Registered: Jun 2008
Posts: 173
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Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: $600.00 | Rating: 5
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Kernel (uname -r):
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Linux-2.6.26.5
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Distribution:
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SlamD64 12.1 (Slackware 12.1 for 64 bit)
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Before I start, this review is for the 5520-5912, which is NOT the same product as the above. I bought this at Wal-Mart on sale for $600 this last Christmas (Dec'07). I believe it has been discontinued. Specs are:
AMD TurionX2 TL-58 @ 1.9 GHz tops (lowest step 800 MHz)
2 GB DDR2-5300, max possible 4 GB
NVIDIA IGP consisting of GeForce 7100M and nForce 610M, Intel HDA clone sound, and gigabit ethernet
160 GB SATA 5400 RPM drive
PATA CD/DVD burner (all standards including DVD-RAM)
Acer (actually SuYin) CrystalEye Web Cam (internal USB)
Firewire, 4 USB ports, S-Video port, multimedia card port (SD, etc)
ALPS Glidepoint pad
15.4" 1280X800 (16X10 aspect ratio) display
Atheros 802.11b/g
I think that covers it.
Installing Slackware and SlamD64 was easy, but I was never able to get Ubuntu to work (mainly due to being locked out of root). Works mostly ok after all this time, though I continue to have problems with ACPI (big surprise) and the web cam (but I haven't put much effort into it). I also tried installing FreeBSD, but it wouldn't even boot the CD (crashed in the bootloader--probably the ACPI again).
Here is a list of hardware and the required drivers:
1. The hard drive is SATA while the CD/DVD is PATA: the nForce 610M is AHCI on the SATA side, while the PATA side uses the "AMD/NVIDIA" driver. I have learned the hard way that, unless you want to access your DVD as a SCSI device, use the SATA/SCSI driver only for SATA and continue to use the old IDE driver for the PATA side--they live nicely with each other.
2. The GeForce 7100M isn't supported by the open source "nv" driver AFAIK. I'm using NVIDIA's proprietary Linux driver (64 bit version) with no problem at all. This is one of 2 (semi-)proprietary drivers you're forced to use (for now, anyway).
3. 802.11b/g: This is an Atheros AR5BXB63 AKA AR5007EG AKA AR2425. It has been supported for a while in the testing part of the 32 bit version of the MadWiFi driver, but has been available in 64 bit only since Sam Leffler released a new HAL in late May. You want to get the "0.10.5.6" (or newer, when it becomes available) HAL branch of MadWiFi. This is the other (semi-)proprietary driver you'll need, as the HAL is closed-source--still better than before when you needed a winblows driver with ndiswrapper, though! Note that both the NVIDIA and this driver will REQUIRE a kernel reconfig and compile, as they lie outside the kernel source tree (though there's a way around that).
4. Web Cam: this is supported in the UVC drivers, which, as of 2.6.25, is in the kernel mainline. For most distros as of this writing, that means having to d/l and compile a new kernel (or at least a new module); otherwise, you'll have to download the code external to the kernel source from the UVC driver site for earlier kernels. I haven't been able to get it working yet, but I haven't exactly been trying that hard, either--but it's recognized by the driver in any case. Note that this is internally connected to one of the 2 internal USB hubs.
5. All those non-USB ports: the Firewire, SD/MMC, etc are all controlled by a Ricoh multimedia controller, and it's fully supported in recent kernels. I haven't tested it (I don't own any of these things) but there's no reason to doubt it as the driver recognizes everything.
6. S-Video port: untested as of yet, so I don't know if the kernel or the NVIDIA driver directly drives it.
7. Touchpad: I hate touchpads as a rule, and this thing is a headache even for them! Unlike reported above, this pad, using just the psmouse driver, seems to understand all those "zones" touchpads are supposed to have; unlike the winblows driver, however, I have yet to figure out how to turn them off! This gets particularly annoying when you're typing and the pad "accidentally" interprets a click!
8. A word on the memory: as I understand it, the memory is physically unable to be expanded past 4 GB. I doubt this will be a problem unless you're doing heavy graphics, though. (And if so, why would you want an IGP?!?) And unlike the Vista that came with it, Linux runs with a large memory surplus in the 2 GB that it came with.
9. ACPI: not as bad as it could be, I suppose. All the CPU governors work fine: I'm using "conservative" as the default, per instructions in the kernel "Documentation" directory about AMD processors not liking the "on-demand" governor (but is this still true?) and manually switching to "performance" when needed (such as with gaming or compilation). The system boots and shuts down fine, though, as I said above, it doesn't like the FreeBSD bootloader. However, the IGP/GPU won't go into power save mode, leading to symptoms at idle of a cool CPU but hot IGP. (The IGP is cooled by a heat pipe leading to the CPU and its fan, BTW.) I haven't installed all the power saving code out there, so I don't have hard drive spindown and such enabled yet, but that's not ACPI specific anyway. OTOH, suspending to RAM seems very unstable: video only comes back while X is running (and therefore under control of the NVIDIA driver) and after being suspended for a while the machine seems to crash when trying to bring it back (or just shut down, requiring a cold boot). I have not installed the code for suspend to disk yet, so that remains untested. One problem particular to my setup: Slackware was never really designed for laptops, so I'm having to download and install quite a bit of additional software.
10. Sound: I forgot this when I wrote this all the first time. The sound driver is built into the IGP. Assuming you haven't built ALL the ALSA drivers, or are building from source, you want to enable the Intel HDA driver (*NOT* the AC'97 driver!), and, in the sub-list, enable the "Realtek" driver. One problem: the ALSA driver apparently doesn't know about the "volume knob" on the left side of the laptop, so you have to control the sound by firing up "alsamixer" or similar.
11. Wired ethernet: Use the "forcedeth" driver in the 10/100b-T directory. Even though this is a gigabit device there's no difference as far as the driver is concerned.
12. Miscellaneous: There are at least a couple of reasons why I only rate this laptop a "5". First, the quality of the hardware build is only so-so: it's mostly made of cheap plastic and seems to flex more than it should. This gets very irritating when playing sound and one speaker and the 4-way button under the touchpad start vibrating. Also, the charger/wall supply is way undersized for this laptop: if all you do is office stuff, you'll be fine, but if you game and push the system to its limits, that little box will get too hot to touch! Apparently it must melt some of the plastic inside because if you do this for a while, it'll start making noise (i.e., you can hear the switching power supply inside). I already replaced it once, but the new one started doing it as well after gaming a whole day (Urban Terror and other Quake-3 based games work great on this laptop, but newer games won't).
And, of course, there's the winblows tax...
Bottom line: if you don't mind paying the winblows tax, or you get this used, it's not a bad laptop. The game Urban Terror *ROCKS* on this laptop with a 64 bit build and SlamD64 (in fact, native 64 bit apps seem to run faster than 32 bit ones). OTOH, 32 bit Flash via nswrapper is a dog under 64 bit Firefox (more of a dog than normal, that is), so YMMV.
Mike
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