Looking for a good DFly/BSD laptop choice

[Bill Hacker]

Jonathon McKitrick wrote:

Hi all,

I wasn't in the market for a laptop recently, but I got a good pay review
yesterday.  :-)
I'd like something forward-thinking, if it isn't too expensive, but it MUST
run DFly or at LEAST FreeBSD 4.x.  I was looking at a Gateway Athlon64, but
I heard there are big problems with interrupt routing and BSD.
Laptops one should buy on proven performance and durability, not paper 
spec..

I've been considering IBM ThinkPads.  What do you think?  I've heard they do
well with *nix, and there's a bit of an IBM price premium, but that's all I
know about them.
Thinkpad price premium is well earned, IMHO.  Durable, long among the
best keyboards and screens, good warranty service, especially if you are a
continent-hopper. Used by enough coders within IBM that most things
have available solutions.
Many have shipped with the flexible OS/2 boot manager pre-installed to
manage the recovery partition / primary OS partition, and that co-exists
well with *NIX and other OS. Very easy dual/multi-boot setup.
IBM's friendliness to Linux is also a plus for other NIX'en. Seldom
a shortage of drivers.
Any advice?
'Contrarian' view.  But there is merit also to having at least one 
machine in
your arsenal that does NOT get used as a test-bed.  Something that can
be counted on to always work with printers, scanners, cameras, etc.  -
grab files off the 'net, keep things where you can find them, burn
CD / DVD, and generally be a key part of your 'working toolset'
and work storage - not the project target itself.

I use a PowerBook 17" with external FW-2 and USB drives for that.
Different 'race' of CPU helps keep my fingers out of it.
Has been twice round-the world, plus, and works anywhere there is
connectivity of one kind or another - often in the carpark of a Starbucks
after hours on a T-Mobile subscription.
Aside from replacing the HDD with a larger and better one, formatted UFS 
with
*BSD-style directory structure, I pretty much leave it alone.

Every other box within reach could be in any condition or OS from week 
to week.
And that can get frustrating....

HTH,

Bill