Plan to Buy a New Laptop Post: 302522009

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The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Plan to Buy a New Laptop Post 302522009 by bakunin on Friday 13th of May 2011 04:57:33 AM

05-13-2011

Registered User

Plan to Buy a New Laptop

It is time for me to buy a new laptop computer and i was searching the net for the last few days looking for one. The results haven't really been satisfying and i thought you might have information i lack - if so, i'd be grateful for sharing it with me and the probably interested audience.

What i want:
My laptop is strictly only for home use. For every purpose mobile i have a 10" netbook. For home (-office) i want a system which is not bound to a specific place like a desktop, but can be moved around to the couch or another room. That's as mobile as it ever will get, therefore battery operating time or weight are non-issues, as long as the battery allows me to get from one power outlet to the next.

I want the display to be big (17" or up) and i want the best possible. I learned the painful way with my last system that what is good for watching videos is not necessarily good for working: glaring displays are ... *yuck*.

I plan on running several virtual machines for all sorts of test purposes so i need a lot of RAM. I want to have 8GB minimum, 16 GB would be great. On the other hand i never experienced shortage on processing power with the system i had (HP Pavilion dv7, AMD Turion), so i suppose every processor sold today will do.

I plan - needless to say - to run Linux on it, so i need a system compatible with Linux on one hand and i would really appreciate avoiding the "Microsoft Tax": many laptops are not only sold only with Windows but also all sorts of "useful" software packages like MS-Office, Norton-Anti-Virus and what have you. Call me greedy but i don't want to pay a company i despise for a product i won't ever use.

For the same reason (Linux) i don't want a Blueray-drive to be installed but a DVD drive instead. AACS forbids the development of drivers and that in turn forbids the usage of Blueray for me.

I would like to have an SSD installed instead of a HDD. Not because i really need it but because it is new, fast and cool (yes, I'm childish sometimes). It doesn't have to be all that big: right now i use ~25GB of my harddisk and that includes 15GB for disk images of virtual machines. 128GB will be more than i probably ever will use.

Price is not really an issue - i even considered (briefly) buying a MacBook Pro, which would come at ~3.5k$ in the configuration i would like. On the other hand I'd like to use the machine for a longer time so quality of the finish and general workmanship is indeed to be considered.

Finally a detail: the HP Pavilion dv7 i use right now has its (big) power cable attached on the right side (where it goes straight out). This is utter foolish, because it will get in the way of the mouse for all right-handed people (including me), which are the overwhelming majority.

Any input is welcome.

bakunin

bakunin

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LEARN ABOUT OPENDARWIN

pmset

PMSET(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						  PMSET(1)

NAME

     pmset -- modify power management settings

SYNOPSIS

     pmset [-a | -b | -c] [dim minutes] [spindown minutes] [sleep minutes] [womp 1/0] [ring 1/0] [autorestart 1/0] [dps 1/0] [reduce 1/0]
	   [powerbutton 1/0] [lidwake 1/0] [acwake 1/0] [boot]
     pmset -g [disk | live | cap | sched]

DESCRIPTION

     pmset changes and reads power management settings such as idle sleep timing, wake on administrative access, automatic restart on power loss,
     etc.

SETTING

     The -a, -b, -c flags determine whether the settings apply to battery (-b), charger (wall power) (-c), or all (-a).

     Use a minutes argument of 0 to set the idle time to never.

     pmset must be run as root.

     The boot argument tells power management that system bootup is complete. Loginwindow handles this on a normal Mac OS X system.

GETTING

     The -g flag outputs the settings currently in use (same as -g live ).  -g disk will tell you the settings on disk.  -g cap will tell you
     which power management features the machine supports.  -g sched will show scheduled startup/wake and shutdown/sleep events.

ARGUMENTS

     dim - display dim timer (value in minutes)
     spindown - disk spindown timer (value in minutes)
     sleep - system sleep timer (value in minutes)
     womp - wake on ethernet magic packet (value = 0/1)
     ring - wake on modem ring (value = 0/1)
     autorestart - automatic restart on power loss (value = 0/1)
     dps - dynamically change processor speed based on load (value = 0/1)
     reduce - reduce processor speed (value = 0/1)
     powerbutton - sleep the machine when power button is pressed (value = 0/1)
     lidwake - wake the machine when the laptop lid(or clamshell) is opened (value = 0/1)
     acwake - wake the machine when power source (AC/battery) is changed (value = 0/1)

OTHER ARGUMENTS

     These arguments don't directly affect power management settings:
     boot - tell the kernel that system boot is complete

EXAMPLES

     pmset -b dim 5

     pmset -a dim 10 spindown 10 sleep 30 womp 1

     pmset -g live

FILES

     All changes made through pmset are saved in a persistent preferences file (per-system, not per-user) at
     /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

     pmset modifies the same file that System Preferences Energy Saver modifies.

Darwin								  August 19, 2002							    Darwin