# Travelmate 800 LMib, WAS:Notebook: Travelmate 800 or 435?

## Gruffi

Hello everyone,

I want to buy a new laptop.  At first i wanted to buy the Acer Travelmate 435LMi.  After doing a search on the forum i heard allot of good stuff about the Acer Travelmate 800 series but nothing about the 435 series.

Acer Travelmate 435LMi notebook LX.T2606.151 :

Intel P4 3,06Ghz, 15'' TFT, 512MB (2x256MB), 60GB HDD, DVD-RW, LiIon, 56K modem, LAN, Windows XP Prof. Azerty BE 

http://www.acer.be/vi_dutch/page9.do-dau34.oid=2314&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=2&ctx1=BE&crc=2494000277.htm

Acer Travelmate 803LCiB Centrino notebook LX.T2506.095 :

Intel Centrino 1,6Ghz 15'' TFT 2x256MB 40GB DVD-CDRW LiIon 56K Modem LAN(wired & wireless) Windows XP Prof. Multi-Language, Azerty BE

http://www.acer.be/vi_dutch/page9.do-dau34.oid=2358&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=2&ctx1=BE&crc=2710663496.htm

They both cost about the same (1900 EUR for the 800LCiB and 2090 EUR for the 435LMi) while the 435LMi has a way faster CPU and a bigger HD, so whats so good about this "Centrino" cpu that is has to be so expensive compared to the P4?

Anyone know what's actually inside these notebooks? (On the acer website they show nice pictures with very vague descriptions...)

Sound chipset? Network chipset? Modem chipset? DVD-R brand?

On the acer site they claim the P4 stays alive 2 hours on battery, that's not that much.... are the batteries swappable while the system is on? I guess not?

Any pro's or con's would be very much apreciated!

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## kamikaz3

sound on the TM 800 is from intel, works fine with alsa and intel8x0

LAN 10/100 is from broadcom, available in most of the kernel sources (broadcom 44xx or something)

Wlan is intel 2100B (Centrino) which is unsupported

VGA is a radeon 9000 Mobility with 64MB ram

modem, never used it

I have the model with CDR/W, don't know the brand, but it just works, and as far as I see it, I won't be using it regularly. I have a faster writer in my desktop

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## smiler.se

The centrino isnt THAT much slower than the P4. 

Check out a comparation here.

The centrino has a much longer battery life (I have been able to push out over 5 hours using speedfreq to tune the speed dynamicly on my TM 800LCi but they say that 4 hours is normal @ 1.3ghz).

Only thing I havent got working on the TM800 is the smartcard reader (havent tried), the internal wlan (unsupported so far by intel) and the internal modem (havent tried).

If you want to know anything more specifik about the TM800 ask me  :Smile: 

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## smiler.se

I forgot to mention the bent keyboard that I just love!   :Razz: 

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## Gruffi

Oki, centrino sounds nice...   :Very Happy: 

Now i'm looking at:

http://www.acer.be/vi_dutch/page4.do-dau22.oid=2358&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=2&ctx1=BE&crc=3039281746.htm

Can someone explain me what the difference is between the 803LCib and the 803LMib version?   :Question: 

LCib costs 1900 EUR and the LMib costs 2100 EUR... (pocket money...)   :Rolling Eyes: 

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## Gruffi

First of all: thanks for all the info!

The parts list sounds great....  No via and no realtek.... what a blessing this laptop is!   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

I have a laptop with a realtek network card that only works when i first boot to windows and then reboot into linux...   :Rolling Eyes: 

And the onboard via82686 sounds is making me lose all my hair...  :Crying or Very sad: 

Now if my boss wants to pay me for all this hard work i did this month (reading gentoo forums for example   :Wink:   ) i can go out and buy me a real laptop  :Smile: 

Anyone read my previous post   :Question:   cause i still dont understand the difference between the 2 laptops   :Sad: 

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## kamikaz3

LCib - with CDRW

LMib - with DVDR

There is also a 804Lcib, with 1.7 ghz Pentium M

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## Traveler

LCib actually has a CD-RW/DVD-R combo, while the LMib has a DVD-RW (I'm planning on ordering that exact same laptop tomorrow (the 803LMib), so that's why I know - and here to look out for any info on the (im)possibility of easily getting Gentoo to run on it to make me change my mind at the last moment - though so far things are looking very hopeful.) :)

Oh, and to Baron FrostFire: since you're from Belgium, you might find this thread (at tweakers.net - in dutch) interesting - part 3 about the 80x laptops so far - ...and part 4 was just started.

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## Gruffi

I have ordered the 803 LMib... i CAN read ordinary CD's i assume??

Can't wait to have this baby in my hands   :Very Happy: 

Edit: Thx for the information Traveler   :Smile: 

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## feffi

Hi buddy,

you may have a look at 

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=78780

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## Gruffi

yeah i noticed, thanks! when i get the laptop i'll post my results.   :Very Happy: 

Maybe i should call the store for the 10th time and tell them to hurry?   :Rolling Eyes: 

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## Gruffi

i guess i should write some stuff down while installing, like how long the emerges take etc... any other stuff i should report? (-:

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## feffi

Hi buddy,

PLEASE write EVERYTHING down and send me a copy!!

I'm writing an extensive tutorial on the ACER 803LCi and if you want participate yourself!

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=499164#499164

This would be a great help !!

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## Gruffi

i'm bootstrapping this candy as we speak now!!  :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

edit: bootstrap

real 171m42

user 60m33

sys 103m44

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## Gruffi

Ok time for a stupid question:

Did you manage to remove the Designed for Microsoft XP label without damaging the surface?    :Rolling Eyes: 

btw I have the 803 LMib but thats almost the same

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## feffi

@Baron FrostFire

yes i managed it with....alcohol !    :Laughing: 

I'm not drawing any connections between M$ and alcohol...no...I'm not...

Your's

_kev_

BTW: Can you note wwhat drivers you're installing and how ?? would be great if not too much trouble...it would help other geeks...   :Cool: 

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## Gruffi

So far i havent much to say yet... i followed the installation manual reccomended settings except for the CFLAGS (will have to check back home) and the kernel.

bootstrap took 170m, emerge system a little over an hour

I tried the ac-sources wich segfaulted on me... then i tried the development sources 2.6beta4 wich compiled but paniced on me on reboot... i must have forgotten something in all the excitement   :Laughing: 

Now i'm running the gentoo sources wich boot op fine.  Haven't installed anything yet.  Gonna install the 2.6 sources more carefully tonight.

btw: in the kernel i compiled the broadcom network driver as module, in the help it said "the driver will be called b44" but it's "modprobe bcw4400" actually.

Will report back when i got x running   :Very Happy: 

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## Gruffi

ok, here's where i am so far...

under kernel 2.4:

as usuall the sound with alsa sounds is extremely disorted so i unmerged it and used esd wich works perfectly

edit: actually not entirely true: the sound volume is way too low and there is no volume control on the laptop itself as far as i know and i don't know how to fix it in software [FIXED: emerge aumixer]

the DVD-RW works fine with ide-scsi

the radeon 9000 works for 99%

important programs such as tuxracer en quake3 work however in quake3 i am "missing" a very small part of the screen (on the right part of the screen it goes like 1cm "outside" the real screen), the resolution is ok.

when i swap between console and kde with altF1 - altF7 the screen often is messed up, moving some windows around sorta solves the problem.

the broadcom driver in gentoo kernel 2.4.20.whatever.rc6 sucks, the driver is called BCW4400, the driver doesnt work under heavy load.  When i do an emerge -f on 3 consoles and thus opening 3 connections the network locks up and i have to do a net restart.  Same happens when i try to download a single file from another computer @ 100MBit.

Kernel 2.6

Can't get X to start up: it complains that it can't load kernel module agpgart and a dri module.

the broadcom driver is called B44 and works perfectly under heavy load.

Thats's it so far... I can choose between a decently working network or a working X

I had hoped it would be allot easier... I'm gonna score me a beer and try kernel 2.6 again!

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## Gruffi

cdrao works now too... simply adding "generic-mmc" to dao in k3B did the trick

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## Gruffi

Allright... getting quite happy now...   :Very Happy: 

ditched the gentoo-sources and used the ac-sources 2.4.22-ac1  :Exclamation: 

It has the working b44 broadcom driver, and X and dri work.  :Cool: 

it works a bit different than the gentoo sources:

I compiled agpgart static in the kernel and DID NOT compile in support for DRI in the kernel.  :Idea: 

then i did emerge ati-drivers, rebooted and important programs such as tuxracer work.  :Laughing: 

I still have the weird quake3 problem tho.   :Rolling Eyes: 

getting close to a fully working system now   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

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