[KLUG Members] Re: Just say NO to the new Toshiba laptop.

[Bryan J. Smith]

Bruce Smith wrote:
> My employer recently bought a new Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 laptop
> with the hopes of running Linux on it.  Before the purchase I did a
> little research (too little), I learned the NVidia video chipset was
> supported, so we bought it.

I have a Satellite with the same logic, the 2805-S402 (the first
model produced -- a bit larger, long story).

> This laptop is unlike any laptop I've ever seen before.  It's is one of
> the NEW "legacy free" laptops.  What does that mean?  Well it's free of
> all legacy devices (M$-XP thing ya know).  There is NO serial ports,

Yeah, that's a bitch even on the 2805/3005, especially when I can
use my Kyrocera SmartPhone as an external, generic 14.4Kbaud modem. 
I've got SmartCard, Firewire and everything else, but no serial!!! 
Geez!

> NO parallel port,

Ouch!  Did the 3005 series have this too (I thought so)?  My 2805
has them at least.

[ For those that don't know, the P3/nVidia mainboard is in select
Sattellite 2805, 3005 and 5005 systems ]

> NO PS/2 ports,

Ouch!  My 2805 has one.

> NO floppy drive,

Can't you swap the DVD out for it?

> NO APM, and best of all:  THERE IS NO USER INTERFACE TO THE BIOS.

There are Toshiba utilities to deal with this, at least on the
2805/3005.  But I still left my original ME partition (XP Home Ed
now on newer sales) "just in case".

> Which means you cannot change the "PnP OS" setting, because it doesn't
> exist!  That means EVERY DEVICE is PnP and must be assigned a IRQ by
> the operating system.

Yeah, that can get nasty.  But I haven't had problems with newer
kernels though -- even though a lot of IRQ sharing is going on.

> After a lot of fighting trying to make Linux work on this thing, I got
> Linux to assign IRQ's to some devices, but even then, it was flaky.  I
> would get random crashes upon bootup, and X would _randomly_ screw up
> the screen to something unreadable requiring a reboot, other times X
> would work fine.  And even the keyboard wouldn't work right in X.

Did you read the nVidia driver docs on the "module.conf" settings
required for Toshiba Sattellites???  Or are you not using the nVidia
closed-source drivers???  If not, I highly recommend you do!

> Fair warning, this is being pushed hard by M$ so hardware vendors can
> build a "XP certified PC", and until Linux support improves, beware of
> new PC hardware configurations!!!

Yeah.  I personally _hate_ USB (long story).  Much better serial
standards out there that could have been used.  Even 10-year old
DECstations had a better one.

> OTOH, if you want to run _only_ XP, this is probably a very nice PC.
> I'm not sure if you can even install older versions of windows on it.

ME on it was a piece of shit though.  I sure wish I would have
waited a few months before I bought my 2805-S402.  Would have saved
$500 (I bought mine for $2,199, and that was on-sale!), and gotten
XP.  Oh well, I run Linux anyway -- including lots of games.  I
mean, there's nothing like being at an Install/Hackfest playing UT,
Q3 and other games under Linux with this thing, and it looks better
and runs faster than half the desktops running Winodws!

> Also, I could find NOTHING about this new "legacy free" crap on
> toshiba.com, and the only way to learn this is from their tech support,
> and that's only IF you can get to the right tech support person.

Thanx, it's good to know this.  My 2805 has legacy, and I think the
3005 does as well.  The 3005 and 5005 are the same form-factor, so
maybe not.  The 2805 is larger, but has all drives internal, but not
all 2805's are the same (most don't have the nVidia option).

> There is a lot of talk about this PC on Google Groups, and there are a
> lot of unhappy Linux users.

Ouch.  Well, I've seen people complain about the 2805 series too. 
But I just got the nVidia drivers and the GPL Toshiba utilities and
90% of my issues were non-issues.

I guess the 5005 is different thanx to the legacy free crap?

I have a legacy-free Celey that runs Linux great, but that's a
desktop.

> Needless to say, this laptop was returned and something else ordered.

Eck.  Well, what was the restocking fee?

-- Bryan

-- 
Bryan J. Smith, Engineer        mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org   
AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.     http://www.linux-wlan.org
SmithConcepts, Inc.          http://www.SmithConcepts.com
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