| From: Ian Malone <ibmalone@xxxxxxxxx> | It'd be nice to hear if anyone has experience of the following two | laptops. | Acer AS5103 http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=4F5Y | Wireless is really odd, since they've decided to give it their own | branding. Write-ups for similar model numbers mention both Atheros | and Broadcom; not sure if these are different drivers for the same | chipset or completely different chipsets (one page in particular has | the two alongside). Graphics are ATI which I'm a bit wary of. I don't really understand the different Acer models. I was commissioned by my son to buy him an inexpensive small notebook to run Linux (I like shopping for computers and fiddling to make them work). - The smallest inexpensive notebooks I found have 14" displays. The choice of 14" systems is low -- there are many more 15.4" models. - I wanted Intel-all-the-way for the reasons that have already been pointed out. I ended up getting an Acer Aspire 5570-2792 with a "Pentium Dual Core". This CPU is the confusingly-named price-reduced version of the Intel Core. I figure that it is a good mobile CPU at a bargain price. No 64-bit, no VT. Unfortunately this Acer has an Atheros 802.11g interface, not an Intel one. This was unclear from the specifications (heck, some specifications that seemed to apply listed Intel). Grrr. I put Ubuntu on it. I wanted a fresh Linux and Ubuntu Feisty Fawn was out and F7 was not. Besides, it is handy to have all that forbidden candy on a notebook (mp3 players etc.). I've documented what I had to do to get Ubuntu going. F7 should be similar: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/AcerAspire5570-2792 The biggest adventure was the Atheros 802.11g interface. For some reason that I could not figure out the half-open driver did not work. Perhaps something that Acer did to the chips. Anyway, the problem is in the binary part of the driver and there seems to be little support from Atheros(?) or Leffler(?) to fix things like that. I ended up using ndiswrapper and getting it fixed by the author! Madwifi problem like the one I hit: http://madwifi.org/ticket/1206 Leffler talking about his "open source"ish driver: http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=149 I think that this machine was a good choice given that price was a primary concern. I got quite a good deal (Canadian $600). I then replaced the 1 x 512M of RAM with 2 x 1G sticks for a very low price (C$80 total) -- RAM prices have crashed perhaps due to slower than expected MS Vista adoption If the price were less important, I would have made a few different choices. I agree that 12" screen makes a notebook more portable but it usually makes it more pricey too. I actually use a cheap 10.6" one (not easy to find!).
