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

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
hollunder at gmx.at hat gesagt: // hollunder at gmx.at 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