Laptop Recommendations for a Future Engineering Student Using Arch

Jessehk · 2008-07-16 17:35:43

Really, the only game I'd want to play on the Laptop would be Starcraft 2, but even that is not a selling point for me. Could the Nvidia Quadro scrap by on that?

dhave: I've added a 10% discount coupon and they have a sale on at the moment that saves an additional 22%. The price would be about $1700 CAD after tax and shipping if it weren't for the discounts.

Last edited by Jessehk (2008-07-16 17:36:12)

dhave · 2008-07-16 17:42:55

It's true that Thinkpads may not be the greatest machines in the world for games. But the OP is looking for an engineering computer. And engineering students never, ever play video games, do they?

If I were wanting a game machine, I'd probably look at one of those speciality laptops made by somebody like Alienware.

One Thinkpad feature none of us fanz have mentioned is what they are maybe most noted for: the keyboard -- its firm but friendly feel; its ample dimensions, even on the smallest models; the way each key rises back like a dance partner to meet your fingertip; the steady, gentle thum-thum of the keystrokes -- no thin, uneven crackling and snapping.

Megamixman · 2008-07-16 22:24:34

Quadros are standard GFX cards with a special signature to allow special drivers. They do fine mostly on Games. You could always mod your Quadro BIOS to accept the Consumer Drivers.
Also Thinkpads have a really good mixture of power, performance, mobility, and reliabillity. Yes, you can spec similar systems for cheaper, but they will lack majorly in one of those 4 areas in comparison and do no better in the rest. Thinkpads also lose value at a slower pace then other Laptop brands. They are like the BMWs of the Laptop world.

staple · 2008-07-16 22:27:36

how about a macbook? you can boot into osx, winxp, and arch!

kclive18 · 2008-07-17 01:09:32

Yeah thos are nice, but very pricey, especially for college students. The Lenovo thinkpads run minimum $550 from what I've seen, and are pretty good spec even at such a low price (Core 2 Duo, 1GB DDR2, 160GB hard disk, intel GMA X3100 graphics, etc). Plus they have Intel wireless adapters, so compatibility with Linux or *BSD is much better. Additionally, they are not overloaded with extra features like webcams and stuff, so they are simple to use and configure, especially in Linux and *BSD.

Last edited by kclive18 (2008-07-17 01:10:00)

Zeist · 2008-07-17 09:56:22

Megamixman wrote:

Quadros are standard GFX cards with a special signature to allow special drivers. They do fine mostly on Games. You could always mod your Quadro BIOS to accept the Consumer Drivers.
Also Thinkpads have a really good mixture of power, performance, mobility, and reliabillity. Yes, you can spec similar systems for cheaper, but they will lack majorly in one of those 4 areas in comparison and do no better in the rest. Thinkpads also lose value at a slower pace then other Laptop brands. They are like the BMWs of the Laptop world.

I don't really have that much experience with the Laptop quadros, but the Desktop quadros have always been architecturally different enough to be better at being used for rendering rather than realtime graphics such as gaming. It may very well to a big part be due to different BIOS:es, but they do run the same drivers as the other nvidia cards on windows so if there is a software difference in the card it is within the BIOS. Anyway, the Quadro FX1500 which I've had quite a bit of experience with didn't even run half the things that the 6600GS runs at decent framerates even though the FX1500 supposedly has a far better chip than the 6600.

For gaming I do think the X3100 isn't the worst card there is out there, but it isn't great. However, it wouldn't suprise me if it's faster than the Quadro FX cards for gaming.

Oh, and as for the Macbook recommendation. Unless you really want OS X buying a Macbook is too expensive. Sadly they need to cost a bit less to be worth buying if you're planning on running Linux.

Last edited by Zeist (2008-07-17 09:58:25)

dhave · 2008-07-17 10:00:44

staple wrote:

how about a macbook? you can boot into osx, winxp, and arch!

I'm not endorsing this, but take a look here.

I've also seen OSX Leopard demonstrated on a T61. It works quite well. I wish Apple would loosen up their software license.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

tofu · 2008-07-17 17:21:32

Well, if you're going to put OSX on the T61, sound as far as I know is not working. (I tried about a month or two ago, maybe they changed it?)

I also couldn't get my Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M to work but if you get the x3100 by Intel it will work.

If you're also planning to do this, get the Atheros ABG card since that will be supported by OSX after some tweaking while the Intel wifi cards... probably don't work.

Not to mention I couldn't get sleep to work and that the fan on my Thinkpad was running at full speed - maybe cause I put vesa on 1440x900?

Its off my drive now, but while using OSX I missed linux. The alt+tabbing in OSX really doesn't do what I wish it to. It switches between applications and not windows. Just to say.

However, if you have a T60, I read that they worked fully out of the box now.

dhave · 2008-07-17 17:46:11

tofu wrote:

Well, if you're going to put OSX on the T61, ...

Nah, I fooled around with it for a couple of days, then decided that (1) while it was cool to see OSX running on my Thinkpad, it wasn't *that* much better than a nicely customized Linux installation, and (2) if I really wanted to run OSX, I'd break down and buy a Mac (which I won't be able to do until somebody fixes the global economy).

kclive18 · 2008-07-17 18:02:09

Wouldn't *BSD on a ThinkPad be pretty much the same as putting OSX on it (just a different interface and more diverse hardware support)? Arch and FreeBSD are my two favorite OS's at the moment besides OSX.

Macbooks are mad nice though, especially the pro models (they seem to be the most powerful lappys around yet get EXCELLENT battery life).

rson451 · 2008-07-17 18:04:33

I admit I've not read this entire thread so forgive me if you've already chosen a laptop, but for info's sake, I've been running arch on an hp dv9000t for over a year with every single piece of hardware supported. Love the computer.

dhave · 2008-07-17 18:17:08

kclive18 wrote:

Wouldn't *BSD on a ThinkPad be pretty much the same as putting OSX on it (just a different interface and more diverse hardware support)?

Tangerines and oranges.

tanis · 2008-07-17 19:33:06

Go with Asus or Thinkpad

Btw, aren't Macbooks missing right touchpad button? I was working on one recently and in Windows it was pretty frustrating

SiC · 2008-07-19 05:45:01

I've had absolutely no problems with my Toshiba Satellite, Arch installed and everything worked with very little tweaking. I've got full power management and cpu frequency scaling working, and the battery lasts a coupla hours easy, which is good considering the hammering it usually gets when I am working on it.

I do a lot of work in matlab and mathematica, and this machine runs sweet as.

Spec wise I got a good deal, cost me £650 (about 1300USD) has a 1.8GHz core2duo, 2 Gig ram and an ATI 2400HD in it, so games run nicely too. It's also near silent all the time as the cooling fan rarely kicks in, which is something I appreciate a lot as I am generally unable to work with any noise around at all.

With regards to which machine you get, the major manufacturers are all pretty much the same, and people will always swear by the machines they have used in the past if they have had no problems, I've had a fujitsu-siemens, a (IBM) thinkpad and an HP before this one, and to be brutally honest they were good machines, but I got a good deal on this one, so I bought it. Best thing to do is pop into a branch of your local friendly electrical retailer and see what takes your fancy, then order online

iBertus · 2008-07-19 08:18:44

I'm using an HP dv4632nr and it works most of the way. At first it was very painful, crashes every day and random boot failures. Latest kernel releases fix some of this but it still has the random lockup (once weekly) without passing a bunch of parameters to the kernel, which break USB2.0 support. Moral of the story: buy the Lenovo.

Zeist · 2008-07-19 10:11:21

tanis wrote:

Go with Asus or Thinkpad
Btw, aren't Macbooks missing right touchpad button? I was working on one recently and in Windows it was pretty frustrating

Yeah, in OSX they use Ctrl+Click as right click, I think it's fn+Click in windows.

dhave · 2008-07-19 11:54:35

iBertus wrote:

I'm using an HP dv4632nr and it works most of the way. At first it was very painful, crashes every day and random boot failures. Latest kernel releases fix some of this but it still has the random lockup (once weekly) without passing a bunch of parameters to the kernel, which break USB2.0 support. Moral of the story: buy the Lenovo.

I might qualify this and say, "Buy a Thinkpad." For the past several years there's been a lower-priced line of non-Thinkpad Lenovo notebooks, the 3000 series, of which I have no experience. They might be great machines, and, if they are, they're certainly a good deal. And there's also the new IdeaPads, and now even a newer Thinkpad SL series.

Most if not all of the recommendations I've seen on this forum are for Thinkpads of the T2x, T4x and T6x line, along with the R and maybe X series. For the 3000s, IdeaPads and Thinkpad SL series, I'd ask around before buying.

As I write this, I'm thinking, "Lenovo surely is adding a lot of new models." I hope they can follow through with the sort of quality control and support that they've done well with in the past. Clearly they've decided to take on the general consumer market and not just the higher-end business (and geek) sector.

Last edited by dhave (2008-07-19 11:56:25)

smurnjiff · 2008-07-19 17:41:40

Dell XPS M1510.

Case closed.

kclive18 · 2008-07-19 19:00:08

Uhhh...Dells aren't that great of computers to begin with. Build quality is the worst.

Jessehk · 2008-07-22 21:33:12

I went with the Thinkpad T61 in the end. It was a bit more expensive, but I hope it will be worth it.
Thanks for all the tips and suggestions!

Last edited by Jessehk (2008-07-22 21:33:27)

dhave · 2008-07-22 22:16:19

Jessehk wrote:

I went with the Thinkpad T61 in the end. It was a bit more expensive, but I hope it will be worth it.
Thanks for all the tips and suggestions!

Money well spent. Welcome to Club T.

iphitus · 2008-07-22 22:26:15

kclive18 wrote:

Uhhh...Dells aren't that great of computers to begin with. Build quality is the worst.

*creak*

*crack*

dhave · 2008-07-22 22:34:50

iphitus wrote:

kclive18 wrote:
Uhhh...Dells aren't that great of computers to begin with. Build quality is the worst.
*creak*

*crack*

Yup.

moose jaw · 2008-07-23 01:56:00

This thread has definitely piqued my interest in the T61, which I had also been looking at to run Arch. Can I ask: does suspend-to-ram work properly on the T61? That's a major can't-live-without feature that I need on a laptop, but of course it can be tricky. By "work properly", I include anything from running a custom cli script to using a GUI button in a WM or DE, as long as it works and is reliable. (Not to threadjack, but it seems like there's plenty of relevant T61 experience here, between dhave, the OP, and others.)

dhave · 2008-07-23 03:02:13

My only experience with suspend-resume was under Gentoo on a T43, a good while ago -- no problems that I recall, but the way it was done has probably been superceded. My T61 boots and shuts down fast enough under Linux that I don't feel the need to suspend.

Since Lenovo sells and supports Linux (SuSE) on T60s and T61s, I think you should be O.K. In fact, in checking this before writing, I ran across this link, which mentions a fix to the T61 Nvidia (proprietary) driver for Linux that speeds up suspend-to-disk. This is some evidence of support, at any rate. I don't think Lenovo would support Linux at all if they couldn't get all the machine's features to work under Linux. I guess it's possible they could have some SuSE-specific patches for various things, but I usually figure that what's done on one Linux distro is doable on another, if you apply yourself.

Still, for first-hand knowledge regarding suspend-resume under Arch Linux on a T61, someone else with more current experience would need to answer your question. I'm sure someone will chime in soon.

Last edited by dhave (2008-07-23 03:05:34)

Arch Linux

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Re: Laptop Recommendations for a Future Engineering Student Using Arch

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