[ltp] New thinkpad advice wanted

[Mike Gratton]

Hey Mark,

I have a T21, which is fairly similar, I've found it has worked fine, 
with one exception as noted below.

linux-thinkpad@merctech.com wrote:

>
> 	are there any incompatabilities between Linux and the internal modem
> 	on the T22 series
>


That depends on if you get a 3Com mini-pci card or an Intel/Lucent. The 
3Com modem is a win-modem and there aren't any drivers AFAIK, so buy the 
intel/lucent one instead.

 
> 	are there any incompatabilities between Linux and the internal network
> 	adapter on the T22 series
> 


See above, built-in networking is provided by the mini-pci card. The 
3Com's ethernet side does have Linux drivers available, but if you want 
to use the modem, get the Intel/Lucent card instead.

	
> 	are there any incompatabilities between Linux and the graphics system
> 	on the T22 series, are there X drivers to take advantage of the
> 	S3 Savage IX8+ chipset


Yep, XFree 4.1.0 comes with the best Linux drivers for the Savage 
chipset. For earlier XF versions, get the driver from 
<http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html>

> Can anyone comment on whether the difference in performance from 800MHz->
> 900MHz->1GHz is worth the increased cost and decreased battery life?
> 


I guess it depends on if you want to do really computationally expensive 
computing or not. Games don't count, because the graphics card will be 
the bottleneck, not the CPU. So if you're you're going to be recompiling 
kernels or Mozilla all day, then get a faster one. Otherwise, get one of 
the lower-end CPU and buy more memory instead. More memory will save 
your batteries because it means the machine will be using the HDD less 
for swapping, and the HDD is a *big* power drain.

I've got a 700MHz w/ 256M of memory, and the battery lasts a long, long 
time for me.

Hope this helps,
Mike.



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