RPJD> i'm looking at picking up a seriously fast notebook since i plan on
spending a lot of time a) compiling kernels, b) running JAVA, and c)
hosting numerous VMs at the same time.
Have you considered a Eurocom laptop w/ dual SSD? I know Eurocom boasts "desktop replacement" performance and the ability to run Linux. Can anyone please verify such a configuration (with Ubuntu)? I see they have 15" and 17" versions. But I've heard battery life may be lower on these large notebooks, is that true (the spec says 2 hours)? If so, to get the most life, some vendors offer dual batteries.
Likely you'll need a power outlet for lots of busy builds running, the idea of a notebook is more for portability rather than a backwoods compile session which would require an off-grid rig and/or alternator.
They come w/ ATI Radeon graphics and Intel i5 and i7 Arrandale 32nm or Clarksfield 45nm Processors.
up to 8GB of DDR3-1333.
Seems the larger unit isn't using the 32nm chips yet. What might also be nice is getting an LED backlit model versus LCD for power savings with such a large screen, but then does it matter as much with a large form factor model running many VMs?
I am not in the market for a Linux laptop myself, nor do I own stock in Eurocom, but I did think it useful to track specs and price points for comparison. Why buy an ASUS, if you can buy another local brand and configure to suit?
Nothing against ASUS or Apple, but I'd like to see if people get better performance out of a large form factor notebook.
Thanks,
Allan Fields
- Ottawa, ON
-----Original Message-----
From: linux-request [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca
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Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 12:00:02
To: <linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca>
Reply-To: linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca
Subject: Linux Digest, Vol 77, Issue 6
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Today's Topics:
1. any personal experience out there with hybrid SSD drives?
(Robert P. J. Day)
2. Re: any personal experience out there with hybrid SSD drives?
(Chris Mallam)
3. Re: any personal experience out there with hybrid SSD drives?
(R RENAUD)
4. Re: any personal experience out there with hybrid SSD drives?
(Prof. John C Nash)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 12:15:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday [ at ] crashcourse [ dot ] ca>
Subject: [OCLUG-Tech] any personal experience out there with hybrid
SSD drives?
To: Ottawa Linux Users Group <linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca>
Message-ID:
<alpine.DEB.2.00.1105051212130.3851@localhost6.localdomain6>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
i'm looking at picking up a seriously fast notebook since i plan on
spending a lot of time a) compiling kernels, b) running JAVA, and c)
hosting numerous VMs at the same time. so i was ogling one of these:
http://pccyber.com/?v=Product&i=NB-AS-G73SW-A1
first, yes, it's an nvidia chipset but i'm tired of fighting that
battle. if it works and supports the latest ubuntu, i'm good with
that.
but i'm intrigued that this system comes with dual hybrid SSD
drives. anyone out there using these kinds of drives? can you
testify to noticeably better performance?
in any event, is there anything about that system that would scare
me off? other than the price?
rday
--
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 12:36:59 -0400
From: Chris Mallam <chris [ dot ] mallam [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com>
Subject: Re: [OCLUG-Tech] any personal experience out there with
hybrid SSD drives?
To: linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca
Message-ID: <4DC2D22B [ dot ] 5080101 [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 11-05-05 12:15 PM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> i'm looking at picking up a seriously fast notebook since i plan on
> spending a lot of time a) compiling kernels, b) running JAVA, and c)
> hosting numerous VMs at the same time. so i was ogling one of these:
>
> http://pccyber.com/?v=Product&i=NB-AS-G73SW-A1
>
> first, yes, it's an nvidia chipset but i'm tired of fighting that
> battle. if it works and supports the latest ubuntu, i'm good with
> that.
>
> but i'm intrigued that this system comes with dual hybrid SSD
> drives. anyone out there using these kinds of drives? can you
> testify to noticeably better performance?
>
> in any event, is there anything about that system that would scare
> me off? other than the price?
>
> rday
>
it doesn't appear from the specs that it has an Optimus graphic
solution, that is, an intel integrated graphic chip, plus a discrete
nVidia which switches seamlessly under windows, but has no driver for
Linux. If it does have Optimus, you will be in for a world of hurt. i
put a Seagate Momentus XT 500G harddrive in my N53JF, which has an
integrated 4G SSD and have had no problems with it. Looks good to me,
guess you can retire your barbells ;-)
--
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 10:22:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: R RENAUD <rjrenaud [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com>
Subject: Re: [OCLUG-Tech] any personal experience out there with
hybrid SSD drives?
To: Ottawa Linux Users Group <linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca>, "Robert P. J.
Day" <rpjday [ at ] crashcourse [ dot ] ca>
Message-ID: <934500 [ dot ] 79512 [ dot ] qm [ at ] web88302 [ dot ] mail [ dot ] re4 [ dot ] yahoo [ dot ] com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
--- On Thu, 5/5/11, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday [ at ] crashcourse [ dot ] ca> wrote:
| I'm looking at picking up a seriously fast notebook
...
| but i'm intrigued that this system comes with dual hybrid SSD
| drives.? anyone out there using these kinds of drives?? can you
| testify to noticeably better performance?
...
In December I bought the Crucial RealSSD from shopRBC.com.
Yes, the machines are noticably faster.
I've since bought 1 for a different laptop and 1 for my Intel Core I5 desktop.
Also, the SSD takes less power so the computer fan is usually off or
running very slowly. Very nice when just reading web pages.
My notes:
- Installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) desktop on ThinkPad T500.
- testing SSD
Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB 2.5 inch SATA 6GBs Solid State Drive - $128.
Firmware rev 0002 S/N 103802FD810F Rated at 5V 2.0 Amps
- summary: Crucial RealSSD is 5 times faster on read and 20% faster
on write than WD Scorpio Black 320GB.
I used "hdparm -t /dev/sda" on both drives for the read speed test.
Offhand, I don't recall what I used to test writes.
Here's some things I did to reduce SSD wear but don't know how much it matters.
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008/11/overview-of-ramfs-and-tmpfs-on-linux/
Overview of RAMFS and TMPFS on Linux - Ramesh Natarajan Nov 6, 2008
The notes in the "Tweaks" article below don't show how to set the
ramdisk size.
Added to /etc/fstab
# use ramdisk for /tmp to reduce writes to SSD
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,size=200M,mode=1777 0 0
cd /tmp; rm -rf *; reboot
Rrjrlap3% df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 9.2G 1.3G 7.6G 14% /
tmpfs 200M 12K 200M 1% /tmp
/dev/sda6 19G 5.9G 12G 34% /usr
/dev/sda7 28G 6.4G 20G 25% /u1
- Put Firefox cache in ram.
Open about:config in Firefox. Right click in an open
area and create a new string value called
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory. Set the value to /tmp.
Files ended up in /tmp/Cache owned by roland.
Back this up before hibernate?
roland
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 14:23:35 -0400
From: "Prof. John C Nash" <nashjc [ at ] uottawa [ dot ] ca>
Subject: Re: [OCLUG-Tech] any personal experience out there with
hybrid SSD drives?
To: R RENAUD <rjrenaud [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com>
Cc: Ottawa Linux Users Group <linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca>
Message-ID: <4DC2EB27 [ dot ] 8020206 [ at ] uottawa [ dot ] ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
This might be exactly the type of topic for a meeting where we try to interest people from
"business".
JN
On 05/05/2011 01:22 PM, R RENAUD wrote:
> --- On Thu, 5/5/11, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday [ at ] crashcourse [ dot ] ca> wrote:
> | I'm looking at picking up a seriously fast notebook
> ...
> | but i'm intrigued that this system comes with dual hybrid SSD
> | drives. anyone out there using these kinds of drives? can you
> | testify to noticeably better performance?
> ...
>
> In December I bought the Crucial RealSSD from shopRBC.com.
> Yes, the machines are noticably faster.
> I've since bought 1 for a different laptop and 1 for my Intel Core I5 desktop.
>
> Also, the SSD takes less power so the computer fan is usually off or
> running very slowly. Very nice when just reading web pages.
>
> My notes:
> - Installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) desktop on ThinkPad T500.
> - testing SSD
> Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB 2.5 inch SATA 6GBs Solid State Drive - $128.
> Firmware rev 0002 S/N 103802FD810F Rated at 5V 2.0 Amps
>
> - summary: Crucial RealSSD is 5 times faster on read and 20% faster
> on write than WD Scorpio Black 320GB.
> I used "hdparm -t /dev/sda" on both drives for the read speed test.
> Offhand, I don't recall what I used to test writes.
>
> Here's some things I did to reduce SSD wear but don't know how much it matters.
>
> http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008/11/overview-of-ramfs-and-tmpfs-on-linux/
> Overview of RAMFS and TMPFS on Linux - Ramesh Natarajan Nov 6, 2008
> The notes in the "Tweaks" article below don't show how to set the
> ramdisk size.
>
> Added to /etc/fstab
> # use ramdisk for /tmp to reduce writes to SSD
> tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,size=200M,mode=1777 0 0
>
> cd /tmp; rm -rf *; reboot
>
> Rrjrlap3% df -h
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda1 9.2G 1.3G 7.6G 14% /
> tmpfs 200M 12K 200M 1% /tmp
> /dev/sda6 19G 5.9G 12G 34% /usr
> /dev/sda7 28G 6.4G 20G 25% /u1
>
> - Put Firefox cache in ram.
> Open about:config in Firefox. Right click in an open
> area and create a new string value called
> browser.cache.disk.parent_directory. Set the value to /tmp.
> Files ended up in /tmp/Cache owned by roland.
> Back this up before hibernate?
>
> roland
>
> _______________________________________________
> Linux mailing list
> Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca
> http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux
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