I experimented with the Compaq Armada M300 at the recommendation of Joe Touch’s group at ISI.
General impressions: It’s a nice laptop and works well with Linux and FreeBSD.
Pros:
- light weight (about 3 pounds) and reasonably small size
Cons:
- no longer (as of May 2002) being manufactured
- the built-in modem is a Winmodem
- have to pay for Windows
Machine stats for the M300: Pentium-II 600MHz, 64MB memory (default, expandable to 320MB), ATI 3D Rage LT Pro video, audio is ES1978 Maestro 2E, internal Winmodem (Lucent LT WinModem), internal Ethernet Intel Ethernet Pro 100 (82557). BIOS TBD
Disclaimer: PC models change very quickly, what’s on this page may not have bearing on later models. YMMV.
Linux
Installation: I haven’t installed linux, but the machine booted RedHat Linux 7.2 from a 30GB hard disk I’d installed on a different machine. My expectation is that installation with the CD-ROM on the mobile expansion unit would be straightforward.
RedHat 7.2 autoconfigures the video, audio, USB, and touchpad without problem.
Power management: suspend works fine out of the box. Hibernation goes to a windows disk file and so doens’t work for me without a Windows partition.
The modem is a “win”modem. The drivers at uni-stuttgart build fine. I haven’t tried them out yet.
FreeBSD
Others here at ISI regularly use these machines fine under FreeBSD 4.x.