[rescue] non-Intel laptop for general use?

[Robert Darlington]

I used to use them when I worked for .gov.  They were kinda a pain in
the butt, but then again I was running Solaris on them.  (I love
Solaris, don't get me wrong).  I think there was an 802.11a wireless
card available for them, no 802.11b card / drivers at the time.  one
of the BSD unix like os's probably has something, perhaps even Linux.

>From my point of view, you'll either be running an old version of
Solaris rather slowly or a modern BSD OS at medium speed.   Pick any
old P3 or P4 laptop and you can run both of these OS's at reasonable
speed, Windows, QNX, apparently now you can run OS X (the new one that
is legally stamped as UNIX), and just about any other OS.   You also
won't have trouble finding parts, and it'll be dirt cheap (my 1 GHz P4
laptop was $140 delivered).  Get yourself a free copy of VMWare and
run them all at the same time.  GNU compilers are just as crappy on
x86 as they are on Sparc so you're not going to gain anything in this
arena but you'll have a lot more options in the long run.

Just my 2 cents, feel free to keep the change.

-Bob

On 10/29/07, James Hartley <jjhartley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/29/07, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at verizon.net> wrote:
> > When I was a younger man, people used to buy computers to run particular
> > programs on, and that software decision drove the platform choice - you appear
> > to want to not follow that model.
> >
> > I assume by non-Intel you mean not WinTel (Intel and Windows), would MacTel be
> > acceptable? I am very fond of my MacBook Pro.
>
> I've noticed over the year or so that I have read this list that a
> number of people favor their [Power|Mac]books.  Yes, I'm considering
> them as well.
>
> ...but I'm also curious as to what Tadpole owners|users think of their
> purchase which was my motivation for posting.  Most on this list are
> not afraid of sharing unvarnished opinions, & I was hoping to gain
> from their experience.
>
> As for why non-Intel, the *BSD's that I am likely to run all have
> ports to the common platforms, so I don't feel I am not limiting
> myself by making a nonstandard processor choice.
>
> Of course the price/durability ratio is an issue, & yes, an Intel
> solution may be cheaper, but I am willing to pay a bit more if the
> engineering is clearly solid.  Here again I figured that soliciting
> for opinions here would clear up any ambiguity on whether supporting
> something other than the gigantic Intel machine is merely a romantic
> notion.  :-)
>
> I do appreciate the comments made thus far.  Are there any Tadpole
> users out there?
>
> Jim
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