Review: Laptop Mini Roundup

The family and I are visiting the in-laws in Great Falls over the holiday weekend. My family picked me up from work so I wasn't involved in the packing... and it just so happens that my wife didn't pack my laptop. :( As luck would have it, my father-in-law has two recently purchased laptops... and he also had a Dell Mini 9 he was working on for a friend... and he was kind enough to let me play with them.

MontanaLinux from LiveUSB thumbdrive

I usually have one or more USB thumbdrives in my pants pocket and almost always one of them is a bootable LiveUSB of a recent built of MontanaLinux i386 (my own remix of Fedora 11)... so at least I had something I could test with and get my Linux fix. The build I used was dated August 26th, 2009 so it had all of the Fedora updates released on or prior to that date.

Now onto the three laptops I tried out.

Toshiba Satellite L355
Brief specs: 17" display capable of 1440x900, 3GB RAM, 160GB HD, DVD burner, Card Reader
CPU: Intel Celeron 585 2.16GHz (one thread)
Works: Everything - 1440x900 widescreen accellerated video, sound, wireless, battery monitor
Problems: Special keys not mapped properly

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

I think my f-i-l bought this for $399 at a local store. Overall I was fairly impressed with the performance and quality... and how well Linux runs on it.

Acer Aspire One ZA3
Brief Specs: 11.6" display capable of 1366x768, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, Card Reader
CPU: Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz (two treads)
Works: Wireless, Audio, Some but not all special keys
Problems: 1024x768 (stretched) video without accelleration, no battery monitor

lspci outout:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) HD Audio Controller (rev 07)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 07)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 07)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #1 (rev 07)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #2 (rev 07)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #3 (rev 07)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB EHCI #1 (rev 07)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) LPC Bridge (rev 07)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) IDE Controller (rev 07)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

I think my f-i-l picked this one up for $350 at a local store. I was impressed with the speed (accept for the video) and how well Linux worked. I assume that the next release or two of Fedora will resolve the video issues.

Dell Mini 9
Brief Specs: 9" display capable of 1024x600, 512MB RAM, 4GB SSD, Card Reader
CPU: Intel Atom 1.6GHz (two threads)
Works: Nice display, Sound
Problems: Wireless hopelessly broken

My f-i-l had this laptop because a friend of his was hoping that when I came to visit I could get the wireless working. It was supposedly purchased with a wireless data plan through Verison and came pre-loaded with Ubuntu. The owner reported that the wireless worked fine until the last set up Ubuntu package updates were installed... and then the wireless broke. While it almost seems as if it is a hardware failure on the part of the Broadcom B43xx wireless card, I think it is a regression in the Linux kernel... but that is only a guess. It seems as if a number of people have had trouble with the wireless in some of the Dell Mini series of netbooks.

I really like Dell computers and use them for most everything at work. One advantage is that they all have a service tag number that you can type into the Dell support page to find out warranty information as well as easily locate drivers (for Microsoft Windows flavors anyway). The person who bought this laptop didn't think it had any warranty left but after checking, I found it is still under warranty until January 7th, 2010... which is 1 year from when they purchased it. I hope they are able to work with Dell technical support and get the wireless issue resolved.

It didn't work in MontanaLinux either even with the firmware for the b43 available. :(

Unfortunately I didn't get to hang on to the Dell Mini 9 long enough to jot down all of the specs nor get a lspci output. Given the fact that I didn't have network access (didn't have a wired connection handy), I didn't get to try out much with it... no multimedia playback because my LiveUSB setup doesn't have any media files to try.

Conclusion

This was a very brief and incomplete review but I was very happy to see how well Linux holds up even on some of the latest hardware. I'd like to encourage site readers to comment or blog about their experiences with Linux on their hardware.