# Core Duo laptop experiences - compatibility, graphics, etc.

## ttuttle

My current Dothan Pentium M laptop is breaking (a friend's kid pushed it off the top bunk of my bunk bed, and the hinge is broken).  First, I'm faced with a choice between spending $200-$250 or more (if they charge for labor--it's unclear if they do) to get a new shell for the one I have, or buying a new one now.  You should know that I'm planning to buy a new one in about 12 or 14 months anyway (for college), so the money I spend on this one is only going to extend its useful life for about a year.  First, does anyone have an opinion either way?  Is it stupid to buy a new one or should I just do it?  (Keep in mind I'm going to treat the new one much better now that I've had experience caring for one ;-))

So, assuming I do get one, what's a good Core Duo laptop?  I'm looking for something with a screen that's at least 1440x900 (I'm surprisingly flexible about screen size), at least 1.83 GHz (preferably 2.00 GHz) CPU, at least 1 GB (preferably 2 GB) RAM, at least 80 GB (preferably 100 GB) hard drive, a DVD burner, at least 3-4 hours of battery life (preferably more than 5).  Weight should probably be under 8 pounds, although a little over is okay.

I've been looking at these:

 Asus W62f - Nice and cheap, but screen is a little small, and my current Asus doesn't seem to be too well-built (the hinge is weak, mostly... but I don't know if most are built this weakly).

 Dell Inspiron e1505/e1705 - Nicely priced, decent specs, probably decently built, but I hate the case design, and component (CPU, RAM, hard drive) upgrades cost too much.  I also don't like the thought of Dell support.

 Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad T60/X60 - Awesomely built (compared to most), good Linux compatibility (or so I hear), but overpriced and not very configurable.

 Toshiba Satellite M100/P100 - Nice looking, decently priced, upgrades are relatively cheap, but I don't know anything about compatibilty or build quality.

So I'd like to know: Does anyone have any of these, or any other Core Duo laptop?  How is compatibility with Linux?  Do most things work?  I'm especially interested in knowing how easily graphics (Nvidia, most likely, or ATI if a miracle occurs) works on some specific models.  There aren't many reports on sites like tuxmobil.org or linux-laptop.net, but I know Gentoo users tend to keep up to date with new hardware, so I'm sure some of you can offer your experiences.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

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## tweakt

Keeping my eye on this thread as well, I'm in the market for a laptop and I think with the Core Solo/Duo chips it's definately a good time to buy. From what I hear battery life is even better than Pentium M?. I've been looking at the Dell primarily because of price. Thinkpads are nice but definately pricey. I was hoping to find was some reports on compatibility. 

The last laptop I had was a Thinkpad T23, and it was great but took a LONG time to get everything working and running smoothly. I just want something that's going to work without a lot of tweaking. Mainly power management, video and network (wireless).

Please post if you come across more info, I'm sure others are interested.

PS: I noticed Linux Magazine had an article about laptops and recommended the Acer Travelmate 4652LMi. It has a Pentium M 1.7Ghz, and got about 4h 45min battery. So you might still consider an older one cause they might be a lot cheaper and still do quite well.

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## ttuttle

 *Quote:*   

> From what I hear battery life is even better than Pentium M?

 

Yes.  ArsTechnica reviewed a pair of extremely similar Asus laptops that got about half an hour more battery life under Yonah than under Dothan!

 *Quote:*   

> PS: I noticed Linux Magazine had an article about laptops and recommended the Acer Travelmate 4652LMi. It has a Pentium M 1.7Ghz, and got about 4h 45min battery. So you might still consider an older one cause they might be a lot cheaper and still do quite well.

 

I actually have a Pentium M at 1.7 GHz right now.  It's the older Dothan, so it's only a 400 MHz FSB and doesn't have the execute-disable bit.  I'd wait longer to get a Core Duo notebook but the screen hinge on this one is breaking.

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## jgrafton

I recently purchased the T60 after having a Dell Latitude d600 for about 2 years - the thing was completely unreliable, routinely breaking various parts every few months.  After the hinge broke again a few weeks ago, I decided enough was enough.  Losing my laptop for 3+ days to get it serviced is simply unacceptable.

Anyway, I just got Gentoo on this guy a few days ago, but it's pretty sweet - I'm really diggin' it.  The 2ghz dual-core deal is pretty nice, and the build is fantastic as well.

As to linux experiences... the wireless driver just made it into portage recently, but seems to work well enough.  Ethernet works, most things generally work; the only bad part is the ATI video card, which is still pretty badly supported, and I don't think there's any ETA on it getting fixed.  The VESA drivers work for now, though...

I'm rambling now.  Let me know if you have any questions.

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## ttuttle

 *jgrafton wrote:*   

> I recently purchased the T60 after having a Dell Latitude d600 for about 2 years - the thing was completely unreliable, routinely breaking various parts every few months.  After the hinge broke again a few weeks ago, I decided enough was enough.  Losing my laptop for 3+ days to get it serviced is simply unacceptable.

 

Jeez... my current one will take 2 weeks for repairs, and their repair center is in the same state!

 *Quote:*   

> Anyway, I just got Gentoo on this guy a few days ago, but it's pretty sweet - I'm really diggin' it.  The 2ghz dual-core deal is pretty nice, and the build is fantastic as well.

 

Can you run some benchmarks?

 *Quote:*   

> As to linux experiences... the wireless driver just made it into portage recently, but seems to work well enough.

 

Indeed.  Intel rocks.  They had a relatively good-quality driver out almost right after the hardware came out.  James Ketranos apparently convinced someone there that it's worth supporting Linux drivers enough that they come out within a reasonable time frame.

 *Quote:*   

> Ethernet works, most things generally work;

 

Good.  How is ACPI?

 *Quote:*   

> the only bad part is the ATI video card, which is still pretty badly supported, and I don't think there's any ETA on it getting fixed.  The VESA drivers work for now, though...

 

/me is probably going to choose Nvidia or just get the integrated graphics.  ATI is annoying.

 *Quote:*   

> I'm rambling now.  Let me know if you have any questions.

 

;-)

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## jgrafton

Yeah, the support for Dell was usually fairly nice... free overnight shipping back and forth, and usually a turnaround of a day for the repair once it got there.  Too bad the laptop quality was so poor.

Do you have any suggestions for benchmarks?  I know I compiled glibc twice in like 20m...

ACPI sorta works.  I haven't gotten sleep or suspend to disk working yet; the latter is reported to work by others, though with my setup it'd be kinda hard.  I'm not sure when/if the former will work.  All the other ACPI foo seems to be fine.

I'm using the ATI binary drivers now.  They seem to work, and they're better than the VESA driver.

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## SMoo

I just got my Inspiron E1505, and it's great!

The battery, as of the time of this post, has been running for almost 4 hours.

The Dell (Broadcom) 1390 card isn't recognized, but that shouldn't be too hard to get working.

#emerge sync on stage 2 took less than 20 minutes on this on my 5mbit DSL!

I'll be happy to tinker with it to answer your questions before buying a new machine...

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## quat

I bought recently IBM/Lenovo X60s. I didn't have any serious issues but I had to put a small patch for the net card (e1000). 

what is working:

intel graphics card - supported by xorg, ok it's not the best 3D quality/performance but the notebook is not generally dedicated for such applications,

sound card w/o any problem; i took alsa from portage,

smp - i had to compile the kernel,

fingerprint - no problem with installing after reading thinkwiki.org

suspend-to-ram - works well after applying patches for MSI and SATA resuming, 

wifi - works well (however there is a lot of space for improvements) with drivers from ipw3945.sf.net which are in portage

what is not working (yet):

suspend-to-disk - i need to play a bit with suspend2 (now works w/o problem - suspend2-sources-2.6.16-r7)

I'm not sure if frequency scaling is correctly scaling my cpus because the battery lasts for about 20% less compare to windows,

blueetooth, irda, modem, firewire, pcmcia - i haven't tried yet,

there are some dedicated ibm progs which which are working great like ibm-acpi, tp_smapi, hdaps.

as you can see almost everything work ok.

Kamil

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EDIT: typos. 

suspend-to-disk - i need to play a bit with suspend2 (now works w/o problem - suspend2-sources-2.6.16-r7)

bluetooth, pcmcia and firewire works great.

. in other words this notebook is simply dedicated for linux  :Smile: 

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## pcfreak85

Hi,

I bought the Thinkpad R52 Model few weeks ago. Everything is working on gentoo, even the fingerprint reader works great. gentoo compatibility on thinkpad notebooks is super.

my next notebook will be an thinkpad again.

with best regards,

andreas

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## DOSBoy

Don't get a Toshiba. I have a Satellite P100 and it's caused no end of problems trying to get sound+ACPI working.

- On old kernels you have to hack the DSDT.

- On not-so-old kernels (2.6.21-2.6.22 perhaps?) you need to either pass acpi_osi=!Linux on the kernel line or hack the DSDT.

- On certain newer kernels it regresses: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-606767.html

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## kries

I have a dell latitude d820. 

core duo frequency scaling is giving me a headache with kernel 2.6.23. 

rest is great. modem might be a problem but i don't need that.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Dell_Latitude_D820

nvidia card is working fine (with twinview) (see wiki for info on xorg.conf)

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## Dagger

Some time ago (may this year) I've bought Asus G1S. D2C 7500 (2.2GHz), 15" 1680x1050, 2GB, 160GB, GeForce8, 801.11n. I really can't complain about it. Back in may/june was a bit hard with all the drivers, but since august everything (and I mean EVERYTHING including stupid ASUS leds, multimedia keys, HDMI and even small OLED display) is running perfectly fine. nVidia looks after linux users pretty well. The G series was designed mainly for games, even though I don't really play on it, I really enjoy the way it is built (good material, shock resistant). The battery last for around 4h on conserve settings and around 1.5h under very heavy cpu/gpu usage.

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