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    6100HS mini review (tested with Linux and Win XP)

    Discussion in 'Other Manufacturers' started by jfall, Oct 8, 2004.

  1. jfall

    jfall Newbie

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    Just thought I would put this out there. When making my decision on buying this laptop I didn't have a lot of information to go by because it is a fairly new product. Hopefully this will help someone in their decision making process.

    Here are my experiences with this laptop:

    I purchased the Averatec 6100HS from Futureshop in Canada for $1,699. This is a solid notebook, good keyboard, decent sound and a great screen. The left hand side above the hard drive gets hot, but its not too bad. IMO it's a great laptop for the price.

    The first thing I did was format the laptop and setup a dual boot with Windows XP Pro and Slackware Linux 10. XP pro had a hard time finding the proper drivers, but I found them easily on Averatec's websit. Everything worked fine except for the wireless Lan driver, it would keep losing the connection every 10-15 minutes. To solve this problem I installed the Ralink drivers, worked like a charm. Windows XP Pro runs great on this laptop in my opinion.

    I was impressed with the Linux support for the most part. The sound and wireless card didn't give me any problems upon setup. One major problem however is driver support for the ATI radeon 9600 mobility card. Unfortunatley ATI does not offer a driver for the 9600 mobility , it's vendor specific. Averatec is not on the list :(. I managed to get the resolution in X-Windows to display at 1200x800 however I am using a default driver with no special support so graphics performance is low. I have written to Averatec about this, so hopefully something will come along in the future.

    Overall, this is a great laptop that won't cost you an arm and a leg. I highly recommend it.

    PS. If anyone has any ideas about the Radeon support in Linux, I am all ears.
     
    jfall, Oct 8, 2004
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  2. racoontje

    racoontje Notebook Enthusiast

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    The radeon driver works fine and has nothing to do with the reseller. ATi doesn't make two different 9600 Mobilities for IBM and Averatec ;)

    What chipset is the wireless?
     
    racoontje, Oct 11, 2004
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  3. jfall

    jfall Newbie

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    On second thought.. I did some more searching and found this: http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/radeon-linux.html?type=linux&prodType=graphic%E2%88%8F=productsLINUXdriver&submit.x=15&submit.y=13

    it looks like the radeon 9600 mobile may be supported through this driver. I will give it a try and report back with my findings
     
    jfall, Oct 11, 2004
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  4. jfall

    jfall Newbie

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    "ATI Mobile Graphics products in notebooks
    Display drivers and multimedia applications for notebooks with ATI graphics solutions are available for download from your Notebook manufacturer.

    For your convenience, a list of links to notebook manufacturers is available in the ATI Onboard section of our website.

    The display driver supplied with a given notebook has been customized for:

    * the built-in flat panel display
    * any other graphics or video options installed in that specific computer.

    As a result of these customizations, ATI Customer Care is unable to offer drivers for notebooks."


    --

    Perhaps if I could find a Linux driver for an ATI radeon mobility 9600 from another laptop vendor it would work. I have yet to find one (for linux).

    I believe the built in wifi is using the ralink chipset
     
    jfall, Oct 11, 2004
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  5. jfall

    jfall Newbie

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    Well, it was definiately a hack job installing this driver in Slackware but I got the job done for the most part. Performance has increased almost 250% but I know I can get a lot more.. just need to tweak the xfree config file a bit more. Looks like this driver will do the trick :D
     
    jfall, Oct 11, 2004
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  6. catalyst_007

    catalyst_007 Notebook Enthusiast

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    go to www.omegadrivers.net and they have drivers for all OS's
     
    catalyst_007, Oct 13, 2004
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  7. Azn6r

    Azn6r Newbie

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    jfall: I too just picked up the 6100HS from Future Shop. I'm having a similar problem with the wireless dropping every 10-15 mins and it's very annoying. I noticed you wrote that you changed the driver to a Ralink one... but which one? I went onto their site and dl'ed their minipci wireless g version 2.2.8.0... but I'm still getting that problem of the wireless dropping out. Did I download the wrong one? Please help! Thanks!

    ~Eddie
     
    Azn6r, Oct 17, 2004
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  8. wipeout

    wipeout Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    I've been able to work this problem out (win xp pro sp2). My router is a SMC 22mbps (b only). I have forced 11mbps on the router (instead of auto), and it seems to works ok now. With the drivers from averatec.com
     
    wipeout, Oct 18, 2004
    #8