Can anyone recommend the best laptop to enjoy Haiku

1

I already got macbook pro second gen. But I likes Haiku a lot. I feel the picture and video qualities are more natural in Haiku. Can anyone recommend the best laptop to enjoy haiku’s multimedia features. I have got a home theatre with bose 5.1 and sony projector. I wish to have a laptop with hdmi output which is fully compatible with haiku. At least the external display, overlays video and 5.1 sound output through hdmi should work.

I am eyeing on Sony T-series 15" laptop. If you have any better suggestion, please suggest.

2

HDMI isn’t supported all that well in any case… you may not get native resolution for your display. I wouldn’t spend money expecting it to work… definitly only buy something if you can try it. In the store perhaps with a USB stick (ask if it is allowed) that still won’t tell you if HDMI works correctly at native resolution.

3

I think the only video cards that work with video out are some ATI cards (radeon?) - and I don’t know which ones. I also am also not sure if they work with HDMI or just VGA. Be sure to get a laptop with ATI graphics if you want any chance of this working.

If you want a laptop that generally just works, I’d go for an older thinkpad model. I bought a Thinkpad x61 specifically for the switch to haiku, and haven’t looked back. The video out doesn’t work (which is VGA, it doesn’t have HDMI), but it does have the right video resolution with the intel driver, battery monitoring works (mostly) and sound and wifi work out of the box. I’d still like to see support for the SD card slot and the VGA out, and better battery life, but it’s pretty close to fully supported. If you want something a bit bigger you can get a T61 or similar, about the same specs but larger. The best thing is, they’ll only set you back about £100 refurbished on ebay. Note that the newer thinkpad models are not as well supported, AFAIK, and if you want something newer I don’t know what to go for (my thinkpad is a little long in the tooth, but that doesn’t bother me much).

4

My Acer Aspire One works well with both the VGA and HDMI, but only one at a time. I can test later but I am sure HDMI was 1920*1080 on my flat screen TV.

But VGA only works to 12801024 most monitors, a number of them do do 16001200 but for some reason Haiku want to go 1920*1440 for the rest which none of the monitors want to display.

Lucky, one will show that resolution in a very smeared display which lets use preferences to change to something usable.

5

Which aspire one do you have? Some of them have radeon graphics, others intel. I’d be interested to know which you have working!?

6

D270-1044

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600 Series

The really weird thing is that my LCD reports it runs 12801024 but Windows refuses to set it to that resolution. It lets me use 1024600 only as my max. I can 800*600.

But in Haiku the base machine on boot only supports 640480, 800600 and a max of 1024600 like Windows, but if I plug in an external VGA monitor the display appears on both monitors and I can then set it to 12801024, unplug the external display and Haiku has no problem running the internal display at that resolution.

The only problem is if I reset the machine Haiku losses the higher resolution display. :frowning:

Sound needed opensound to be installed but works fine.

Oh yes, unlike my Toshiba NB305 the SD card slot is NOT seen as a USB device, thus it can’t be seen by Haiku for storage and/or booting.

The USB ports (3) work fine so if I need a SD Card directly I use a USB<=>SD Card adapter, mostly I use the SD Card with Windows to transfer pictures.

Note: The Toshiba costed me over $350 to buy, the Acer only costed $217 which is why I think the Toshiba is a better machine but this machine was a better buy to just play around on.

PS; If you want details on the Toshiba NB305 netbook I will post them, but presently it is an older model that stopped working after I going up North, I left it in the bottom of my canoe running, but it started to rain and I did not notice how much water was being collected. By the time I go to it it already stopped working (dripping wet), I tried to dry it out over the propane gas stove in cabin, got sidetracked and melted half the keyboard. Also damaged the charging circuit (don’t ask how). Of-course it did not work, so I disassembled the entire thing, did some clean up and re-wiring, converted it to a proto-tablet and got the monster to work for the next year or so. We will not talk about me breaking the screen on my next Toshiba laptop or closing the trunk of the car onto the keyboard of the presently working Acer netbook.

Maybe I should just buy the latest Toshiba netbook and see how well it works. All these Win8 machines are driving me crazy as I know many had the option to turn off secure boot without using Win8 but the sales people know next to nothing about the hardware they sell.

7

It’s really interesting to know that some intel chipsets work. Does it do just mirroring, or can you have two desktops? The x61 has an intel GM965 (somewhat older than the 3600 I guess) and last time I tried I couldn’t get any external graphics to work at all (although I’ll try it again when I get home). It would be nice if there was some definitive info on this somewhere.

8

These netbooks seem to be a little on the fragile side, given that they’re small enough to lug around everywhere. I had an Acer Aspire One (w/Windows 7) and it worked great for a while, until it got knocked around a little too hard. Now it can’t find the hard drive to boot off of it.

I figured out how to take it apart and get to the hard drive, but unplugging and plugging it back in didn’t resolve the issue.

But now I’m wondering if its bios supports booting from usb devices…I’ll have to check.

9

One: The BIOS does support boot off the USB.

Two: Read my last message again, notice how I never mention anything about data loss? That is because I always install a SSD in my computers. I never lose data from knocking the computer about.

Three: I wonder if you can find any laptop that can survive being forgotten in the rain while it is in the bottom of a canoe, or being roasted over a gas fire because I was to busy outside the cabin. These computers are not fragile, I am just hell on equipment. I did not mention the spilled acid, the high voltage discharge tests, the other chemical spills, the experimental rocket fuel and or fun stuff I do around my machines.

And lets not forget my habit of disassembling the computers to put in my own mods.

Any laptop that survives me for more than a year is not fragile!

10

Sorry, still wasn’t clear on whether the video out just allows you to do mirroring, or can you extend your desktop?

11

Both Toshibas netbook and laptop will allow extended desktops in Windows, neither in Haiku.

The Toshiba NB305 netbook did not mirror in Haiku, you choose the default output in the BIOS if an external monitor was plug in, if none were installed it would default the main screen.

The Acer will not do extended desktops with Windows on either the VGA or HDMI outputs.
Haiku always mirrors VGA for some reason but the laptop screen is unreadable in resolutions above 1280*1024. I thought it did not do this with an earlier version of Haiku, so I will have to run some tests when I get some time.

Oh yes, wireless did not work on the Toshiba laptop or the Acer, the Toshiba NB305 had the right wireless card, and I have been able to remove it from the NB305 and install it into the other computers where it works fine.

WARNING WARNING Taking apart the Acer with out breaking anything seem next to impossible, be very careful if you attempt this. Just upgrading memory was a royal pain compared to any of the other laptop I have owned.

12

Thanks all for your replies. Acer Aspire looks interesting. Does it play videos in overlay mode or bitmap?

Like I told I just need to use it for my home theatre. If only the external display works, I am fine. Don’t bother about the extended or mirror display.

Does anyone able to play 5.1 sound on any device? Please let us know.

I think for display the best bet would be Radeon HD 2350 - Radeon HD 3450. What is the best bet for the sound card, can anyone let me know please?

13

I have a Thinkpad X200 here and it works just as well as the older T60 and T61 series (including the SD card slot).

There is a trick if you want to use the VGA output, you have to switch it using the hotkeys (fn+f7) before haiku starts booting (it’s easier to do if you have a boot manager installed). On some machines you can get either the internal or the VGA display, and on some you can manage to get bot (in “clone” mode, no extended desktop).

I think you can safely go for something more modern. If you ever attend one of the Haiku conferences (such as BeGeistert) you will quickly notice almost all the developers are running Thinkpads.