After looking at some new laptops online in the $1100 range, I decided to drive down to Best Buy and get me a Lenovo V570. It seemed to have everything I needed for roughly half the price.

That was yesterday, and today I'm wondering if I should feel really stupid. The first thing I did was wipe out the OS with Slackware. Damn near nothing worked. Vertical scrolling with touchpad didn't work, which always did with my old Dell XPS. Wireless was disabled, and today I finally figured out which module to blacklist, so that's resolved.

I'm posting this from Xbuntu because I had the CD and it at least supports the touchpad drivers. But I don't want to stick with it because I like doing my own configuration. Canonical doesn't make that half as easy as Slackware does, and I don't feel like learning a whole new config structure.

The screen resolution maxes out at 1366 x 768, which will take some getting used to. I had 1600 x 1050 before, and I'm guessing this is a limitation of my screen rather than simply the graphics card.


Anyway..... does anyone know of a way to make touchpad scrolling work on this model?

This just sucks. Lesson learned on bargain PC's I guess.

Well holy shit! I actually figured it out.

Add xorg.conf.d directory to /etc/X11/
Add a file called 50-synaptics.conf and add this to it -

Hey there! We're in the exact same boat ( or almost! !)

Basically I had an xps m1730 dell laptop which died about a week ago leaving me with no computer at all... in need for a machine ASAP I drove to best buy and got a Toshiba L755d which I intend to return for either a replacement or refund .. it has ati radeon cards in it and I've come to realize that ati still has substandard performance under Linux .. its been like that forever so I've lost faith .....

The replacement laptop I have in mind is the Lenovo v570 so I'd like to hear what you have to say about this machine ... I will use slackware as well and im particularly worried about the performance of the Gt525M video card when playing bluray or 1080p content ..

What about the rest?

Can you share a review with me/us?

Thanks a lot!

Btw the maximum resolution of 1366x768 yes sucks especially when you had a machine outputting 1600x1200 or above. But its only the internal monitor, the external monitors should be at their native resolution while connected to the laptop dvi or HDMI ports....

Can you also confirm this machine support dual monitors? ?

I've got a z575, and yeah, the touchpad was tricky to configure. After I got that all sorted out however, it was smooth sailing from there on out. Dual monitors work with mine, I just plug it in to the hdmi plug. Mine has the ati radeon 6480, and thats fine for everything I've thrown at it, I even get decent frames in games like skyrim running on high graphics.

trademark91, what about 1080p playback with your HD 6480??? My experience has been very bad with ATI/AMD chipsets under Linux.. Maybe the general desktop experience is all right, but HD content doesnt play well. I get video/audio sync problems, videos are lagging, and I get all kind of visual problems like visual tearing etc...

When I built my HTPC, I first went for an HD 5450 but had too many problems with XBMC.. then I switched to a Geforce GT430, and it was day and night.. My previous machine also had a dual 8700M GT in SLI so Im pretty much sold to NVidia when it comes to GPU's, especially under Linux.

1080p is fine for me using mplayer.

The "HD" resolution of 1366x768 you get nowadays on 97% of all laptops is a nuisance. I had the same problem in finding a new laptop, and eventually settled for a VAIO which costed $995. I don't recall the type number (typing this on my old faithful Lenovo T61). The screen is alright, the fan is noisy, the webcam is totally non-sensitive, the keyboard feels like cardboard, the internal mic is useless due to the fan noise. That is a high price to pay for a 1600x1050 resolution.

BTW, the solution for touchpad scrolling is the correct way.

jlinkels

Yep... laptop manufacturers (like every other companies out there selling electronics these days) are exploiting the consumers selling unreliable junk for high prices, with stores that are also screwing up the end consumers.. The more I think about it, the more Im going to settle with a desktop, built with the parts I will chose, and screw the toshiba/dell/lenovo/sony laptops... All they want is money money money..

If these machines were at least reliable... But its not the case.