Laptops and BSD?

[DocHoliday52090]

How do BSD releases fare with laptops?

I'm concerned mainly about power consumption. My laptop is an HP nc6220. Ubuntu rapes my battery life - all the way down to 90 minutes from 2.25 hours in XP.

Right now I'm in a heavily stripped version of Windows (nLite got ram usage down to 30 mb idle) but am missing the 'open' feeling of open source. Though what I'm running is blazing fast, it feels confined.

Does BSD at least equal or surpass Linux in power management?

[chucky chuckaluck]

you might find this forum of additional use - http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=64

[regomodo]

you might find this forum of additional use - http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=64

wow. Talk about spamtastic. Come on BSD, you're supposed to run the internet

[Sorivenul]

I've had my FreeBSD set up on my Sony Vaio VGN-FS980 laptop for quite some time and have never had any web problems. Wireless (iwi driver for ipw2200) works flawlessly and wired support is a given. I recently converted my wife as well, and her laptop works like a charm "out of the box". All the BSDs have great laptop support from my experience. OpenBSD worked fine for me in my tests, NetBSD as well. DragonflyBSD was my latest test and they have things working as they should be as well. Not every case will be as simple as my own, but there's lots of support in bsdforums.org, the mailing lists, and of course the manuals. Don't be afraid. Give it a try. If you're scared, start with a preconfigured system like PC-BSD or DesktopBSD.

[geeree]

I set up FreeBSD 7.0 on my Dell Inspiron 640m laptop about a month ago. I had to struggle to get the display working at its proper resolution (Mobile Intel 945GM Express chip set). But 915resolution sorted that out easily. My current problem is sound: the Sigmatel STAC9200 audio controller seems not to be supported by FreeBSD 7.0. Not decided what I am going to do about it yet.

Girish.