Re: tlug: Sub-notebooks for Linux?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

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tlug note from "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
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>>>>> "John" == John D'Elia <taii@example.com> writes:

    John> I'll be moving to the Tokyo area in a month...  I'm
    John> wondering about getting a laptop that will run Linux.  I had
    John> two in mind: The Toshiba Libreto and the Thinkpad 530(?).
    John> Has anyone had experience using these?  What are the current
    John> street prices for these units?  Any other recommendations
    John> for something in ultra-small notebooks?

I haven't used either one, but I have used two luggable/notebook
machines each from IBM and Toshiba.  Both told fibs about compliance
with standards.  That's only four cases out of several hudred models.
But that's four out of four from my point of view.

I've been fairly happy with all but the very oldest (Toshiba 3100 SGT,
if anybody remembers that piece of junk).  But there were some things
that the machines just can't do, and others that need substantial
working around.  The IBM problems were related to video drivers; you
need special drivers to access the hi color, hi res modes.  The
Toshiba problems were related to disks; the 3100 SGT could not handle
standard 1.44MB floppies (so much for the advertised 100% IBM PC
compatibility), and the Dynabook's ATOK kanji-henkan ROM looked like a
hard drive to Toshiba's special BIOS extensions, but drove Norton
utilities up a wall (Linux was too slow to seriously use).  So don't
buy until you've gotten recommendations that the machines will do what
you want them to do.

This advice goes for all makers, of course.  I've just had more
trouble with IBM ad Toshiba than I've had with home-brews and Proside
(a Tokyo systems integrator) and Gateway 2000.

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
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