Re: z50 for everyday life?

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> - How much extended battery life lasts?

I don't know.  The battery I use is one from some online shop (my
memory says batteryrefill.com, but I don't know how accurate that is).
It is physically the same form-factor as the battery I got it with, but
gives me some 6+ hours of battery life; the one I got it with gave me
only about two.

> - The z50 i'm going to buy has only got 16 megs ram, [...]

Mine had 48, but the 32M addon I was using broke.  (It was Kingston,
and I sent it back to them, but they said it was unrepairable.)  If you
find a reliable source for z50 RAM, I'd love to hear about it.

>   NetBSD 4.0 with Xhpc is usable?

No idea.  I've never even tried 4.0 on my z50; 4.0 has been problematic
enough to integrate into my local setup that 3.1 is the latest I run,
except for one 4.0 i386 machine which is my guinea pig for 4.0.

I've also never tried Xhpc; to the extent I've been working on X, I've
been looking at digging up enough info to build a ddx layer for the
(R6.4pl3) X I'm using on all my other machines.  (For a server, that
is.  Client-side X Just Works for me.)

> - I've searched for microdrives.  [...]

I have a Seagate "8GB" microdrive (actually more like 7.5G) which has
never given me any trouble.

> - I plan to use a 4 GB compact flash card.  Will it be supported by
>   the z50?

If my experience is any guide, it will be fine.  But I haven't tried
very many CF cards; I could have just been lucky.

> - I've read that serial cable and InfraRedport aren't currently
>   supported by NetBSD on the z50.  Is this true ?

In my experience, the serial port works but the infrared does not.  But
I haven't really put any effort into making the IR work.

> - I've read that the z50 has a 16 bit cardbus slot, and i can only
>   use 16 bit pcmcia cards.

I thought "16 bit cardbus" was a contradiction in terms; I thought 16
bit was PCMCIA and cardbus was 32 bit.  Perhaps I'm confused.

I do know that when I was looking for USB cards for my z50, I found a
number of cardbus cards which fit physically but were not even
recognized as present by the (3.1) kernel.

As for wireless, I've found some wireless cards which work, but I don't
know whether they're 11g or 11b or what.  I've never cared enough about
wireless to bother.

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