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Linux Laptop from R Cubed Reviewed 132

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the more-the-merrier dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge (Also owned by VA) has a short writeup on R Cubed's latest laptop, the LS1250-L Linux laptop. From the article: 'My test machine came with Fedora Core 5, the GNOME desktop, OpenOffice.org 2.0, the Firefox browser, and Evolution mail client. The lineup also includes the normal assortment of multimedia players, administration tools, and games. If you prefer, you can choose SUSE 10.1, various flavors of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and even Microsoft Windows XP.'"
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Linux Laptop from R Cubed Reviewed More

Linux Laptop from R Cubed Reviewed

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  • Dell (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22, 2006 @02:08PM (#15763519)
    Dell must be quaking in its boots. And Apple... well let's just say Mr. Jobs should get acquainted with his local welfare office.

  • A bit expensive for a Linux laptop? (Score:5, Informative)

    by gasmonso ( 929871 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @02:08PM (#15763523) Homepage

    Not trolling here, but the price does seem high... almost as if the MS tax in in there somewhere. Is there such thing as a Linux tax? Consider the Dell XPS M1210 [dell.com] for $1200.

    http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]
    • just shy of $1500 doesn't seem that high, it's only £812, which is pretty cheep really, although as they mention in the article, the premium is mainly for the lack of weight in the system. Although if the XP model doesn't cost any more there is also be a MS premium built in, which would be a shame - because everyone will want FC5 ; )
      • just shy of $1500 doesn't seem that high, it's only £812,

        You seem to think currency conversion is all that matters. Everything in the UK is priced higher than the same thing in the US. For example, the $1099 Macbook is £749 in the UK (incl VAT). Expect to pay over £1000 for this machine. (Without VAT the prices are closer, but the UK is still higher. In the US prices are always quoted without sales tax, because each state has its own tax rate.)

      • Re:A bit expensive for a Linux laptop? (Score:4, Informative)

        by spuzzzzzzz ( 807185 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @05:06PM (#15763998) Homepage
        Although if the XP model doesn't cost any more there is also be a MS premium built in, which would be a shame
        On this [shoprcubed.com] page, you can see that adding Windows XP to a laptop costs $105.

    • Re:A bit expensive for a Linux laptop? (Score:5, Informative)

      by also-rr ( 980579 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @02:17PM (#15763550) Homepage
      Well this one is 66% of the weight of the Dell (a big deal for me since I travel a lot - in fact being sub 3lb it's amazingly light), by the time I picked out similar specs for both the Dell and the R Cubed the comparison was around $1700 (Dell) vs $2000.

      $300 is easily paid for with the weight reduction and having every bug already worked out so I don't need to spend any time setting it up to run under Linux, in my opinion, but it depends how much you value your time I suppose.

      Anyway it's interesting enough that I'm seriously considering getting one as my next laptop instead of a MacBook Pro as I'm not sure I can face messing around like this [revis.co.uk] to get wireless working again when I could have it all functioning out of the box.
      • Plus it's made from a 'carbon-fiber alloy'. What's a carbon fiber alloy? (I'm assuming alloys are when two materials are dissolved in acid/water, then mixed...although I'm no chemist...such as carbon-fiber and...) And why would anyone want a carbon-fiber alloy linux laptop, when they could have a stainless steel no-os laptop, then install linux on it for free & fun? This seems to be about as useless a product as a mac...although an ultra-light (or an ultra-durable, waterproof) laptop may be desirable fo

        • Kevlar on laptops. I can imagine a conversation going like this -

          Person 1 Hey, this laptop is bulletproof.

          Person 2 Yeah, of course. It's got linux on it.

          Person 1 No, I mean literally bulletproof. It's got kevlar.

          Person 2 YOu mean if I shoot a bullet at you, you can block the bullet with your laptop.

          Person 1 Yep. (satisfied grin)

          • Actually, those mainboards, although flexable, are pretty dang hard. Although I don't have any data on bullet penetration vs. most mainboards, I bet they bounce off those finely woven metal wires. Ironically, a thin, lightweight piece of kevlar is not bulletproof, yet 10 feet of fiberglass is! (Uh...I'm assuming that second part, data on the first part is from www.theboxotruth.com, in the 'ballistic armor penetration' section.)
          • You laugh, but over in iraq one of our solders was saved when the bullet shot at him didn't pass through the Panasonic Thoughbook he was carrying...

            THat would be one hell of a story to take home with ya..
      • This really looks like a product in search of a market instead of one built for a known market. Lightweight, but outdated. Linux, but pre-configured i.e. non-geeky. Fewer features, but overpriced. Good luck with that.
        • FC5 is the latest version of that distro afaik. So you are completely uninformed there pal.

          As for being fully configured, you are missing the point: even die hard geeks need to get things done.

          I have installed Linux on many laptops. Been there, done that, got the cheap T-shirt. If I needed a new laptop I would be more than happy to get something ready to go to which I can add what I need, but that has the basics (Internet stuff, multimedia, office applications) ready to rock.

          They are aiming for the geek wit
      • You really can't count a Dell off the shelf price to anything. They have a 30% sale every week. If you search for a few months you can find 600 off 1200 coupons for 10 bucks on eBay. I've bought quite a few Dell desktops with monitors for $300 that were VERY nice machines (DVD burners etc). That price is very very high. For that price you might as well just buy a Macbook and get triboot. The Pentium M is last years generation. Why would you pay that price to get last years tech.
    • Oh, but you're forgetting the "carbon fiber" {???) case.

      And the special X windows drivers.

      And the fact that it can run "continously for up to 7.9 hours".

      Lots of value added things in here. But does it run Vista?

    • Well, it costs more to have it in black... Don't you see? If they mimic Apple, then they'll be geeks with class... and their customers can joint the elite ranks of the discriminating (as in cool with class) Apple users, hehehe...

      (What's that joke? Many windoze users are smart, but Mac users are smart AND have class, or something like that?)
    • No, don't consider that specific Dell model. It has an issue with the hard drive controller causing the HDD to not be able to boot. I've seen this same problem with two of these so far from my customers. Granted, Dell was quick to send new HDDs to the customers under warranty, but that's curing the symptoms and not the cause. They should recall that particular model.
    • While we're on Dell, is it just me or have they made their site completely un-browseable? All there is on dell.com [slashdot.org] is a link to one product, and the product description is terrible. And people wonder why Apple is doing so much better..

  • From TFA: "The $1,433 suggested retail price for the reviewed model seems high."

    That's for sure, considering the reviewed model was a 1.73GHz Centrino processor with a 533MHz front side bus, 512MB of DDR2 memory, and a 60GB 5400RPM hard drive.

    I like what rcubed is doing and give them lots of credit, but until the likes of Dell and other large vendors offer mainstream factory linux installation (without hidden charges, etc), we're on our own. Modern distributions are savvy enough to handle almost everyth

    • Dell does offer either RHEL 4 (at all levels of support) and FreeDOS as options on it's computers... you just have to ask ;)
      • I did ask, several different reps. It's so widely publicized at Dell, that only one our of four even knew linux was an OS. The others believed windows was the only operating system.
      • Are you sure about this? I clicked "Configure" on one of Dell's consumer laptops, and it pretty clearly states that you options for "Operating System" are your choice of "Windows® XP Home Edition [Included in Price]" or "Windows® XP Professional [add $149 or $4/month]". See this page [dell.com], although I'm not sure if the link is stable.

        There is no mention made, nor selectable option for, FreeDOS, RHEL, or anything else besides Windows.

        Are those special "business" options? Because if that's the case, it's
    • As the developer of Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux [blogspot.com], I would want to try and run my livecd linux on any machine, to turn it into a linux box. Problems would be partitioning an existing Windows XP hard drive, so I can have a swap partition, and a partition to do "knoppix tohd=/dev/hda3" for instance. I have QTParted, but have not tried it on a XP filesystem. Might work, might fowl XP up, don't know.
      The other problems might be just getting the sound system to work, on many machines I have no problem, o

  • And why would I want to pay the premium (Score:5, Interesting)

    by namityadav ( 989838 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @02:15PM (#15763544)
    Why don't the no-name revolutionary linux laptop makers understand that unless they sell their laptop for lesser than a similarly spec'd Dell Inspiron, people are going to buy the Inspiron and install Ubuntu instead.

    Yes, I know it's easier to have a pre-setup laptop and not have to worry about searching for ndiswrapper etc for wireless, but the community that the linux laptop makers are targetting actually loves such challenges.

    Okay, now I'll get back to trying to figure out how the heck this BCM4318 is going to work :-(
    • Heck, right now you can even get a 1.8Ghz Intel Core Due [dell.com] for less than what R^3 wants for the 1.53 Ghz Celeron M. You can't even get an Intel Core Duo on the R^3 model.

      Screw that.
    • Hunt for ndiswrapper? We got ten new Dell laptops in the other day, booted Ubuntu Dapper Live, and wireless worked. Straight. Out of. The Box. As did everything else.

      Although to be honest it was my technical team that did it so I'm not sure if they tested hibernate/suspend or any other real hardcore stuff. DVDs played, sound worked, network fine, wireless sorted.

      I need to make sure the external VGA works (this is a problem with some laptops in linux) since that does cause our students to los
    • As people have pointed out already, by the time you spec a machine similarly from Dell, the cost is very similar. For me the weight, battery life, and the linux compatibility are worth a $300 premium. People also like to complain about the expensive Apple laptops too until I show them that Apple is often cheaper than the equivalent Thinkpad or sometimes Dell.

      Since the masses do think like you do, you are probably right, though. Most folks probably will take the lower-quality Dell over this laptop. This
    • Added to that, you get a free copy of Windows. I know people swear it's the devil, but it's easy enough to set up a dual boot and only use it for solely-Windows based games or apps, without forking over money for Cedaga or something.
    • The 4318 should be natively supported now by the bcm43xx driver. Not sure which kernel version that crept into, but it's definitely there in 2.6.17.
    • so they're supposed to perform a value-add service (installing and configuring linux) for free and sell their laptops for less than the volume leader? they might as well not add a warranty since they won't be in business long enough to have to honor it

    • Yes, I know it's easier to have a pre-setup laptop and not have to worry about searching for ndiswrapper etc for wireless, but the community that the linux laptop makers are targetting actually loves such challenges.

      I'd rather pay more and get linux preinstalled and hot have to dink with drivers. But I also want a specific distro. Fedora, RedHad, and SUSE aren't what I'm looking for. I'd rater go with a debian based or maybe Gentoo distros. I just bought a macbook (haven't got it yet) using this reasonin

  • This article made me think of the overall lack of commercial systems sporting pre-loaded Linux operating systems. It's funny that it would take such a relatively small company as this to even attempt it. In particular, I am surprised that boutique companies like Alienware don't offer their models with Linux or with a Linux-Windows dual-boot. People who are willing to shell out thousands for an SLI notebook are (relatively) likely to be interested in Linux. And if you dual-boot with Windows, what's the loss?
    • Companies like Alienware have their name in the world of gamers who aren't competent enough (or motivated enough) to build their own machines ... and in case of laptops, those who aren't aware that Alienware does nothing but badge Clevo machines as theirs and charges a premium. So I don't really think that Alienware is going to be the first big-brand to sell Linux based laptops (Keeping in mind that thier biggest selling point is PC Gaming). Lack of PC Gaming on Linux is the reason why I don't buy the argum
      • why should i pay HP/Compaq for preloading my laptop with linux when i can just throw in suse 10.1 and everything but the broadcom wireless card works? suspend to ram/disk works ( had to set the suspend to ram config to force, but the acpi config DOES work just fine) HP/Compaq would probably just charge the same as a windows only laptop anyways... why would i pay for them to install linux? now i might consider donating a few bucks if they could provide a wireless driver that actually makes my wireless button
        • why should i pay HP/Compaq for preloading my laptop with linux when i can just throw in suse 10.1 and everything but the broadcom wireless card works?
          Two reasons:
          1. So that you don't pay HP to preload Windows (Assuming HP won't sell you an OS less laptop because that may add a new cycle in their QA process)
          2. Because then HP will ensure that our wireless cards, suspend, media buttons etc work everytime.
    • This is precisely why. I went to buy myself a linux-loaded laptop in early June. I found 4 serious vendors, and 3 of them only had a couple models each, and none were customizable. R-Cubed had a bunch of models and you could pick and choose your components, much like Dell does. The price was expensive, I'll admit, but my grandparents paid the bill because it was a high school graduation gift. I got a nice laptop, not the one in the article though. It has the NVIDIA, a 2.0 processor, gig of ram, 120 GB total

    • One of the biggest reasons why Linux has not reached a wider audience is the difficulty of installation and configuration, which involves partitioning, potentially compiling drivers, and other things that can take some time. It also requires a decent amount of technical knowledge. If Linux came pre-installed, casual users would be a lot more inclined to give it a try.

      This is an extremely good point - which makes the fact that Windows XP is sold in boxed versions just so much more astonishing.

      Last time I

      • Perhaps the right antimonopoly measure against MS is to prohibit pre-installation and require the systems be shipped with a clean drive, OS install CD and have the installation protocol fully documented.

        This idea won't work unfortunately. Even if the installation process was as simple as 'Insert the installation CD and turn on your computer', this would still be too scary and complicated for many users. 50%* of people would put the CD in the wrong way round (the others just got lucky). A computer should be

        • This idea won't work unfortunately. Even if the installation process was as simple as 'Insert the installation CD and turn on your computer', this would still be too scary and complicated for many users. 50%* of people would put the CD in the wrong way round (the others just got lucky). A computer should be fully working when you buy it.

          Except that the computer is usually *not* fully working when one buys it. You need to unpack and to connect the cables. I saw people mix up and plug speakers into a micro

  • that's just peachy

    Has it got a windows key too ?

    I notice that the Leveno Thinkpads have gone to two button touchpads too.

    I'll be glad when I'm out of computing, it's a lifetime of frustration.
    • Well, the non-thinkpad notebooks anyway. Call me an optimist, but hopefully they'll keep the thinkpad line alive for some time to come (at least until I can afford one) :(
    • I can't find a touchpad with a third button and/or scrollwheel (usually clickable) on any laptop from any manufacturer today. Three years ago they were available from a lot of brands.

      I doubt anyone even manfacturers such touchpads anymore.

      Which is sad for users, especially Unix users.

  • 2 Button Mouse? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Am I seeing right? Are they targeting Linux users with a two button mouse latptop instead of three? This would be pretty much ridiculous.
    • Oh come on, *real* hackers don't ever leave the keyboard.
    • ... under Linux. I've got several variants of wheel mice, and the distro's I've tried can't seem to handle "the wheel thing" properly - especially my beloved MS explorer optical with the wheel & extra buttons. Fortunately, the web is full of (bad) advice on how to get multi-button mice ~working .... heavy sigh...

      I'm also not surprised that the sleep and WiFi are flakey. It's gotta be tough for an OS to support proper re-initialization on hardware that can be powered off and on. That's not somethin

  • Wouldn't most people with the technical ability to use/maintain a linux laptop just save a bit of money and get a laptop (probably a 'barebones' laptop) with no OS on it? Especially when you consider how custom linux is, and how advanced most linux users are...I wouldn't want someone else to install linux for me, although I actually am a Windows user...
    • Laptops are made to run Windows, which is why it's been so difficult in the past to get Linux working on them. The manufacturers do everything they can to make sure the hardware works flawlessly in Windows because, with the exception of the above company and a couple others like them, the final product WILL have Windows installed.

      There currently is no such thing as a "barebones" laptop (although it's been attempted in the past), unless you are referring to sloppy seconds offered by companies reselling corpo
    • Wouldn't most people with the technical ability to use/maintain a linux laptop just save a bit of money and get a laptop

      It does not take a lot of technical ability to use or maintain Linux (assuming you are using a distro like Ubuntu rather than one like LFS)- in fact I would say it takes takes less ability than Windows once installed.

      It takes some ability to install any OS, Linux attracts a more technical crowd because it does not come pre-installed. Selling PCs with Linux pre-installed will (hopefully)

  • Still using Pentium M when the Core Duo has been here a while, and Merom just around the corner ...

  • Forget the software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @02:38PM (#15763605)
    The tagline is all about the software that comes preinstalled. But really, living with Linux on a laptop is all about hardware support. Can it suspend to RAM or disk - even if 3d acceleration is enabled and I forget to remove my PCMCIA devices first? Can I dock and undock with a docking station - each time switching over to my high-res external desktop display - without rebooting? Does the WiFi work - including support for all the weird security and authorization mechanisms? These are the important questions a linux laptop buyer should ask.
    • The product page says that r3 patched the kernel with Software Suspend 2, that wifi works, that all the special keyboard buttons (e.g. web browser) works, that they fiddled with the X server configuration to get the video working, etc. But I agree that the review would have been more useful if it had stated this information, as that seems to set this laptop apart.
      • "Software Suspend" alone is a bit alarming with no mention of suspend-to-ram (which is much faster). There are many little gotchas. For instance my T40 can suspend to RAM and last for days using APM. When I switched to ACPI, my battery runtime when up substantially, but suspend-to-ram (though it appears to work and shuts of the screen) works poorly, hardly saving any more energy than just shutting the lid. I am not saying that Windows is any better, but I have never seen all the features on a laptop act
      • Oogh...which means that the first time you upgrade your system...well, you can expect "interesting" behavior.
    • Wow. I notice no-one's replied to you. Those are EXACTLY the questions I'd ask. I can get Linux working on just about any laptop on the face of the planet.

      But I have never seen Linux suspend to disk (or suspend in *ANY* fashion, actually) without hosing on restart. I'm currently running Ubuntu on an IBM (Lenovo) which should have the best Linux support out there, and I can only suspend the laptop once. The second time I do, I have to power it off and reboot. Not useful.

      I haven't even bothered with trying to
  • why couldn't they offer a preconfigured option with Ubuntu? I know they can't offer to pre-install every linux distro out there, but considering it's popularity...
  • Firefox! I must have this machine...

  • So what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @02:44PM (#15763623) Homepage Journal
    The battery life seemed pretty normal, with a full charge running about 2 to 2.5 hours.

    What's the point of creating yet another laptop with an overpowered CPU and no battery life? It would make more sense to use a less powerful CPU that doesn't suck up power. Especially when the system is designed to run Gnome on Linux — that's a configuration that would run happily on a system with 1/3 the hz.

    Linux people have to stop producing technology whose only advantage over standard Wintel platforms is that there's no OS tithe to Redmond. Go with the Penguin's strengths: less resource hungry, so you can produce cheaper systems that use less power; open source, so you can fix all the usability bugs that Microsoft (and, alas, most Linux app designers) can't seem to deal with.

    • Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 )
      My first hand experience, running OpenOffice on Linux and Office 2000 on Windows 98 on the same older Pentium I laptop, is that it's nearly impossible to run 'productivity' apps on a 'popular' desktop like Gnome on said hardware. Office 2000 was no racehorse, either, but it at least was usable.

      No, it is a misnomer to claim that modern Linux-based OSes are less resource hungry than Redmond bloatware. The modern 'Linuxes' may have caught up to Win98 in terms of usability, but they're resource pigs.

      My tactic

      • Your comparison is based on system that ten years old. When I said "less powerful" I didn't mean "anemic". Aside from having any version of Office without a lot of virtual memory swapping. Hence your slowdown.

        My comparison of Linux and Windows was not theoretical. I used to be a tech writer at Borland, and we were developing a Linux version of our Windows IDE [borland.com], so I had two machines on my desk. I named them "Calvin" and "Hobbes". Calin was a 350 mhz Pentium III with 256 MB of RAM (wimpy by today's standard

        • Gaa! Is my mind going, or did Slashdot eat a whole sentence That second sentence should read, "Aside from having a slow CPU, that old system probably has between 64 and 128 MB of RAM. That's not enough to run any version of Office without a lot of virtual memory swapping."
          • The laptop in question has 32M of memory and is very usable for light Word or Excel dabbling. Completely unusable with Open Office. And below the recommended minimum for all of the above.

            • Re:So what? (Score:2, Interesting)

              by kullnd ( 760403 )
              Yea, your right, your gonna run Winblows 98 better than Gnome on this laptop w/ 32mb of RAM... Linux is awsome with resorces, but lets face it, it's much more advanced than Win 98 and that needs to be taken into consideration.

              I think the basis of comparison here was more towards the current operating systems, i.e. Win XP
              • I agree completely that a freenix on that laptop is much more powerful than Windows 98. But as a dumb cheap laptop for word processing and a few spreadsheets it's usable with Windows 98 and Office 2000 and a non-runner with OpenOffice. But it's really best utilized IMO running NetBSD and a light X environment like FVWM, Motif (mwm- isn't it amazing that Motif can now be called a 'light' X environment?!?), or even good old twm (Tab Window Manager rules, comes by default in the X11 distribution, and is 'lig
          • (Your website is 'picknit' so I will nitpick a bit)

            Don't say _any_ version of Office. I have Office 4.3 on CDROM for Windows (3.1 or greater) and also Office 4 on floppies for Macintosh. Both will run quite well on a machine with 4 megs of RAM.

        • Re:So what? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 )
          I thought the slowest Pentium III that Intel ever made was 450 MHz. That's the one I bought for my first PIII anyway. I remember at the same time having the 'fastest' PII made, which was 450 MHz.

          And I'm typing this on a Dell Optiplex with a PIII 500MHz processor, with NetBSD 3 on Mozilla. (under FVWM, etc.) Go figure. I'm cheap and refuse to waste ANY more money on 'horsepower' when if I have a processor-hungry computing task I can pull another Dell PIII machine out of storage and hang it off a free po
      • OpenOffice is resource hog - that is why I rarely use it (on my Sempron 2400 desktop). If you use a system that old there are other apps that are much better suite to it.

        Even on a newer system, and though I rarely use OOfice it I turned off Java and changed some other settings to speed it up a bit - I really do think that the default settings are silly.

        That said my not particularly powerful desktop runs multiple simultaneous KDE and Gnome sessions (using older PCs as terminals) with fairly heavy apps runnin
  • That notebook looks just like an ASUS notebook [asus.com]. Did they just rebrand it, or did they actually change it?
    • Yeah, "That's an Asus" was my first thought. Confirmed it by scrolling half a page down the article and reading "Powered by ASUS", nifty logo and all...
      • Confirmed it by scrolling half a page down the article and reading "Powered by ASUS", nifty logo and all...

        The article on Newsforge does not mention ASUS.

        (However, going one link further, R-Cubed's site does say "built on ASUS", but leaves open the question of whether they changed the machine in any way.)
  • Let's get things straight. R Cubed says it's based on the Asus Z33A series of laptops. So let's compare the full Z33A specs on the "ultraportable" as Asus compares. http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&mo d el=606&l1=5&l2=64&l3=0 [asus.com]

    It's a Centrino based system. Which means Intel Pentium M or Celeron Pentium M at 1.6 GHz or better and SpeedStep, Intel chipset, Intel WiFi. All supported, so we're good. Everything lines up nicely with much of everything... but there's a few bits tha
    • Seems like the most important thing to you is playing games. If that is the case, why buy a Linux based laptop? Why dont you apply the same criticism to the OS.
      • Okay, same criticsm to the OS, in comparison to Windows.

        Pro for Linux: Doesn't crash as often, has fine-grained seperation between OS and UI, is much faster and for a professional, better to maintain. Has actual user seperation, limiting damage by viruses. Holes are plugged faster.

        Con for Linux: OpenGL card support isn't quite up to par in all but NVidia chipsets. Need binary drivers, which sometimes lag behind OSS UI's, for faster performance in video. Only a few mainstream games (including id Softwa

    • Re:Stripped down... it's a terrible laptop. (Score:4, Informative)

      by r_cerq ( 650776 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @04:08PM (#15763832)
      First, the graphics card isn't ATI or NVidia. It's Intel. That means no native OpenGL support
      Bzzt, wrong! Intel cards do support OpenGL, just not spectacularly. Here I am running XGL on one to prove it...

    • Re:Stripped down... it's a terrible laptop. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by massysett ( 910130 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @05:02PM (#15763983) Homepage
      All these arguments show why it's not a good laptop for you, but that doesn't make it a "terrible laptop." First, you're wrong about the lack of OpenGL support. Intel chips do support OpenGL, and what's more, they do it with fully open-source kernel drivers. Compare that to nVidia or ATI chips which require proprietary kernel modules to get the same support.

      Second, the graphics memory is shared, but so what? That does matter if you're playing heavy duty games, but if your laptop use consists mainly of Web browsing, email, and Vim usage (as is true for my usage) then it doesn't matter if your memory is shared. If that's a real concern, throw an extra 512MB of RAM in there, which is still cheaper than going for a dedicated GPU.

      Third, yes, the screen is only 1024x768, but that also means it's small. The laptop is light and fits easily in my bag. Compare that to 1400x1050, which means widescreen and it means having a bigger panel. It's fine if you want that, but to some people portability is more important than screen real estate.

      Fourth, happiness might be doubling up on 9-cell batteries, but to me, happiness is not having to carry two batteries. Weight, weight, weight.

      In short, the laptop is made for someone with basic computing needs who values portability over power. It's not a gamers' notebook. That doesn't make it a "terrible" notebook, it just makes it a notebook not suited to everyone's needs. The same is true of one of those XPS monsters with a huge screen, high resolution, and dedicated GPU: it's a hulking machine that weighs several pounds more. That doesn't make it a "terrible" notebook, even if it does make it a notebook that I wouldn't buy.
      • Third, yes, the screen is only 1024x768, but that also means it's small. The laptop is light and fits easily in my bag. Compare that to 1400x1050, which means widescreen and it means having a bigger panel. It's fine if you want that, but to some people portability is more important than screen real estate.

        Well, first off resolution != size, if you look at some of the high-end HDTV cameras you have a 7" 1920x1080 LCD display. The important part is what defines the size of a laptop, my impression is that the

  • Hot Item? (Score:5, Funny)

    by thunderpaws ( 199100 ) on Saturday July 22, 2006 @03:35PM (#15763738)
    Will it explode as well as a Dell?
  • Something's not right. From the review:

    By itself the 11x9x1.5-inch LS1250-L weighs in at a svelte 3.62lbs.

    And later. . .

    The battery life seemed pretty normal, with a full charge running about 2 to 2.5 hours.

    Umm excuse me? One look at the companies product page yields:

    # Up to 7.9 hours battery life (72WHr. Battery Pack)
    (. . .)
    # Less than 3 lbs (with 24WHr. battery pack)

    I can only draw one conclusion: the reviewer must be lying! After all, who can you trust to know a laptop better than t

    • After all, who can you trust to know a laptop better than the company itself?

      The actual manufacturer, Asus, who lists 3.3lb as the base wieght on their spec sheet.

      As for the batter life, 2-2.5 hours is for the three cell 24Whr battery. The "up to 7.9" hours is with an optional (and significantly heavier) nine cell battery.
  • It's still got a bloody windows key though :(

    Looks like someone took an ASUS laptop , slapped fedora on it , hey presto linux laptop..
  • It's a trap!
  • OK, one more seller is using GNU/Linux on laptops. Where are the news? even acer (who makes pretty cheap notebooks) is exporting notebooks with GNU/Linux preinstalled on some countries, like Brasil ( I bought one of these) and aparently Polonia. The news are that those notebooks are MUCH cheaper with the same components of these ones.
  • I find it interesting that they're such big supporters of "Linux", yet their website is running Windows Server [netcraft.com]...
  • For that price, it better come with 900 hours of free AOL, or 6 months of Norton AV!

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