C90 and mint

Hi, I'm in the market for a new laptop and I'm leaning towards the Asus C90. I plan to use it mostly for mp3 ripping, video converting, digital photo editing, and light gaming. I will be using a dual boot system with XP and Mint 4, Linux, or at least until my iPhone is supported by either Linux or in VMWare. Well, enough with the background stuff and onto the questions.

1)There seems to be a high number of C90 owners that have stability issues. Is this the norm or are they just more vocal? How bad is the heat issue? ...incompatible RAM issue? ...the trackpad?

2)How well does Linux support the C90? What works and doesn't work with Linux? What distro works best? This is what matters most to me.

3)I understand that I will not be able to use the Turbo Engine to over/underclock the computer in Linux, but are there other means to achieving this either through the BIOS or third party software?

4)I also understand that the RAM is running at only 533MHz to allow room for overclocking. Is there a way to undo this and allow the RAM to run at its full speed? Is there any advantage to using 800MHz RAM?

5)Is there another laptop that you would recommend over the C90? If you own a C90, would you make the same purchase again?

I will appreciate any help that anyone can provide. Thanks for your comments. Also I know some of these have been discussed, I'm just trying to get a more precise and updated consensus.

 

1). I havent had an stability issues yet,
Heat: heat issue is quite bad depending on what your doing lets say gaming my GPU hits about 90-100 & CPU hits about 80 maximum.
RAM: there is a list of compatible ram here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=172169
Trackpad: the trackpad is really really bad, if you buy this computer get a mouse as we'll.

2). I havent had any problems with Ubuntu v7.10 the previous release did not work but this works perfectly no problems what so ever.

3). you cannot overclock through the bios, and I'am not aware of any app's that allow you to overclock the CPU.

4). I'am not an expert on RAM, but someone else can probably answer your question.

5). I would recommend the G1S, yes I am very happy with my purchase.

 

Thanks, D3MON

 

Alot of resources in my sig if you want more c90 info.

 

ViciousXUSMC, Thanks for your reply. I've looked at many posts from you, thezoid, and Alex. I quess I'm being lazy and trying to consolidate all the info into a single thread. Since your looking, did your drilling out the bottom of your case have any negative effects, such as dust, on your system.

 

No not at all, but I keep my laptop in my bag when its not in use most of the time. Even if dust did build up it would be a 2 min job to take the door off and blow it out with compressed air. Any computer gets dust buildup over time so the c90 happens to be quick and easy to clean.