OT: Recommended Linux Laptops, suppliers?

[Brian Quinlan]

> No doubt they have some nice features.  They also lack some I consider
> essential.  I don't think we're going to reach an agreement on what a
> good price/performance ratio is.

Using Skip's numbers, the 1GHz Powerbook scores about 10% less pystones.
I think that 10% less performance, for a similar price, is reasonable.

> Perhaps you get a bigger paycheck or
> are happy with the same PC for longer than I am.  I spend around $400
a
> year to upgrade my PC (new mobo, CPU and RAM, occasionally an
additional
> amount for a larger HDD) and easily double my performance every year.
> With a Mac I'd have to shell out $2000/year to maintain the same
> situation (and given their glacial processor improvements *if* it
could
> be done remains questionable).  To me that's unacceptable in today's
> commodity PC market.

We were talking about laptops here. What PC laptops have upgradeable
motherboards?

> > Are your fonts antialiased or is every graphic object antialiased?
And I
> > am talking about client graphics, not window manager constructs.
> 
> Everything.  The fonts are AA by X (Xft extensions), but the desktop
is
> AA by the video driver (nVidia), which, IMHO, is where it ought to be
> done (most modern video cards support fullscreen AA in hardware).  I'd
> be surprised if Apple doesn't leverage this same hardware support.

Cliff, I don't think that you understand how the X architecture works.
Here is a diagram: http://www.x.org/X11_protocol.html

If you look at the protocol, there is no way for a client to specify
that it wants to draw a line terminating at subpixel locations. This is
actually true of all the X functions that I am aware of. The server can
chose to render the line using antialiasing, if it wishes, but precision
is lost between client and server (because the protocol specifies
integers for coordinates). There is also no way to assign blending
values when drawing. 

Your point about your desktop being antialiased is irrelevant because
your desktop is a window manager artifact and your window manager is not
an X client.

Where the pixel calculations are actually done is irrelevant to the X
(and Quartz) client. 
 
> > There are OpenGL extensions for X windows. Why do you think that is?
> > Because it would be way too expensive to convert OpenGL constructs
into
> > X primitives and send those across the network.
> 
> But at least they *can* be sent across the network <wink>. 

Well, they can't because no one is insane enough to do this. But you
*could*, I guess. Just like you could just send the entire window buffer
over in Cocoa. Doing that with a 1024x768 window @ 60fps would cost you
4MB/s of network bandwidth. And you'd lose a bunch of information (like
color correction data) and optimization opportunities.

> I've done
> little research and it appears that Apple's remote desktop is very
> similar to VNC or PCAnywhere.  

Apple doesn't have a remote desktop product, do they? They just have
hooks to allow others to develop them. 

> Undoubtedly Apple figures this type of thing isn't
> too interesting to their target market (and perhaps they'll add it
> later, if their architecture allows) but to me it's an essential
aspect
> of my computing environment.

The architecture allows it and any interested party is free to implement
it. 

> I have 4 PC's here at work, one in another
> room, and I routinely run monitor apps, editors and whatnot remotely.

I do this too. I just use ssh, which I'll admit is less cool.

Cheers,
Brian