On Monday 23 May 2005 2:42 am, Ronald Wiplinger wrote:
I want to use a notebook computer with Windows XP and Linux. I need Windows for Office (including Visio) and Project, while I need for developing and connection to otherLinux systems. What is the best setup for that? Dualboot and vmware?
What should I take care when I purchase the notebook?
I had very similar needs as you. I have found that vmware is not a very good solution for a notebook. I used it for a few months and then stopped using it. While vmware is taxing on memory and CPU, that problem can be solved by buying more memory and/or buying hyper-threaded/dual-core (when they will be available) CPUs. The reason why I stopped using it were many-fold: 1. Suspend-resume is very painfully slow. If you are a road-warrior, then vmware's suspend/resume will make the notebook suspend/resume very slow. This is because you have to suspend the virtual machine before you suspend the physical one and then resume the virtual machine after you resume the physical one. I have found that this takes anywhere from 2 to 3 minutes depending on the size of RAM allocated to virtual machine and the speed of your machine. 2. Clock problems while running on batteries. If I start vmware when my notebook is connected to power supply and then remove the power supply; the CPU frequency drops (as it should). This confuses the virtual machine's clock run really fastl. Unfortunately, there is no fix for this. 3. X memory blow up. I found that X was constantly using more and more memory and became unusable after a few days. I had to restart my X server every 2-3 days. I am using X.org 6.8.2. Once I stopped using Vmware; I have had no problems with X memory blow up. To vmware's credit, it does work well if you are just plugging in your laptop into power supply and do not have to ever suspend/resume your machine. Regarding which laptop to purchase, I would recommend IBM T series laptop (T42, T43 etc.) whole-heartedly. -- Osho