OT: Recommended Linux Laptops, suppliers?

[Brian Quinlan]

> In the PC world, firewire is more of a convenience than a necessity.
> Especially with USB 2.0. 

I guess USB 2.0 is equivalent to 1394b, with a few minor exceptions:
1. USB 2.0 is 40% slower
2. USB 2.0 carries 5% of the power
3. USB 2.0 can only be organized into simple topographies
4. USB 2.0 cables can only be 5% as long

blah, blah, blah

> My Gf's Dell has firewire and it collects dust bunnys.

90% of the time, so do the USB ports of my PC :-)

> > It seems that, using the motherboard, a 2GHz Celeron is about 20%
slower
> > than a 2GHz P4.
> 
> But still pretty fast <wink>.

Did you look at Skip's numbers?
 
> > I can't really do the same comparison between a PIII and a P4 since
they
> > never appeared on the same motherboards, but I thought that P4 was
> > slower than PIII, clock for clock, because to allow for higher clock
> > speeds, the P4 needed a very deep pipeline. Anybody know?
> 
> The early P4's were.  The new ones (Hyperthreading) aren't.

Actually, when executing single threaded applications, they are even
slower than regular P4s (they also aren't available in laptops so I
don't see why this matters). See Tom's Hardware for details.

> Ah.  Excellent.  Does it require another Apple to do the remote
display
> or special software on the client?

I would guess that writing a non-Apple client would be very difficult. 

Cheers,
Brian