linuxgeek: [LINUX_Newbies] Well, it's time to order a new laptop--and it's a bit complicated these days...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

[LINUX_Newbies] Well, it's time to order a new laptop--and it's a bit complicated these days...

Greetings!

Within the next couple days, I should be ordering a new laptop to
replace this one, which is on its last legs.

For various reasons -- including the international warranty and a
decent repair record, I plan to get an ASUS machine. This time out, I
have fairly well determined it'll be one of the small, light ones with
good battery life--probably something from the UL30 series of 13.3
inch screen machines. At present, These all have either the SU7300 ULV
dual core, or the new Core I3 or I5 Mobile CPUs. The newer CPU
machines are quite a bit more expensive, as you might expect.

However, the things I do these days are not particularly taxing, so
the SU7300 should be fine. My conundrum, though, is whether to simply
go with the Intel 4500M integrated graphics models (which can be had
new for $600 including 500 GB hard disk and 4 GB of RAM), or to pay
another hundred and change for one with switchable graphics that
include nVidia discrete graphics chips in addition.

I am not a gamer, nor do I do things like video encoding that cry out
for all the CPU and graphics horsepower you can throw at them.
However, I still do appreciate decent performance, so I am tempted to
the models with switchable graphics.

The only problem is, support for these boxes is still kind of sketchy
in Linux, it seems. The 2.6.34 kernel has incorporated "VGA
Switcheroo"--but that is not yet fully stable and tested with
Intel/nVidia combinations like the ASUS boxes.

Oh, yes, one more issue--the older models often have WIFI issues--many
of them have difficulty getting solid connections even when sitting
within ten feet of a wireless router. If I get one of these, I would
also get a much better wireless card and at least one additional
antenna, as ASUS has been only putting in a single antenna. Thus, I
will probably be out another thirty or forty bucks or so and about ten
or fifteen minutes labor to make the switch.

So, what's your opinion--should I simply get the cheaper machines with
integrated graphics only, or would I be a bit too much on the cutting
edge to get the dual graphics machines? What would you do? (And who
knows, there might be someone here already using one of these
machines, and I would most definitely love to hear your thoughts in
particular.)

TIA,

David

Thanks for any suggestions you may have.

David