What's your Dell notebook again?

Post #15,990 by Another Scott 10/31/01 11:35:20 PM Reply	What's your Dell notebook again? Hi Doug, My boss is still considering his notebook options, and I've been toying with the idea of getting one, probably after Christmas at the earliest. I think it would be great to get a new 667 MHz G4 PowerBook, but can't see spending nearly $3k for one. OS-X + VPC + Win2K + Linux all on one 5 pound box.... :-) Of course, VPC for OS/2 is due to come out early next year, so a PC laptop would be necessary for that. Decisions, decisions. :-) Anyway, what's your Dell laptop again? I assume VPC runs better if it has more RAM and that in order of importance: 1) RAM, 2) CPU, 3) Hard disk. Is that reasonable? If you had $1500 - $2000 or so to spend on a new laptop for VPC for Win2K and Linux, how would you partition the money between RAM, CPU and HD? Thanks for your thoughts. It's someone sharing experiences like this that keeps computing interesting for me. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #16,003 by dmarker2 11/1/01 1:39:56 AM Reply	Re: What's your Dell notebook again? My current config is DELL Latitude 800/700 mhz with 12GB disk & 256MB Ram. I can add 256MB Ram and would prefer a 20GB hard drive. Win2000 Professional. I have a 20GB 2.5 USB attached IBM disk but it is quite a bit slower. I tried running my Mandrake VPC off that disk but was too slow & got annoying - it is good for archieving but I plan to swap it with the 12GB in my DELL. If I could I would like a 1.5 Ghz P4 & min 20GB drive & at least .5 GB Ram, but thus far the DELL as is has delivered & I can still go to the bigger disk & add 256 MB RAM. I don't know when P4 notebooks of that speed will appear. My screen is 1024 x 768 TFT & Connectix supports right up to that. I have a spare 128MB Notebook RAM chip at home & may add that to see if it makes a diff. Connectix say that due to a bug in Win2K, only half the memory gets made available to Connectix - they recommend SP2 to solve this but I am not sure it has. I am sure the multi VPC performance would jump markedly with more RAM. Cheers Doug
Post #16,012 by dmarker2 11/1/01 3:25:12 AM Reply	Re: Hmmm - turns out my DELL Latitude already has a 20GB hard disk. Some how it escaped me - must have been thinking of the model I had before this one. I was about to migrate to the 20GB disk I plug in with its USB connector but when I took a closer look at my existing hard disk discovered I had 4 partitions of 3.5, 3, 3, 8 Createing fixed size disks for Linux VPCs chews up the space very quickly !!!! Cheers Doug
Post #16,111 by dmarker2 11/1/01 6:27:43 PM Reply	Re: One more fantastic feature of VPC - print port dongle I have some software (Micro Focus Cobol) that only runs when I plug a security key into the printer port. It is legacy stuff but I need it to support a couple of customers. In the past few months I have found that the last computer I have that runs it is a WinNT system. I keep it just for 2 customers - complete server just to compile MF Cobol programs. Well today I installed an NT VPC under Win2K & attached the printer port - installed the needed Rainport driver on the NT VPC and hey presto - the dongle works. Boy am I relieved - now I can copy this VPC to my note book & support Cobol compiles under a VPC. Most impressed with Connectix. Cheers Doug PS PS/2 VPC has been released.
Post #16,113 by Another Scott 11/1/01 6:56:26 PM Reply	Neat. Thanks very much for the details. PS PS/2 VPC has been released. VPC for the PlayStation 2 has been released? ;-) I assume you meant to type OS/2. It's been announced and demoed, e.g. [link\|http://www.os2ezine.com/20011016/page_1.html\|this] article from OS/2 eZine, but it's not due out until next year. Cheers, Scott.
Post #16,157 by dmarker2 11/2/01 3:53:12 AM Reply	Re: Nuther great VPC feat - window & full screen toggle You can for example have your host monitor at say 1024 x 768 and can set the virtual monitor to the same size, but it adds a border with some control info thus you have to scroll left & right for the tiny bit missing - could drive you nuts if it weren't for a great feture that allows you to toggle from this control mode (with the need to scroll) to a full screen mode that removes the extra control border the VPC adds. What is more intriguing is that if you set your host to say 1024 x 768 & your virtual window to 800 x 600, when you toggle to full screen mode, it goes to 1024 x 768 but the contents are at 800 x 600. There are times when that is very useful (such as wanting to switch between many windows & not wanting the VPC to always be at full screen). This is a very well thought out bit of software. Cheers Doug

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