So for the last year I have, for the most part, had a break from this little project of mine. I don't normally have time via my psycho family, however I haven't had too much of a bad time lately and I have been able to commit myself once again.

So, I am normally a linux user. I'm an avid arch lover and the most I know about windows is on the DOS based systems. Pretty sad for a 23 year old huh? Oh well. I do dream of a perfect AROS system that I can plop on a laptop and have everything work out of the box. Naturally, I should have requirements for this, and I seem to have candidates now.

1: Its a laptop. Desktops are nice, but if I'm out and about I'd rather have my fun machine with me. I can do net stuff at home or on my phone. Needs to bee portable, which I am pretty lenient about. 16 inches or less. Weight doesn't matter to me.

2: AC97. All computers that I own that I like happen to have this sound chip. So thats not hard. They tend to sound the best as well, ironically.

3: 8:5 or 5:4. Can't have 16:9 or 4:3. Ugly. Bleh. Can't see anything either. Pain in the butt. Give me a 5:4 or its fat sister.

4: 2GB of ram. No less. No pentium 3's or early athlons.

5: 800 MHZ or more. Thats pretty simple.

6: Wifi. Its a rule of mine.

Well I said I have candidates right?

1: Dell Inspiron 620M. Pretty nice. Has all the stuff I would want, just need a wireless card and its all set right out of the box.

2: Dell Inspiron 6000 DDR2 edition. It doesn't need to be DDR2, it just so happens that mine is. Its a pretty nice Pentium M lappy all around. Again, everything works out of the box. Just needs wifi. Even has an ATI X300 :P

3: Acer Aspire KAV10 D150. Screen is pretty shit in all honesty, but its so damn small that its too convenient.

I have a sub requirement. Needs dvorak capable keyboard. The acer is the only one of the three capable of that, so for the moment its in the lead. Its also the only one with actual battery life so thats even more of a plus.

I was working on wifi drivers at one point, but the way I was attacking it wasn't working so I've given up. I don't know how to write for hardware from scratch, so I can't really be too worked up about that stuff.

Anyways, thought I'd let you guys know these laptops are pretty a grade for Aros, Icaros specifically. And in my area they seem pretty common, so they can't be too hard to find elsewhere.

@dommer416

Wouldn't it be easier to aim for a Dell D820 ?
When last year I was experimenting with AROS, I got one for 40 £, changed the wifi card with an Aspire One zg5 (5 £) and upgraded the LCD panel to WUXGA (1920x1200) for 40£ and keyboard to US Layout (15 £) and RAM 4GB, visible 3.2 for an additional 15£

Needless to say it supports wifi, intel graphics acceleration (including 3D). The Core2Duo is still an OK CPU for ICaros and should the SMP/64 branch ever move forward, it's also relatively future proof.

I have no idea about this Dvorak thing, but if all you need is a fully supported machine, my suggestion is the D520, D530 or D820 (the D830 has random issues with the tcp stack).

@IridiumFX

I guess it would, but I have sight problems so I try to not go for stupid high res (example being I had a 1080p screen on my desktop and I bought a 1680X1050 screen and am much happier). At that, these are literally machines that you can get for free and have cheap batteries. Icaros, Aros more specifically, doesn't care about cores or anything, just SSE and clocks. Maybe DDR2, but thats not much of a difference.

@dommer416

How about this laptop, still available and runs brilliantly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn8TW0gF5xQ

_________________
Amiga 1000, 3000D Toaster, Checkmate A1500 Plus
http://www.checkmate1500plus.com/

Does your selected laptops also support hardware accelerated OpenGL/Mesa ?
If yes which model the fastest ?

Alain

@clusteruk

LOL thats basically the little acer I have now though.

@thellier

The only one of the three that can would probably be the Dell 6000 because it has an actual GPU, though for that you would probably want a desktop in all honesty. I assume you're looking at doing stuff in blender?