Cheap Laptops. Was: [plug] linux on ibook

[Craig Ringer]

Garry wrote:
> I've got an aged Toshiba 300CDS running Debian. No drama, but I haven't
> bothered chasing the sound though. Runs wireless stuff, tightvncviwer
> and the usual stuff without problems..

Well, when it comes to Toshiba laptops /in general/, I've got a 
Satellite Pro 4600 here. PIII/900, 300+ mb RAM, Trident CyberBlade XP 
video.

APM is supported and works well. The video hardware works well, though 
when I first got the laptop I had to use Vesa mode (until XFree86 was 
finially able to obtain specs for the video hardware). Sound (i810?) 
works OK, though occasionally XMMS freezes, forcing me to kill and 
restart it. EEpro/100 works great. The modem doesn't of course, but I 
just heard from Toshiba that a driver may be available and will be 
trying it out soon. PCMCIA works great, as does the onboard (Orinoco on 
Mini-PCI via cardbus bridge) 802.11b. Oh, and the batteries are cheap 
($140 I think).

Overall, I'd give it 95%.

Unfortunately, it's not at about 40% due to the battery controller board 
having died. I now have one high-spec, nice, mains-only laptop. *sigh*. 
The repair guy did fix it, but it died again 2 weeks later. A new 
motherboard (required to fix it from the sounds of things) is $1200, so 
it looks like I've got one expensive thin client now. And of course 
Toshiba, like all the other OEMs, refuse to honour a warranty on a 2/h 
laptop because "the warrantly is a contract between the initial buyer 
and the OEM, is not attached to the hardware, and is not transferable 
with the hardware." Assholes. Toshiba seems to be the best of the lot, 
but that makes them still scum.

Reasons I think they're the least crap of the lot:

http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/main/index.html
http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/

Be aware that newer laptops usually require ACPI, and don't support APM. 
Linux ACPI support is f**ed, with 2.4 unable to suspend/resume on 
ACPI-only hardware. You can usually use swsusp to emulate ACPI S4 
though. You often have to decompile your ACPI BIOS tables, fix the 
syntax errors ("MS-ACPI" - yay) and then tack the corrected tables onto 
the end of your kernel image to get it to work at all, say for fan 
control and such. I hear 2.6 should support S3 and S4 as well as 
software-emulated S4, but I'll have to wait and see how well it works in 
reality.

Craig Ringer