Okay, it’s almost Xmas time and I need a new toy. 
I’m expecting to do some Haiku development, but I will also likely be booting to Zeta, BeOS, XP and PC-BSD as well. I’m not too worried about drivers for XP and PC-BSD, so which laptops/notebooks are providing the most compatible hardware (video/audio/network/wireless) for Haiku/Zeta/BeOS and are still available as new products?
Thanks in advance,
Eric
so which laptops/notebooks are providing the most compatible hardware (video/audio/network/wireless) for Haiku/Zeta/BeOS and are still available as new products?
You can check here for a list of supported chipsets for Haiku:
http://haiku-os.org/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility_list
I’m not sure how complete it is still.
For BeOS you can also check here:
This includes a hardware matrix of BeOS drivers (should be applicable to Zeta) and 3rd party drivers (available on bebits, etc.)
I would definitely check the drivers on bebits - if they are "Source Available" and there’s actually a downloadable file - you can figure they’ll eventually be ported to Haiku.
yellowTab still has their hardware compatibility database online for Zeta. I suspect it’s a bit out of date also, and was mostly a community-effort in the first place. You can consult there to see what you can find for Zeta:
Yeah, I’ve been trying to do the chipset-comparison-thing, but most mfrs are rather skimpy on specs which usually sends me digging through driver downloads. This fails at least half the time as many of the driver installers shotgun for several chipsets.
I was hoping some user experiences might cut through the exhaustive comparing…
Eric
I don’t understand how you fail to mention the BeOS Laptop Page! 
Theres a lot of good user experiences there. My laptop, Dell Latitude D600, works very well with BeOS (except ACPI), as well with Haiku.[/url]
I don't understand how you fail to mention the BeOS Laptop Page! :)
LOL, honestly I hate laptops 
So I really don’t buy them myself 