[SunRescue] OT Soyo subnotebooks

[mike dombrowski]

>I'm very seriously tempted to purchase a Soyo PM-1801 Monday, and I 
was
>wondering if anyone here had any experience with the Soyo subnotebook
>products?
>
>Even if you haven't used their product, has anyone had much experience
>with the (formerly) Cyrix MediaGX CPUs?  It's got a 266 MediaGX for 
CPU,
>video, and sound.
>
>I plan to run either BSD or Linux on it, depending whether or not I 
need
>to access Outlook through it, so any experiences with UNIX on a 
MediaGX
>is welcome.
>
>Why do I want it?  Small (but not libretto small, thankfully, more 
like
>Portege small), reasonable speed, expandable to 128MB, good battery
>life, and $749 new-in-box.
>
>Thanks folks,
>
>Reagen

I would say stay away from that at all costs. Maybe for $450 it would 
be worth it, but not $750. The mediagx is extremely slow, like a 200mhz 
media gx feels slower that a p100 for many things. From what I've heard 
the 266 isn't much better. I had trouble with linux on my mediagx, gcc 
and redhat 5 were not working but I;m almost 100% sure that's fixed 
now. My laptop is a IBM TP240, I got it one year ago almost to the day 
braand new for $1100. 300mhz celeron, 64mb ram, clit mouse, sound, 
great screen, great ibm quality and 3lbs. Runs BeOS/Linux/BSD/Windows 
like a champ, very stable, decent battery life. I would rather have a 
CE machine and take my chances getting linux/netbsd on it than have to 
deal with a mediagx slowness. I dunno if others have had the same 
experience but mine was bad.

Mike