Re: [Mactel-linux-users] Planning on purchasing a macpro soon

[Tino K. <tin...@ti...>]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:16:34 -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
> Tino Keitel wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 09:17:12 -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
> >> I've pretty much decided I want to get a macbook pro.  Searching the 
> >> archives, I don't see any show stoppers, but I thought I'd elicit input 
> 
> Thanks for your response, it generates more questions...
> 
> > Lousy battery runtime?
> 
> Can you define 'lousy battery runtime? Hours, minutes??  Is this because 
> of proprietary hardware in the Macbook pro?

You should find more in the archives of both mactel-linux mailing
lists. With older MBPs (older than the corrent models with multitouch),
users reported battery runtimes around 1,5 hours. I'd expect 3-4 hours
from a decent notebook. The low battery runtime results from a high
power usage when running Linux, which also causes the fans to run quite
often and noisy.

> 
> > Crappy NVidia drivers?
> 
> Is this specific to the Macbook pro, or the Nvidia card it's using? 
> What specifically do you mean?  Lousy resolution?  Poor image?

Poor driver quality, plus it's main part is closed source. Getting it
to work when a new kernel is released sometimes fails, the same is true
for new Xorg versions. Plus all the nvidia related suspend and console
switching problems I read about.

IIRC the NVidia graphics and the missing power managament in the driver
is also suspected to be the cause for the high power usage when running
Linux.

Regards,
Tino