Getting a new laptop... vpr Matrix?

[aent]

I'm about to get a new laptop, and currently I'm looking at this laptop:
Mod edited to fit window size, please use BB tags
Does this laptop work well under Gentoo Linux (battery monitor and such all function correctly without loads of extra work?) and does this laptop work well in general? I'm also open to suggestions for other laptops of similiar prices and features which work well with Gentoo without any hardware compatablity issues...

[hbmartin]

http://www.apple.com/powerbook/
http://www.apple.com/ibook/

Harold

[carambola5]

I'm writing to you on a vprMatrix laptop right now.

And let me tell you, it was a serious pain in the ass setting things up (sound comes to mind). If you're the type of person where everything has to be perfect, I wouldn't go with vprMatrix because you'll pull your hair out getting stuff to work just right. Also, expect absolutely no help from technical support. They are seriously idiots.

And now to the good news: all setup, this thing pretty much rocks. Everyone gawks at it because it looks so cool. I like to point out the "DESIGN BY F.A.PORSCHE" label. And it runs nice, if not a little hot. Blue LEDs are cool too

I do have a problem with some serious clock skew. It could be just my inability to set the clock right, but who knows?

Also, I have no experience getting a Windows refund from vprMatrix. Should have tried, but didn't.

[ozonator]

If you have any doubt about the laptop you're considering, I'll second the recommendation of an Apple laptop, over just about anything else out there. After a whole bunch of research, I picked an iBook (main alternative I considered was a ThinkPad X series, a fantastic machine but twice the price). By all accounts, I got a great deal: a small, inexpensive (esp. for a 5 pound, 4+ hour battery life unit), well-built, and speedy laptop, on which everything, from wireless down to the software modem, from sleep to CPU frequency scaling, works well in Linux.

A caveat, if you're looking at the PowerBooks: some (not all) of the PowerBooks use nVidia graphics (no drivers from nVidia, only xfree drivers, which aren't nearly as mature as the open-source ATI drivers), and all of them now use 'airport extreme' wireless, which (unlike the airport card in my iBook) uses a broadcom chipset for which there's no support in Linux (i.e., if you want wireless with a current PowerBook, make sure it's got PCMCIA, like the 15" or 17", but the 12"). Those two things, in addition to the cost savings, led me to pick the iBook over a PowerBook. Only other issues with PPC Linux: no Adobe-supplied Acrobat reader (xpdf and others are fine), and no Macromedia-supplied Flash plugin (there are others that work). Otherwise, likely helped by the limited range of hardware, support for kernel and userspace stuff is on par with what I've found in the x86 world.

So, definitely give the Apple machines a good look, especially the iBook. Oh, and it does come with OS X, which is no slouch of an OS; Mac-on-Linux works brilliantly if you ever need to run the two side-by-side.

[aent]

The Apple processors are not an option for me as certain programs which I require can only be run under an x86 processor and I want to avoid emulators, also you get less for the higher price... I'm really looking for a good deal on any x86 based processor...

I am willing to work hard to get it setup properly, assuming I only have to do it once (hopefully) and it will be possible to do it without dedicating more then a week to it, and once its done setting up, it needs to run [almost] perfectly without constant problems... (if the clock won't stay right, I can't deal with that (just make a cron job to syncronize it every x hours I have another computer where the clock also is slow and thats my current solution as well)

[ozonator]

[aent]

How about the hp pavilion ze4560us notebook pc (DM736A#ABA)

<mod edit: suppressed URL proven to be impossible to put inside a BBCode tag -- pilla >