IMAG0206
by Jemimus, on Flickr
Another brand new toy. After my last trip to the UK for bikesoup I decided that it was about time to get a proper laptop.
So far I only have a netbook, which is very convenient when size and weight matter. But for getting work done it is just to small, the main problem is the screen size and resolution.
I had a look around for good full sized laptops and the only brands producing something with the quality I had in mind were Apple and Lenovo. The advantages of the Apple over Lenovo are better built quality, battery life and easy to buy locally. I choose the Lenovo, because you can order it with more gadgets, swappable batteries and mostly because it isn't an Apple as I despise where the company is going and I already had bad experiences with Linux and iPods.
This is the configuration I finally got.
  • Intel Core i7-620M
  • 15.6" FHD Display  1920x1080
  • 4 GB
  • UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad) with Fingerprint Reader
  • 500 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
  • Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (3x3 AGN)
  • Integrated Mobile Broadband (Gobi 2000 3G with GPS) 
First thing I did was to install Fedora 14 on it. I used the install option to shrink the Windows partition to 50G and used the rest for Linux. I am probably going to replace the hard-disk with a SSD in the future, but it was a bit too expensive for now.
The install was amazingly boring. I was expecting all kind of problems with the hardware, but everything just worked. Even the fingerprint reader allows you to login after configuring it with a nice tool.
The only tweaks I needed so far, are these:
  • The UMTS card needs a firmware and loader, I used these instructions from the CentOS list.  I don't really need it, because mobile broadband via bluetooth is also very easy to set up and works just as fast.
  • I haven't tried the GPS yet, but I seem to be inside of buildings most of the time anyway
  • if you enable VT-D (whatever that is) in the BIOS, hibernate / suspend to disk won't work
  • for some reason some of the preferences don't work for the touchpad, but you can enable those and more with the synclient tool. For example "synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1"
Battery time is a bit disappointing, with either a 6 or 9 cell battery. Some of it seems to be the fault of the Linux software, but PC hardware always seems to be rubbish in that department.
The build quality is also not on the level of a MacBook pro, but much better than any Dell, Asus or whatever they are called.

I will comment on this post in case I make any new discoveries.