Re: help with laptop purchase?

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In article <pan.2006.06.24.01.31.48.629840@xxxxxxxxx>,
General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:44:12 -0400, hswerdfe wrote:
so the question is do you know of a laptop the meets my hardware wants?
can have Linux installed, ship to Canada, all at a reasonable price?

There are two things you have to worry about, the graphics chip and the
802.11g chip. If the laptop has an Nvidia graphics chip the graphics will
work, with ATI there is a chance you will have trouble.

I suspect this is less true than it used to be. Recent Linux installations
on computers with ATI video have been fairly painless IME.

You are better off if the laptop has an 802.11G that has native support,
however in case it doesn't you can generally use Ndiswrapper to make it
work.

Native support is absolutely preferable. I wouldn't count on ndiswrapper as
a valid option, especially on an AMD64 system. The Broadcom WiFi in my HP
L2000 only became usable under Linux about a week or so ago, with the
release of the 2.6.17 kernel. It's still not 100% there (unencrypted and
WPA-PSK connections work, but WEP doesn't, and it's only running at 11
Mbps), but that's more than I was able to ever get out of ndiswrapper.

I even tried replacing the Broadcom WiFi Mini-PCI card with a card with an
Atheros chipset on it (supported by madwifi), but the computer wouldn't even
POST.

_/_
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(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
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