Best Laptops With Full Hardware Support and Acceleration

[mschilling]

One thing I noticed about the MX8738 is that it looks to have a miniPCI card for wifi. Good news it's a Realtek, and removeable too so you can change it out for something else in the future. AFAIK the Acer has the wifi card built in so you can't change it. You need to use an external card for wifi.

[rschultz101]

best laptop 100% compatible,

...........................................................no such thing,...

unless it's and apple,....

 

most do work, but serious stipulations,....

 

1 core 2 duo , start with that

2 gma950 , maybe X3100 in leo,

some still need a vga dongle,...

and external needs to work

3 wifi , 802.11n , to be on the same level,...

and that means, stock cards without bios hack,

since HP,lenovo, etc, don't allow third party wifi cards,...argh

and without breaking the sound aka enabler

4 booth cores cpus=2 , what's the point these days to run on one ?

5 speedstep/throttle, it's a laptop, this needs to work.

if it runs full speed it will suck down the joice and be noisy too

6 battery meter,

7 sleep/ wake, it's important

8 fan control , so far it's not been working on any I know of

9 touchpad, double-click, and slide,

so far slide has not been working

10 lcd screen dimming, some or most are working with the control keys

11 sound, that's a big sore spot, including , headphone out, mic in, and volume control

most of them don't make it

12 sata disc support, most still need ahci mode ,..

13 update,..... don't use it,...!! hope this be fixed with the efi patch,...

14 express slot, pcmcia slot,.... well laptops only upgrade possibility,

this needs to work too,...

15 firewire port,... it's a mac thing, without it, it's not there,...

16 webcam, seen the ads,... still not working

17 bluetooth, mine is'nt working

18 apple logo, remove all the windows/intel stickers, and put a big apple in the back,

and a small one on the key,.... still fugly

20 dvd writer, slot loading, with lightscribe,.... where ?

21 slim style,.... most , fugly, thick, etc,....

 

ok,ok, so what did I have, close enough,....

- dell 6000 , with 10.4.5 ,...even sleep/wake,

- lenovo R60 , no sound, no sleep, no firewire,....etc.

 

think we'd need a list, aka spreadsheet, with all items checked ,

and forum threads are not the way to do it, maybe some sort of voting/buttons in a database,....

[00diabolic]

The Gateway MX-8738 seems to be the best of the bunch from what I have found & people here have tested it. Specs are high but not core 2 Duo. I cant seem to find anyone else who has gotten a core 2 Duo to work with Leopard. If they have there not posting here.

 

I'm not looking for 100% compatability but as close as I can would be great. I plan to dual book with Windows Xp so Ill always have that to fall back to.

 

The Aspire 5570 Synaesthesia mentions this one but gives no details on how and what works well on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16834115395

 

 

This Fujitsu Has Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel GMA X3100 & Atheros SuperAG wireless

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16834110294

 

Seems perfect. So has anyone tried this one?

 

1. Intel Core 2 Duo - Both cores should work with this one,

speedstep/throttle may work also

2. Intel GMA X3100

3. Atheros SuperAG wireless

4. battery meter Unsure if it would on this fujitsu

5. sleep/ wake unsure but I dont ever but my laptop to sleep just turn the monitor off and if speedstep worked I'd be set there.

6.fan control , Why is that important besides noise and wont throttle handle that?

7. touchpad, double-click, and slide -not sure

8. lcd screen dimming, Need this for sure

9. sound, including, headphone out, mic in, and volume control Not sure

10. sata disc support, NEED but dont know about this

11. express slot, pcmcia slot,.... Would need this

12. firewire port,...Need this

13. webcam, would be NICE

14. bluetooth, would be nice

15. DVD writer, I just want it to work

 

If anyone can test the above Fujitsu and provide feedback on the above things that would be great.

 

THANKS ALL

[mschilling]

How much is that Fujitsu?

[00diabolic]

$779.99 at newegg. I provided the Link right there LOL..

 

Does anyone have a laptop that they have tested on leopard that matches better the Fujitsu or gateway?

 

Since the gateway is tested I feel better taking my chances there. However the Fujitsu's wifi is interesting. Thats the same as the macbooks.

[skyos]

i have a aspire 9420 with tri boot leo TOH ,tiger -kaly 10.4.10 and mandriva 2008

on tiger almost all hardware is functional (except card reader,pcmcia and wifi do to iwi wich is

not full developed yet )

on leo i have one core funtional (speedstep give me panic on kernel )wifi still doesn't working

and neather sleep

waiting for iatkos uphuck to see the difference when it release

i have change my HDD and i put a seagate instead of a hitachi ,i like more but i want to try a 7200 rpm drive to see a smoother boot

[00diabolic]

i have a aspire 9420 with tri boot leo TOH ,tiger -kaly 10.4.10 and mandriva 2008

on tiger almost all hardware is functional (except card reader,pcmcia and wifi do to iwi wich is

not full developed yet )

on leo i have one core funtional (speedstep give me panic on kernel )wifi still doesn't working

and neather sleep

waiting for iatkos uphuck to see the difference when it release

i have change my HDD and i put a seagate instead of a hitachi ,i like more but i want to try a 7200 rpm drive to see a smoother boot

 

Sounds good skyos.. Problem is pcmica. I really want that and it seems to be the hardest thing to get working. Wifi would be another one high on my list and definately both cores. If I get addicted to OSX I know ill want both cores cranking.

 

Anyone else?

[BuXb]

It seems in Europe there are no Gateway 17"s ..

 

Does anybody have a 17" Gateway (with X installed)?

[Azurael]

My Lenovo 3000 N200 has perfect OS X support following a swap of the wireless card for a Dell 1505 (no BIOS lock, unlike the thinkpad - w00t) bar that annoying ALC862 sound codec (which I'm sure will get fixed in time, probably by me if I get fed up enough with it, but I'm lazy )

 

It's a good alternative for somebody looking for a cheap-ish machine, but who want something more solid than the average Acer (it has the built in screen 'rollcage' from the later Thinkpads, for example)

 

I guess the V200 would work just as well, since it has identical hardware, for somebody wanting a smaller machine (like me But I didn't have the money when I bought my current laptop.)

[mschilling]

Bugs, I'll let you know how it goes on my new 8738 hopefully this weekend. I have a copy of uphuck 1.4i to try.

[00diabolic]

Well I ended up getting a black friday deal from staples. To much to pass up really at $350.00. Here it is

 

Complete C717NR Specs:

Display: 15.4″ WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)

Processor: Intel Core Duo T2310, (1.46 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)

Chipset: Santa Rosa platform intel 965

Memory: 1GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)

Hard Drive: 80GB 5400RPM

Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 *Should be no problem

Wireless: 802.11b/g WLAN *Its a Broadcom YES bcm43xx

Optical Drive: SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support *Optiarc burner

Sound: Conexant High Def audio codec model CX20549 NOT SURE ABOUT THIS.. Anyone get it working????

Alps pointing device

Ports: 3x USB 2.0, VGA, mic-in, headphone-out, S-Video, LAN, modem

Weight: 6.3 pounds

Dimensions: 14.1 (L) x 10.11 (W) x 1.29 (min H)/1.58″ (max H)

[BuXb]

Bugs, I'll let you know how it goes on my new 8738 hopefully this weekend. I have a copy of uphuck 1.4i to try.

all right, good luck!

[mschilling]

Alright, so far, so good! I finally got a chance to fire up the 8738 this weekend. The first impression is that the monitor is very nice indeed. The colour is vivid and smooth and even, edge to edge. The size is great, I love the 17" display. Vista worked alright, so I decided to swap out the hd with a new Seagate 7200 rpm 200G 16MB to experiment with. I tried gparted live cd as per the uphuck recommendations to format the new hd, but it stalled partway thru the live cd boot setup. I then formatted the new hd with diskutil on the 10.4.9 install disk. I selected only the 950 vid and main kernal. Tiger then booted off hdd. I tried quicktime and itunes and everything looked great so far. I now need to fix the sound, as no device is recognized under sys prefs, but sys info see the Intel high def sound. Next is to find the right driver for the RTL8187 wireless. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[SA22C]

The rig in my signature works pretty damn good. I don't have bluetooth, PCMCIA or a functional card-reader, though.

[mluu510]

hp dv2500t is almost perfect. everything works except the intel 3945 wifi. you can't replace with a dell 1390 wifi card because hp only allow certain wifi card to be install or the system won't boot.

[mschilling]

This 8738 is fast on 10.4.9. Faster than with Vista using geekbench. I updated all the apps including ilife 08 and everything launches ok. Biggest problem is still the sound which I need a driver for, but also while it played an avi movie with Quicktime ok (no sound), it has a problem playing the flash vids on youtube. I've updated with the latest flash for osx intel too. It shows the vid starting and then stops after 2 seconds consistently using either Safari or Firefox. Any ideas?

[jonokti]

I haven't looked at this post in a while.

To get the sound working on the MX8738 I used

 

1. Sound:

- Get the AppleHDAPatcher_v1.15.zip from

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...amp;hl=applehda

- Get the Sigmatel9250.txt from

http://psykopat.free.fr/apple/AppleHDA/sigmatel/

 

These are from the wiki same as the MX8734

 

I have the wireless driver I originally got from Ixenn

I put it on rapidshare

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/73298971/20070..._1.5.0.zip.html

I get an error every time I've installed it but it works.

I didn't have to do this step but a friend with the same laptop had to

 

- After installation edit the

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist file, change

<key>BSD Name</key>

<string>en0</string>

TO

<key>BSD Name</key>

<string>en1</string>

- fix permissions in diskutils

 

I used the Intel Pro/100 VE pkg installer from uphuck 1.3 DVD for the LAN

 

I'm running Jas 10.4.9

 

I had minor issues with MacNub and Uphuck on this laptop. I found Jas to run the most stable with the apps I need to run.

Hopefully I'll have some time at the end of Dec to try out Leopard and EFI but currently clueless on both of those too busy

at work

[00diabolic]

LEOPARD NOW RUNNING YES!!!!!!!!! See below how I did it.

 

Now only things that dont work are touchpad, keyboard and sound. Need help with there as I am completely lost on what to do next.

 

 

 

Followed this thread exactly with minor changes:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...300#entry524902

 

I got pc_efi ver 6.0 because I could not find 5.2 and 7.2 had all these references to guid and I was not sure if I could use it with MBR. Google pc_efi or go to netkas site to get it. If someone could clear up my question about using pc_efi 7.2 instead of 6.0 I would like to know?

 

From here I grabed paulicats x3100 Natit.kext file the last one he listed in thread:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/lofiversion/i...php/t70282.html

 

Replace references to NVinject.kext with Paulicats Natit.kext file.

Drop it in /System/Library/Extensions & chown/chmod Natit.kext like you would NVInject.kext

 

Then DELETE (rm -rf AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext) like Azurael says.

 

Repair permissions like the guide says. Also do a disc check. Well I did this to be safe.

 

Now reboot and Leopard WILL FINALLY RUN for you x3100 users like me.

 

 

 

Complete C712NR Specs:

Display: 15.4″ WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)

Processor: Intel Core Duo T2310, (1.46 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)

Chipset: Santa Rosa platform intel 965 x3100 Graphics

Memory: 1GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)

Hard Drive: 80GB 5400RPM

Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 *Should be no problem

Wireless: 802.11b/g WLAN *Its a Broadcom bcm4311

Optical Drive: SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support *Optiarc burner

Sound: Conexant High Def audio codec model CX20549 Works in tiger

Alps pointing device works fine

Ports: 3x USB 2.0, VGA, mic-in, headphone-out, S-Video, LAN, modem

[gan911]

i don't know if i'm posting in the right thread, but what is the best cheap clone of a MBP (disregard size/style)? i'm hoping for fast CPU and a working video card (8600M GT perhaps?)

 

i'm mainly looking for one that can do a little of everything w/ perhaps a tiny bit of gaming thrown in. lastly i'm looking for something in the <1000 range...which can currently be done by a vostro 1500, but I don't know if thats a good clone or not.

 

thanks!

[mschilling]

I thought you needed to have a Core 2 Duo processor to run Leopard via EFI, am I right there?

[mschilling]

Jonokti, thanks for the info on the MX8738.

The wireless sparked right up for me with the download off the Realtek site so that was easy. I found out the problem I had with the Quicktime and Flash videos (youtube) was because I updated with the latest Quicktime with the Apple updater, I believe. I just reinstalled 10.4.9 and iLife 08 and the videos now play! Sound is the next thing to fix as the driver that came with the uphuck dvd didn't work even though the sys prefs shows a recognized output device.

So I will try your suggestion for fixing the sound. I'm not sure what you mean by "These are from the wiki same as the MX8734".

What wiki are you referring to? Should I read up somewhere about a procedure, or just install the downloads you're suggesting?

Again, thanks for the help!

[mschilling]

OK, when I try the audio patcher instructed above I get an error when dragging the sigmatel clip onto the patcher:

 

 

AppleHDA Patcher - 2006/2007 Taruga v1.15

_______________________________________________________

Codec :

Vendor Id :

Subsystem Id :

_______________________________________________________

 

 

* Detected unsupported Codec

Exiting...

 

 

I tried a few other patchers and a few different codecs, all with the same error result, any ideas? I'm still using uphuck 10.4.9

[artic_fox]

mschilling:

 

He means this twiki page.

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.ph...0.4.8/Portables

 

Does Sleep work on the MX8738? I just picked one up.. but will take a while to get here.

Planning on doing JaS 10.4.6---> migrate to JaS 10.4.9. Good plan?

[mschilling]

Thanks. Sleep doesn't work on mine with uphuck 10.4.9. It goes to sleep and then immediately wakes up. The energy saver sys pref is working excellent with the battery/charging system and the run time seems ok so far (I loaded uphuck's speedstep which is working), screen saver kicks in and it sure would be nice if sleep would work. I've been using it with Safari 2 and it really is a nice browser on this computer after trying the other 3 os on it. It's snappy and solid, with a great internet wireless connection. It would be nice to have a script to activate the wireless profile, but it's like a mac for immediately connecting to the router. I've updated to to 2G ram and have to try out imovie hd soon to make a home movie dvd. Messing around with the audio drivers (using the wrong one) I managed to blow away mine completely so there is no device recognized under output anymore. I tried the audio HDA patcher which ran ok with no errors but didn't bring back the output device which was there earlier. I like this laptop, it runs cool and the display is easy to look at in a dark room with the functioning display dimmer.

[mschilling]

When I attempted to reinstall osx on the 8738 it hangs on the language screen again with a frozen cursor. It did that in the past and I thought the cure was to format the drive first but now that doesn't seem to help get it past the language screen to let me install Tiger. I've tried jas 10.4.8 as well as the uphuck 10.4.9. Then I tried Toh 10.5 which lets me install everything, but gives me the black restart screen when finally booting from the hd. I wanted to try the jas 10.4.8 and jas updater to 10.4.9 and see if that worked better as mentioned above. Plus I wanted to get my sound output device appearing in the sys prefs again, but no dice. This laptop seems a little flaky when booting off the optical, and also doesn't want to let me boot off an usb optical to see if that helps. For now the only thing I could get working on it is Linux which actually installed so so. Any advice would be helpful, thanks!