[ltp] Re: What to take care of when buying a Lenovo? revisited

[Stefan Monnier]

> Three years have passed since you said this, does your advice still
> stand?

I can't speak for him, but with regards to politics, the situation
hasn't changed w.r.t nVidia which is still completely uncooperative.
ATI/AMD on the other hand is now very cooperative for its GPUs (not sure
how it compares to Intel nowadays, but judging from the quality of the
drivers it seems to be in the same ballpark).

I don't know if the situation in terms of power usage has changed much.
Based on technical specs of recent AMD and NVidia chipsets for
nettop-level systems, it seems like the difference between Intel and
AMD/NVidia has been reduced, but practice tends to be very different
from theory (especially when you add a Free Software requirement into
the mix), so don't take my word for it.

> Has the situation improved with nVidia drivers?

There are now 2D Free Software drivers for most NVidia chipsets and they
work OK.  But this is *despite* NVidia rather than thanks to them, so
it's now on par with AMD/Intel's support and progresses slower.

> If one were to buy an T420s today and had to choose between  IntelŽ HD
> 3000 and NVIDIAŽ QuadroŽ NVS4200M, which one is the one to get? Is
> there a chance nVidia drivers will improve to a point in the next
> three years that it will be worthwhile to have an nVidia optimus card
> running under Linux? And lastly, is there any harm in getting the
> laptop with the nVidia chip and disabling it for the time being if the
> price of the two T420s is nearly the same?

I'd recommend you vote with your wallet and stay away from NVidia.


        Stefan