Re: [LAD] How well do thinkpad notebooks work for audio?

Hallo,
hollunder@email-addr-hidden hat gesagt: // hollunder@email-addr-hidden wrote:

> It feels like my several year old PC will crap out soon for one reason
> or another, so I need a replacement, better sooner than later.
> This time it should be a laptop and I heard that formerly IBM and now
> Lenovo thinkpads are of good build quality, even if they only come
> with intel CPUs and cost an arm and a leg.

The Thinkpads seem to have a pretty active net community doing sites like
www.thinkwiki.org, which are very helpful. There's nothing bad about Intel
CPUs, actually I consider them the best choice ATM for laptops, especially if
you get a device with an Intel gfx chip inside, they have excellent FLOSS
drivers. Personally I agree that Thinkpads are a bit overpriced, you can get
equivalent laptops cheaper from manufacturers like Acer or MSI, which are the
two companies I have first hand experience with: I have an MSI S260 which
currently gets replaced by an Acer Timeline 3810T. Both are well supported by
Linux. The new one requires bleeding edge software, i.e. Debian unstable in my
case. On the ACER, no interrupts are shared when AHCI is enabled, but I guess,
that's normal for AHCI:

$ cat /proc/interrupts
            CPU0
   0: 31601 IO-APIC-edge timer
   1: 7186 IO-APIC-edge i8042
   8: 99 IO-APIC-edge rtc0
   9: 13850 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi
  12: 25164 IO-APIC-edge i8042
  16: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb3, uhci_hcd:usb7
  18: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb8
  19: 24 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb6
  21: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb4
  22: 182 IO-APIC-fasteoi HDA Intel
  23: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb2, uhci_hcd:usb5
  26: 138998 PCI-MSI-edge i915
  27: 8011 PCI-MSI-edge ahci
  28: 61621 PCI-MSI-edge iwlagn
 NMI: 0 Non-maskable interrupts
 LOC: 15229 Local timer interrupts
 SPU: 0 Spurious interrupts
 RES: 0 Rescheduling interrupts
 CAL: 0 Function call interrupts
 TLB: 0 TLB shootdowns
 TRM: 0 Thermal event interrupts
 ERR: 0
 MIS: 0

I didn't yet do any hardcore audio tests on that laptop, it's running an
upstream large latency kernel. With laptops, I think, it's important to know
your ways of using it. For example, the Acer is not the fastest device around
(it's just a single Core CPU), but it's very light (1.65kg) and has an amazing
battery life (up to 8h with dimmed display), so it's great to take on the road
which is where I will be using it the most and where I can deal with a slower
CPU, but not with a huge and heavy monster. The other extreme would be a
netbook, but I prefer the 13" screen of the Acer - my eyes don't cope well with
10" screens, and Atoms just don't cut it in the long run for audio work. So to
me, the Timeline is a good compromise, but your compromise will probably look
different.

Ciao

-- 
Frank
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