs
jued0001 writes "A new Pentium III for Laptops running at 600 Mghtz is being released. Once called "Geyserville," now known as SpeedStep, it runs at 600 Mgthz when running on AC, but drops to 450 Mghtz when running on a battery. "
Geyserville chipset Burning laptop - who smells smoke marketing namechange
But it reminds me way too much of those days when you had the 8088 with the turbo button to go up to 10.77 mhz. I wonder how much power will really be saved by slowing down the proc that much. I think I would rather have the option myself so that if I needed the extra speed while on battery I could have it. But Im not a high paid Intel engineer:)
I am 31337 or something.
Wow. I never heard of Mghtz before.
I'm suspicious at the clock speed claims of these new chips. I have Dell Mobile Pentium II-450 at work, and the BIOS Setup contains a warning that setting the CPU to Full Speed may create an unstable system. This leads one to think that the CPU slows itself down depending on temperature, and may in fact never be running at rated speed.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Doesn't APM already do this? There's some setting in my AWARD bios which says something about CPU throttling. Is how is this different? (other than the fact that the change is triggered by power source, not system load).
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
They've been hyping this for a long time. Wasn't it supposed to slow the processor when the system was running low on power? There've been laptops that do this for quite a while now. In fact, there was a discussion on the kernel mailing list about it a while back. Here's a link to the discussion. Personally, I don't see it being that big of a deal. My take on it is that it's just an excuse to charge more for portable processors again now that they've been forced to lower prices by competition by AMD.
Haven't you heard? Micro$ort had long offer this kind of technology in their windoze family products. To simply explain, Windoze will run on maximum performance upon release and will automatically slow down during the time of upgrades and service packs. Industrial analysts expect a major slow down in performance next year February with the new Micro$ort millennium service pack and the release of windoze 2000.
doh, I didn't mean to post this twice. Sorry.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Doesn't the fact that Linux calls the HALT instruction in its idle loop make dropping the processor speed irrelevant? That should save as much power and heat as possible without compromising performance.
I believe that this is the reason that the heat-sensitive fan on my laptop stays off when running Linux, but goes on with Windows.
Well, that's all and good, but how much do they cost? There's nothing about it in the story, and nothing mentioning the new chip on Intel's web site. They must cost 2 arms and a leg, eh? in which case we wouldn't be able to use the computer. (Unless they're coming out with another "You talk it types" program. Good business strategy.)
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
... and frankly, I think its a waste. Sure, its nice to be able to do quick audio editing on the fly out in the field (using Sound Forge on the train or bus to edit just-recorded audio does rock, I'll admit), but for the most part I find it hard to understand why laptop manufacturers insist on putting more and more processing power into portable computers.
... dare I say it ... "window" into that luggage on the road with us...
I'd be quite happy with a 400mhz laptop with good *connectivity* options - if someone came out with a P2/400 that was fairly simple in the performance ratio department, but had 128k radio connectivity within a 4 to 6 mile radius back to a home base unit I could put on my network, I'd be in total geek heaven.
I don't understand why this isn't more of an issue for people these days - I guess in a nation of commuters (I walk to work every day), this is not as important as having the 'latest and greatest processor' to cart back and forth, but I'm hoping that in the coming year or so we'll start to see more innovation in the WAN department for portable computer users than we will in processor designs...
In fact, if laptops *DEVOLVED* into simple video/screen/mouse interfaces with extremely good spread spectrum radio connectivity back to a home base unit that could be connected to a Monster P3/1Ghz system, that would be *ideal*.
Why bother engineering to take all that luggage with you, when we could just engineer to leave the luggage at home and just take a
These new wireless WedPad type devices are more and more becoming an attractive occupation of time and geek attention, in my book... They'll surely evolve to something closely approximating what I described above. Hopefully, anyway.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
apple laptops have had this feature for years.
I remember reading some stuff on linux-kernel about the "jiffies" counter which is used in device driver timing loops and how it is created at boot time and can't change. Has anyone ever tested Linux on a laptop while changing the clock speed on the fly? It's possible that device drivers could crash and lock up the machine.
formatting settings;
must remember next haiku:
set to plain old text.
How will this effect the bogomips loop used to calculate wait states in linux? Seems to me that it was designed for processors that remain at a given speed.
I can assure you all that this is a nice feature for most laptop users. I use a PowerBook G3 Series (Macintosh laptop), that has this feature. I can chooose my power settings to give me the mix of performance and battery life that I want. As most of my work on the road is glorified text editing (scripting/developing), I let my processor cyle down, but keep the screen at full energy (punctuation is hard to read on a dimmed screen in high glare environs..).
I get to keep working for an hour longer on a single battery. And this does bring up one more note on this, whenevery you think about the battery life figures now, remember that they are baseing this on the most power-conserving settings...
I can understand if you need a certain ammount of power but the type shouldn't matter in the slightest.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Here we have Ramsey Electronics of New York shut down by the Clinton administration for terrorism, his inventory confiscated, and this is the best you can do? Malda, get a life. Bill Ramsey has been selling neat kits for years, to Boy Scouts, schools, and the self taught. He has also been a tremendous help to law enforcement. I suppose Bill should consider himself fortunate. At least the BATF agents didn't kill his wife or children. Didn't even stomp to death the family pets. At least they are learning restraint.
Ooooh, the new Geezerite processor. sounds like what geologists will find when excavating the Intel prefab plant about 3 millenia from now with nanobots. "Wow, it's unbelievable - they actually used *silicon* to power their computers!"
I reawlly don't believe such statements that having variable temperature would cause anything but varing Mhz ratings.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Haiku nazi here:
Far too many syllables!
No haiku for you!
Great - now I can fry eggs easily while traveling! Just flip the laptop over and apply butter liberally.
umm...it's a laptop, a lot of people do things while on a plane and such that aren't particularly processor intensive (such as word proc) and they want their battery to last as long as possible; they aren't too worried about draining the power grid when plugged in.
Q:Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A:All my autopsies have been performed on dead peop
TAKE YOUR GOD DAMN AOL DISKS AND RAM EM UP YOUR MOTHERFUCKING ASS YOU FAG!
A better solution would be short-range base units scattered 200 feet apart in all civilized areas (perhaps on top of all light posts) that have a fibre connection to the internet. Thus lower-power radios can be used, and since there would be only at max 200 notebooks in a 200 foot radius to one of these stations, there would be plenty of bandwidth for all! Then you would just securely VNC into your home computer for all the juicy processing tasks you need to do...
Download a fast DirectX Tetris Clone [276 k]
It's all nice and facy to have a 600MHz laptop.. but where is this speed going? I figure someone should look into incorporating a cpu that may start up at 600, but once everything is loaded and the like, the CPU should be able to self throttle itself so that it would slow down the system to the point where heat/power is no longer a problem. Just think of it, how much speed do you actually need to 'type' and 'move the mouse' once the system is booted? 66MHz, 100Mhz? (prolly 66 to stay compatible with system devices..) If the machine were to all of a sudden get bogged down, then it would auto-speed up :) I think it'd be a marvel idea.
I think the days of using your laptop for a primary system are over. (Not that they were ever really here to begin with) The high end desktop CPU's are already pushing 800mhz, 450/600 just doesn't cut it, especially considering they cost so much more.
I'll go ahead and guess that laptops will start to die off by the end of the year. Hand-held devices will do almost everything most people use their laptops for and they're cheaper/smaller.
But I don't travel a lot so what do I know? I think I'll just go take my medicine now.
We have a trade off then. You have the high performance if hooked to A/C. So... it is a not so easy to use (ergonomics wise) home system. If you take it out on the town however it has about the same speed as all a standard high end laptop. Did I miss something here?
The wages of sin are unreported and back taxes are hell to pay.
...they have their role, and they can rock at it, but they are not the best system to replace a whole desktop computer, not because of their cost or power, but because of... their size.
the *interface* to the laptop, what you use to work with it, the keyboard, the screen, the mouse/equivalent, are all components that suffer through miniaturisation, due to their having to interface with our eyes and hands. small, unresponsive keyboards (still using the unwieldy qwerty layout! a disaster, sizewise), poor substitutions for the mouse, and a small screen, all hinder its usage.
coding on it is passable, non-type-intensive applications are better, but anything demanding accurate mouse-control is difficult, graphic design nigh-on impossible. the laptop should not be performing any of these tasks though - by implication, the environment it should be used in is quite unsuitable to these sorts of developments - it should be used on the move.
on the train/bus/etc while commuting, in a restaurant on a lunch break, so on and so forth - a non-work environment. as such it should be used primarily for supplemental tasks... anything from catching up on email to reading documents, filing things, noting down ideas, and so on and so on.. work that can then consolidate the work on the regular computer.
this is probably what has lead to the increasing popularity of palmtop computers - they offer a similar range of functions as detailed above, but are all the more portable. people are finding laptops unwieldy for anything more. it is likely people could make more use of a portable computer than they can get from a palmtop, but in its current incarnation, the laptop is unable to fulfil this role to any great extent.
ideally, the ultimate goal would be to produce a "portable computer" (i refrain from using the term laptop here) whose interface system is not an adaptation of the desktop computer's, but rather one made for the job, ie working on the move. speculation here could end up in the fantastic, but the technology, from voice-activated commands through eye-tracking pointers to thought-control, can't be too many years away.
Fross
(sniff sniff) What's that burning smell? Aaaaaaaaaaaoooooohhhhhh shhhiiiiiiiittt!!!!
The latest tech in rechargeable batteries seems to show up on laptops and cell phones. They see new tech before anything else. NiMH cells first showed up here, then lithium ion. Where can I but Lithium ion cells to run my pager or gameboy?
.
If I wanted to save power, I'd've bought a slower laptop.
... then it must be the wave of the future:
:P
http://www.apple.com/ibook/airport.html
Won't be long before this becomes a commodity in the PC market, and when that happens, as all new technologies that enter the PC realm, it'll become faster, cheaper, lighter, and more and more powerful within a very short period of time...
So
:)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
a software hardware solution that will mantain processor usage at 100%. What I mean is when you look at the proc utilisation on a typical system, it hovers at around 10-20 % most of the time and occasionally in small bursts it goes up to 100%. So in this scenario what'd be ideal is that the s/w throttles the processor speed so that proc utilisation always remains at 100%. As in if the systems not doing too much stuff at any given time slow the proc just enough so that proc utilisation goes up to around 90-100% and once the speed up the proc once utilisation reaches 100% and keep speeding it up until you reach peek speed. Does that make sense? I am thinking you could apply such algorithms to other parts of the system too. i.e. throttle the bus speed the video card etc..
Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second F for this term. - Prof. A.S. Tanenbaum, author of Minix,
I don't want to maintain two computers. I don't want my application display limited by a 128K connection. I don't want to slowly suck data over over the airwaves instead of a 100MHz (or faster) system bus. I don't want to share my processor, my disk, my memory, or any other component of my computer. I don't want to be chained to a desk by a fifty pound mess of beige plastic.
I want a freaking fast portable computer!!!
Bigger pipes? Yippy for that too!! I love it. But I'm sick and tired of people telling me that the future will find me slowly circling the mother ship like some kind of semi-concious droid.
Simple physics: things which are closer together can communicate faster. No NC will *ever* match what a stand alone device can muster.
Ever notice how the people who sell NC's the hardest also sell servers? And also want to run the servers?
The NC is just a modern version of central planning. Don't be fooled. Do things your way, not someone else's.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
My six-year-old laptop has a full size keyboard, as does my new one. Among the well over 150 portable computers I own, there are indeed some with very substandard screens, keyboards, etc. There are some with even worse features, though. You pick whats important to you when you pay your money.
My laptops work great in those situations, but I am not limited to "supplemental tasks" -- because my laptop is my main computer, I am fully functional where ever I might be. I don't have to worry about jotting down notes to update something later, I can update it right then and there. Heck, with my wireless modem, I can update a web page, upload it, and view it off the net without leaving the coffee shop.
When I get somewhere where I work a lot (such as my home office, or my main client,) I plug into a docking station connected to a MS Natural Keyboard, a Logitech Trackman Marble, and a 17 inch monitor. For trips, I have a bag packed and ready to go with a network card, serial card, another trackman, a ballpoint mouse, and various keyboard and monitor cables.
The point is, where ever I am, I don't have to sacrifice. I have the best of all worlds, instead of sacrificing for a good machine some of the time!
Again, I think you are flat out wrong. Perhaps you find them unwieldy, but from what I've seen, laptops are replacing desktops in the corporate world left, right, and center. Fifteen years ago, I was about the only person I knew who owned a portable computer. Today, it doesn't surprise me to see two or more other people on the train with me working on a notebook -- at 9pm, going against the commute.
I have no problem carrying a large laptop -- it beats driving somewhere to walk on a treadmill the way people do -- but there are smaller, lighter ones that still have full-sized keyboards and screens.
Of course, portable computers aren't for everyone. My wife doesn't use hers anywhere nearly as often as I think she should. But for an awful lot of people, they are the future.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Anyone else misread the title as "Ills" instead of "IIIs"? I was expecting a story about the ills of a sick CPU.
pentium suck...but now i can really give my laptop a good beaver rub ooooo feel the power =) (*_-)
Wanna place a bet on that? Portable computers have been around for over 25 years -- I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, my experience has been just the opposite -- they are replacing desktops like crazy.
Well, not everyone does 3-D rendering all day; you might be surprised to find that 90% of the population can get by just fine with a 450mhz processor. Meanwhile, portability -- being able to work where ever, whenever you want -- is far more important than cutting a few milliseconds off that spell check.
As for cost, the relative price of a laptop to its comparable desktop counterpart is much closer than it was 10 years ago, and it continues to drop. In a few years, the price will be very nearly the same (but your desktop computer will come with an LCD screen.)
Wander down to the airport some time and check out how many folks you see waiting for flights with their laptops out. Take the bus some time during the rush hour and look around. Have lunch in Palo Alto or Mountain View and see what's on the menu. Heck, take a look in a CompUSA ad some Sunday and count the number of laptops versus desktops shown! I think you'll find that laptops are definitely not disappearing.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
When did "Mghtz" become a widely accepted abbreviation for "Megahertz"? The standard is "MHz".
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Like here...
Isn't this going to completely throw timing loops and other bogomips-measured functions out of whack? Linux gets it's reading at bootup, and doesn't refresh it's value. If it boots at one clock speed, then changes to another, things are going to break.
Matthew
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
I'd trade 1/2 the speed for twice (how about 4x?)
the battery life.
In fact, everything else being equal (ram and disk capacity for instance), I'd really enjoy something like a P200 with a much improved battery life. 2-4 hours doesn't cut it. Give me 72 hours on a charge!!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The PAUSE instruction has been added to the cacheability support group of instructions.
The execution of the next instruction is delayed an implementation specific amount of time. The instruction does not modify the architectural state. This instruction provides especially significant performance gain.
The PAUSE instruction is used in spin-wait loops with the processors implementing dynamic execution (especially out-of-order execution), or dynamic power throttling. In the spin-wait loop, PAUSE improves the speed at which the code detects the release of the lock. For dynamic scheduling, the PAUSE instruction reduces the penalty of exiting from the spin-loop. For dynamic power throttling, PAUSE in the spin-wait loop significantly reduces power consumption and prevents throttling.
Since the PAUSE instruction is backward compatible with ALL existing IA32 processor generations, a test for processor type (a CPUID test) is not needed. All legacy processors will execute PAUSE as a NOP, but in processors which use the PAUSE as a hint there can be significant performance benefit.
dropping from 600 to 450mhz is hardly an innovative idea. the feature has been something mac laptops have been able to do for years (you can set this in the energy control panel).
--- Hey, Jesus is coming! Everyone look busy
Bah, its a 450 megahertz laptop with a special AC adapter turbo mode. Next they'll start marketing a laptop that has a full size screen and keyboard and extra drive space when connected to a desktop.
Also, you seem very fascinated with the use-less-power-on-battery feature. When I ran a story on the Geyserville on my site PBZone.com, I got a flood of reader mail reminding me that Macs have been doing that since the Duos, so about five-six years, possibly longer.
"it runs at 600 Mgthz when running on AC"
Now, if only I could get an Anonymous Coward to power my PC.
sup
What people don't realize is that Intel is a massive marketing machine that wouldn't abandon their dinosaur architecture even if they could design a better chip. Intel cares about building the brand name and selling whatever trash they can come up with to the poor saps who watch prime time television eating potato chips wishing they were techno-savvy. I even hate their fucking trademark chime.
Comon.. the WHOLE idea of SAVING power is to keep CPU cycles DOWN so it WON'T suck up all the juice out of the battery. If you want this feature, if you call it that at all (my word for it is useless) then go ahead and make it work for your desktop at home or at work. But sure as hell I would NOT want my processor working at 100% and watching the battery meter drop faster than Bill Clinton's pants. Another thing is keeping a CPU uh.. "utilized" for lack of a better word, is just plain dumb. CPU runs at it's rated speed. Period. a P3-450 runs at 450MHz.. 4.5x100 (multiplier X bus speed) you are making it work HARDER by making it do more will **NOT** speed it up. It will only cause it to drain the battery. It's as simple as that.
Please do everyone a favor and buy yourself an idiots guide to a computer.
www.iessoft.com
Come-on people, come to grips, vote for safer technologies. Don't be just lured by just walking around with your laptop and boasting of mobility. Stop this wire-less every-where mania. Use it as a scrace resource and make this world a better place...
--
Your-well-wisher!
DISCLAIMER: This post is my suspision. I have done no research whatsoever. By reading this article you agre not to hold its writer responcible for any possible slander.
Of course it makes a difference, you get the same amount of work done, but it takes longer. Therefore the company can hype longer batterylife, which will make more people buy the product.
Basicly equivelent to working slow because you charge by the hour. Dishonest perhaps, but if it makes a buck go for it!
Little Brother, watching the watchers
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
I've been following all these threads as I'm about to make a hefty purchase on a super-powered laptop. Main concerns have been mhz, ram, hd capacity, and upgradability. I figured, get the fastest, strong, best now, and it'll take a little longer for it to be obsolete. But what about OS issues? Anyone run VMware on a laptop with Linux AND NT? (or any other combos) I like the idea of wireless LANs and wireless modems but it seems they are only available for Win95/98. Is this just FUD, or are there products out there for us mobile geeks with high power needs?
"Where is my mind?"
Ok, now that I see his (and yours) point of view I understand what you are talking about. However, say for example you are doing very light work then this makes sense. Unfortunately most people on the road don't type up letters in notepad but most people would create reports, work on some documents, and perhaps even create presentations with PowerPoint. So throttling down till its 100% busy might make the user's computer feel sluggish. The best bet would be to find an equilibrium between power consumption and Mhz so that we can be at a productive level without sweating it out to the nearest power plug. How that will happen remains to be seen but with the new Coppermines (which run at 1.6v I beleive, correct me if I'm wrong) will be a better candidate for laptops.
my site please don't go to it.
Someone will probably spill their jolt on themselves for me saying this, but take a look at the Powerbook G3. I'm really happy with mine, it's close to a portable equivilent for my P3 500 I'm on right now, the best part is the high power with low power consumption. If I turn the power saving stuff on it's still usable but will get me about 4 hours on a full battery. The screen is big and bright and comes with plenty of RAM, it also has 8 megs of video memory which is great for when I have it hooked up to my 19" monitor. MacOS probably wouldn't be an OS of your choice but I'm pretty sure you could get Yellow Dog or LinuxPPC working on one pretty easily. The 98 G3 300 is pretty nice from what I hear too (I have the 99 333). If you have the cash you can also get a Virtual PC card which works REALLY well in my experience.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Opt for less power.
;-). Not exactly most compatible laptop out there.
;-)
;-). If Linux DVD player project moves along smoother now that our lovely DVD CCA has drawn much attention to it, you would be able to utilize it.
I think Gateway Solo computers are an excellent choice, and yes I worked with them. Sorry, I am not that fond of Dell Latitude, but maybe it's just me, I have over 500 of them here
The ideal way is to buy something about 2 steps below state of the art. It's usually considerably cheaper and just as good.
In reality, that ultra-high P3 power is simply not necessary. Unless you wanna do video editing (for which Sony VAIO would be ideal) on the fly, don't bother getting monster laptop.
I wouldn't suggest a low-end "consumer" laptop such as Compaq Presario, those are just plain unfit for the job.
If OS or computer system is not an issue, demo an iBook. Put Linux on it and enjoy the envious looks. I certainly want one, once they drop in price a bit, and I've never owned a Mac. Oh, and it has wireless networking capability by design.
Shop around, and do not get excess power. Do you really need that 8gb hdd in your laptop? I have one in my desktop and it's very heavily used and not nearly full, with 5 operating systems.
Remember that the more power - the more your battery will be drained. Sure the Vaios are supersleek, but their battery life is quite limited.
The screen size is a major issue... The 15" monsters do weigh a ton. I find 14" to be quite satisfactory, considering that I get near 100% viewable area. 13.3" used to be standard and they fit in economy class air flights, 14" will have harder time
Before you purchase a laptop, read a lot of information, especially their support forums.
A little checklist
CPU - above 200mhz
Ram - 64mb
HDD - = 4gb
USB - for wintel boxes if you plan to use Win 9x or Win 2000 Professional
Winmodem - just say "No" to that garbage and get a normal 3com Megahertz 56K, perhaps with cellular capability.
Upgradability - you don't upgrade a laptop except for hard disk which is removable and ram. Usually everything else is wired in.
DVD-Rom - optional, but you might want it. I want one
Compatibility - check for Linux support of the components prior to purchase. 90% of the time everything is already supported unless you purchase some utter junk.
Finally, it's been a while since I purchased a laptop, but I had to do quite a bit of research before recommending one.
My e-mail address is valid, should you have any further questions.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Network Administrator
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Newer digital mobile phones have the LiON batteries.
:-)
I have a Sprint PCS Denso touchpoint. The battery is 2x3 and less than quarter of an inch thick. 130 hours standby time!
I think the xx90 series from Nokia are also using LiON because their standby is about 5 days as well and they are very slim.
FWIW I have NiMH batteries for my personal electronics
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Network Administrator
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
That's what I did 6 years ago. Six years was stretching it a bit, but you get the idea. My new laptop will hopefully last a while as well.
Personally, I would recommend focussing on (in order of importance):
Well, I went for a ChemBook 7400 which is one of the laptops that Linux Laptops used to sell. (Unfortunately, they stopped taking orders before I got mine.) There is also a page on running Linux on an ASUS 7400 (which is the OEM version of the ChemBook). For more general info, check out the Linux Laptop page.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I just use cpuidle which gives me the full processor speed and only produces heat for the cycles I actually use.
Thanx for the info. I was actually looking at the Dell Inspirion since its upgradable to 512 MB ram and 75 GIGs of disk space. 15.4" monitor, DVD, lots of speed, and I like their touchpad's feel. I do a lot of coding in NT and want processor speed to handle the MS bloat, but I also want the ability to boot a Linux partition. I really like your wireless modem, which sounds great, although not offered in my area and seems to only run under Win95/98 (which I will not stoop to running). Know of any other providers or hardware?
"Where is my mind?"
One thing I didn't mention was that with laptops, getting a good vendor is a little more important than with a desktop. If your video card (for example) goes bad on a desktop, you can chuck it and get a new one. Not so with a laptop. That's why I paid a little more for the Chembook name, rather than getting the ASUS version cheaper from some no-name little dealer.
512MB RAM seems like it's way more than anyone could ever need, but I seem to remember people saying that about 64K not too long ago... 8^) Same goes for disk space. In theory, though, disk space should only be limited by available drives -- is there an actual BIOS limit or something at 75GB?
A 15" monitor sounds dreamy, but be sure it's something you want to haul around. I'm 6', 280lbs, and use to carry one of those 40lb suitcase compaq-types, so it wouldn't bother me, but it's probably bigger than my wife. YMMV.
The touchpad is important, but 90% of the time my hands are on the keyboard (I do COBOL programming mostly) and most of the rest of the time I use an external Trackman Marble. My mobile work is mostly typing (web pages, journal, e-mail, etc.) so the keyboard is far more important to me.
Check out the compatibility of the components -- video card, etc. I've not loaded Linux on my new one yet (where are those damn CD's?) but one of the reasons I picked this model was because of the Linux support available.
I've had it running under MS-DOS/Win3.11, Win98, GEM/TOS (Atari ST), and the MacOS. I'm sure I could use it with Linux if I had the time. I know of others who have used it with handhelds as well.
Basically, it's a hayes-compatible modem with a funny dialing string. The only problem I ever had was my Win3 dialer that didn't think "777**ppp" was a valid phone number. Note that for an extra $5/month, you can prepend a 9 and dial any landline modem. (I use this all the time to dial into client sites.) Check out some of my experiences with it.
There are other, similar services, but most of them don't seem as simple or as well thought out as Ricochet. Check to see if a University in your area has coverage: I was travelling through Oregon one time and was surprised to get a signal. Turned out the hotel was right next to the Univ/OR which was wired for ricochet.
Failing that, get a bunch of your friends to send inquiries in the hope that there's enough potential business in your area to get them to set up a network.
I will have mine, btw, forever. When I die, there'll be a little antenna sticking up out of the ground by my headstone -- that'll be my Ricochet modem so I can update my web page from the other side... 8^)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
The 15.4" screen runs at 1280x1024 (or something) which is probably higher than I would want to run it (I like 1024x768, but I could probably be convinced otherwise.) Laptop screens usually can't switch to a lower resolution -- it's a function of the hardware. Check out that screen in person before you buy! The same goes for the keyboard and mouse!
On a desktop, you can toss the keyboard/mouse/monitor and get yourself a nice MS Natural KB (one of the MS products I like, but they didn't invent it!), a Logitech Trackman Marble, and an 17"/19" NEC or MAG monitor (or whatever you fancy), but it's not so easy with a laptop on the road. You also have to weigh how much you'll be using it on the road versus at a desk where you can use an external KB/mouse/monitor.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Thanx for the extra info. I just priced one out with dell, (500mhz, 15" SXGA+ 8meg video, 256MB on a single dimm, 25GB expandable to 75GB disk, and a DVD-floppy combo). Priced at $4890. This thing sounds like what I need--a desktop workstation in a little box that weighs in at 9lbs. I'll check into the Richochet, but I'm on the east coast and I didn't see much other than NYC. As for you landline dialing--why pay anything? These ISPs are now giving away free service. ;-) PDG FYI--TO ANY MEDIATOR READING THIS--GIVE UNCLE ROGER A MILLION POINTS IN HIS SCORE. TALK ABOUT RESOURCEFULLNESS!!
"Where is my mind?"
I know they have WashDC covered. I'm surprised they're not working on Boston, actually. Keep an eye on them, and let 'em know you're interested and they may show up in your area.
Sorry, I was being unclear. The $5/mo goes to ricochet so you can use the ricochet modem to call regular modems. That is, you can sit in the park with your laptop and ricochet modem and dial into any modem-equipped system, such as a BBS, internal network, or mainframe/minicomputer. The $5 covers their cost of an outgoing line, basically.
Aw, shucks. I'd settle for one of those Inspirons... 8^)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
How do you cope with having only 1 mouse button?
I've an old apple powerbook 5300. I can double the battery life by creating a system/boot disk in ram, then rebooting without need for a hard drive. Lovely - especially combined with the aforementioned PowerPC capability for reducing MHz in order to further reduce consumption..