“Recently I had a chance to spend some time with Fujitsu’s P7230 ultraportable notebook. With a 10.6” LED-backlit LCD and a weight of less than 3lbs the system is just what many mobile fanatics are looking for, but such portability comes at a price. The P7230 is powered but a 1.2GHz Intel Core Solo U1400 processor, something that is great for the battery life, but does not have the power of its Core 2 Duo brethren. The single-core, low-voltage processor works well much of the time but chokes under the load brought on by intensive programs as well as multi-tasking. In attempt to get the most possible from the P7230 I decided to completely remove Vista in favor of Ubuntu 7.04.”
I have been running Ubuntu on a Sony U101 for almost 3 years – an example of the size / form factor can be seen here http://www.werkema.com/laptop.html . It is a celeron 600A with 512Mb RAM and 1024×768 screen. Almost everything including power saving works with Feisty. However, forget about running ‘bloat’ like Beryl, or apps like Tomboy. It takes a little effort to trim down the memory usage but in the end it performs pretty well, even down to viewing XVid movies (I take it on vacations and road trips to dump/edit photos). It has enough speed to dump video from a firewire camcorder via 1394 and output to a USB2 attached hard drive in one fell swoop.
I used to run Linux (Mandriva, of course) on a Sony VAIO Picturebook C1XD. 8.9″ LCD, P2/400, 128MB RAM. The Picturebook machines looked kinda like half a regular laptop – cut off half the screen and the dead space below the keyboard. I ran full GNOME 2.x – that was interesting.
I finally gave in and upgraded to a Lenovo V100 last year. Much faster, not half the personality though. Loved that laptop. People used to come up to me in coffee shops and go “is that a computer?!”
Off-topic, but one of my buddies uses an old Sony Picturebook he found on eBay–cute, distinctive little laptops, those are.
This is the kind of review I like to see when I’m in the market for a new laptop; a straight-forward account of what works and what doesn’t along with the reviewer’s take on the overall experience. Clearly, if proper operation of the built-in webcam and fingerprint reader under Linux are essential, or if you expect Aunt Tillie to be able to get your favorite distro up and running without assistance on this laptop, this isn’t the laptop (or perhaps Ubuntu isn’t the distro) for you (or her, as the case may be).
I bought the FSC Amilo Si1520, and added another GB of RAM. It’s bigger (12″ widescreen), but portable enough for me. It works nice with Kubuntu.
Edited 2007-05-29 18:40
Yes but the real question is the USB port location conveniently located?
/me shakes his head
Great review! He could have tryied xUbuntu thou, it uses way less resourcesbeacause it runs Xfce instead of Gnome.
Not true anymore. With the release of XFCE 4.4, there’s only a thin line between Gnome and XFCE ressources usage.
The only difference I see between Gnome and XFCE when using Ubuntu/Xubuntu is that Xubuntu loads less services.
Ok, Nautilus may takes more RAM than Thunar but you cant compare Nautilus to Thunar…
sure you can, nautilus is the default file manager for gnome, thunar for XFCE
Right, because Thunar is just that much better then Nautilus.
This seems to be just another “Praise Ubuntu/Bash Vista” story which I have been seeing a lot of lately. It highlights all the points that Ubuntu has over Vista, better battery life (by minutes), and more responsive (which I think is highly subjective). I would like to see benchmarks that backup his claim that Ubuntu is more responsive, perhaps using Open Office which runs on both platforms.
The article also marginalizes all the points that Vista has over Ubuntu, better hardware compatibility, precaching of software with readybost, and better support (how long did he search for a camera driver?).
I seriously can’t respect this review. He may be right about everything he wrote but I as of right now it is just an opinion to me, with no weight behind it.
Edit: I apologize if the tone of my comment sounds trollish. I still think I raise some valid points and I would like to see more solid reviews in the future.
Edited 2007-05-29 19:06
While I agree that his review could have been more balanced, I just need to comment on one of your points here.
I’ve been trying to convert a friend of mine to Linux for some time now (he uses Windows 2000). He tried out Mandriva and Kubuntu, both of which detected his sound card flawlessly. He then tried Vista Ultimate, which couldn’t even see the sound card.
I just think it’s nice that sometimes the hardware issue is on the other side
I’ve been on that side too. Actually I’ve been on that side with all sorts of operating systems, so OOTB hardware detection is a kind of crap shoot.
My ThinkPad R51 has had PC-BSD installed on it, Windows Vista, WinXP, and now Ubuntu 7.04. PC-BSD and XP don’t detect my wireless card out of the box while Vista and Ubuntu do. (Also, Xubuntu detects my card, but it doesn’t have WPA out of the box making it useless on my network until I install the Gnome NetworkManager Applet.)
With my desktop Vista doesn’t support anything out of the box besides what’s on the motherboard and my video card. Which is really odd since my stuff is a few years old. XP doesn’t detect anything else either, so I’m guessing it might have something to do with money exchanging hands, or not exchanging hands in this case.
FreeBSD, on the other hand, detects most of my cards with the exception of my add-in IDE controller card, but then again nothing does. :
Generally I plan to have at least one computer running, so I can find drivers and fixes once whatever OS I’m installing is running. I also research ahead to see if I’ll need anything after it’s installed as well, so I generally know what I’m getting myself into.
In the dark old days of BBSs and 14.4 modems, hardware detection was a show stopper, but with drivers a quick click away on the Internet it really is a pointless stat now.
The author actually did mention precaching as something that Vista has over Ubuntu (though it is in fact possible to preload some applications in Linux). His reflexion was that the performance gain with Linux compensates for the lack of Readyboost.
Better hardware compatibility for Windows is a given (though with Vista that’s no longer quite as obvious), and the author did identify the laptop hardware that wasn’t working (camera and fingerprint reader). What more could you want?
As far as support goes, I disagree with you. With ubuntuguide.org and ubuntuforums.org, there is tons of support available. I’d say that, for non-paid support, Windows and Linux are on par.
It seems to me that you simply don’t like the review because it was favorable to Linux…well, the review *was* about putting Linux on that particular laptop. If you weren’t interested in hearing about how well Linux fared on it, why did you read it in the first place?
Let’s see:
– The battery life was better, despite some extra functionality on the Windows side which wasn’t done on the Ubuntu side
– The responsiveness was seen better in Ubuntu in a subjective matter – how could it be else? But what you seem to have missed is that the reviewer indeed used applications like OpenOffice on both platforms and concluded from that experience
– The reviewer writes two times about Ubuntu not being able to use the Webcam and the fingerprint detector. As he doesn’t intend to use both, I wouldn’t say thats marginalized
– The reviewer writes about “readyboost”; he explains it and concludes, that it didn’t give a better experience than plain Ubuntu. That’s a valid conclusion for the reviewer; the existence of this technique alone doesn’t necessarily lead to better results.
In my opinion, this was a fair review, and the reviewer didn’t abstain from pointing out that Ubuntu isn’t the right choice for a large userbase in great details – as part of the conclusion. But it is for him, him alone.
And if you missed it: He wrote two articles, one about the hardware and a follow-up about how well Ubuntu runs on it. I would bet the second one is mainly read by people who are interested in GNU/Linux anyways and want to know how well it runs. Most of them probably don’t want to know if Linux or Windows is the better OS as they can judge this themselves according to their needs!
Edited 2007-05-29 20:36
I know the author talked about pros on the cons. He has to, in order to give the appearance of a fair and balanced review. My point was that the cons were marginalised. Adding the obligatory “Linux is not for everyone” at the end is not enough.
My complaint however is that do we need another article stating that linux can run on laptops, and that a linux user likes linux better than vista. What I would like to see being discussed here is more extensive reviews. The author does not even clarify (if I can recall correctly), whether he ran vista with or without Aero turned on for his battery tests.
Well, as I said already, if you don’t want to know how Linux ran on that laptop, why did you bother reading the review (and taking the time to comment on it)?
This review is clearly not for you, but rather for people who want to know how well Ubuntu runs on that laptop model. I myself found it informative and well-written. Was it a little subjective? Of course it was: it’s a review, and all reviews are subjective.
I also disagree that the cons weren’t marginalized, they were well spelled out and there was no attempt to sugar-coat the hardware issues.
“more responsive (which I think is highly subjective). I would like to see benchmarks that backup his claim that Ubuntu is more responsive”
Since you agree that it is subject why the need to back it up with subjective testing?
“better hardware compatibility”
Depends on the hardware so this is rather subjective…
“precaching of software with readybost”
Whether this makes it faster than Ubuntu or not is rather subjective…
“better support”
Does it? Can your grandma call tech support and get useful support? Rather subjective…
“He may be right about everything he wrote but I as of right now it is just an opinion to me”
All reviews are opinions and all good reviews (and journalism in general) are subjective.
Edited 2007-05-30 03:33
Ubuntu 7.04 is really a great pice of software.
I had a party last weekend, the music came from my ubuntu 7.04 pc. It ran absolute perfectly.
…is better battery time on laptops. I know that ACPI is difficult. But applications also need to stop putting unnecessary load on the system when they´re idle. Especially now when the kernel can be tickless.
Though vista’s battery time isn’t great either of course.
Edited 2007-05-29 19:15
PowerTOP was only just released…a few months, and Linux will play much nicer in a low-power setting.
PowerTOP is just what was missing from the linux world (even from windows). I always wondered where did my power went. How could I have known that firefox prevent the kernel from sleeping (C3/C4) even if looking at a blank page?!
As you say, linux will really kick some but with powersaving in the next couple of month, thanx to powertop
I have a panasonic CF-R4 (10.6″ subnotebook, i915) and I also find that Ubuntu runs perfectly on it. (However I need to use the pcc_acpi module to get hotkeys to work)
I think you need to reread the article. I saw no real Vista bashing. He mentions negative and positive aspects of both OS’s.
I have to say I never read any bashing into the article. If you are going to compare two OS’s it is very difficult to do so if you can’t say what you like and dislike about each. You need to lighten up and not feel hurt every time someone writes about something they don’t like in Vista.
Personally, I enjoyed reading the artice and I hope the author writes more such pieces.
Good advice. Although, for me this has nothing to do with Vista or Ubuntu, but the review itself. I will let this go. 🙂
I am using Arch on my desktop and hardly change over to Windows, except when I want to play games or use Skype Video.
Skype is there for Linux, but Linux version does not have Video support. Also my webcam (Creative) does not have Linux drivers.
I am very happy with Arch, but I think that video chatting is becoming part of everyday life, specially with good broadband speeds of 40 Mbps and more.
Maybe big corporates like Canonical/Novell and Redhat should consider this as the next means to make life even smoother on Linux desktop.
There is this guy who has been writing linux webcam drivers that work with 200+ webcams. The news was on not that long ago. Here is the hero http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/sacre-bleu%21/linux+lovin-frenchman-…
i agree that the big wigs should put some manpower to integrating video into more apps.
Arch is damn good.Cant believe how good it is myself and learning how linux works too at the same time.Using Kdemod by the way and no more distro shopping for me.