I love my Vaio (PCG-N505VE). A year ago when I bought it, Debian slink did not have X support for the Neomagic, and I had to scrounge for the Aironet (wireless ethernet) support, but not a big deal. Potato has all that now. The tricky part was the install, because the Vaio has a USB floppy and a PCMCIA CD-ROM. I had a bit of trouble accessing the CD-ROM during the install.
I don't know why you want a big, honking screen and a built in DVD or floppy drive in something you want to carry around a lot. I have not used a floppy or CD-ROM since the first 24 hours I owned it (to wipe away Win98 and install Linux). I use ethernet to get whatever I need onto the machine. Also, the 10.4" screen is pretty nice, at 1024x768 resolution. Heck, it looks better than my Sun at work, with its 19" 1152x900 screen. And I carry it on my commute every day, a couple of miles of walking per day, with a big hill to go up on the way home. The sub three pound weight helps a lot there. The smaller, lighter Vaios are cheaper, too, less than two grand. On Nov 25, Jordan Evatt ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Hi guys. I've about had it with my Inspiron 3200 laptop; it's fixing to hit > the dust. Falling apart, literally. I'm looking into getting a new laptop > before I go to college, if I can raise the funds before that time comes > (next year). I've lately been interested in Sony's line of VAIO laptops. > Reason being, when I go to college, I want something that's extremely > portable - something that I can carry around campus easily in a backpack, > because I hate laptop cases. I need something that's powerful enough for > what I want it to do - in reality, the basics, and I like to play games like > Quake3 and Unreal as well. > > When I saw the newer Vaio's, the Superslim Pro models, I was intrigued, and > looked into them. I played around on sony's website for awhile with the > configuration stuff, and liked what I saw. They're not *that* expensive for > a laptop - around $3500 for almost top configuration, which is what I'll > probably be getting. My Inspiron was $3400, and the best of the best > component configurations at the time. That was over two years ago though :). > > Anyway, I obviously want to make sure the Vaios have good video graphics > capabilities and excellent linux support for all that is included with them. > The only personal drawbacks I have against the Vaio's (the superslim pro > model) is the fact that they don't have drive bays for dvd-rom/floppy drive, > and the fact that it only has a 12.1" screen. Mine has a 13.3" screen, good > grief. Does anyone have any good success stories installing/using linux > (debian specifically) on the Vaio's? Thanks. Oh, I'm on the list, so no need > to reply to me directly. > > - webfreak -- Neil L. Roeth neil-at-occamsrazor.net
