Intel 950 vs Santa Rosa notebooks (or: HP nx7400 vs HP 6710b)

[bimbo]

How much of a difference does Santa Rosa make for someone who doesn't game, hardly ever uses any 3D apps but who however would like to use compiz or beryl on a decent sized screen (at least 1680*1050)?

Reason for asking is that I'm looking at HP nx7400 (I950) vs 6710b (Santa Rosa). While price wise the difference is rather small, the first supposedly is nearly silent whereas the latter spins its fan more often than not.

And silence is very important to me... For a frame of reference: a Thinkpad T60 is just barely acceptable to me, and that's WITH using tpfancontrol.

[Michael]

Originally Posted by bimbo

How much of a difference does Santa Rosa make for someone who doesn't game, hardly ever uses any 3D apps but who however would like to use compiz or beryl on a decent sized screen (at least 1680*1050)?

Reason for asking is that I'm looking at HP nx7400 (I950) vs 6710b (Santa Rosa). While price wise the difference is rather small, the first supposedly is nearly silent whereas the latter spins its fan more often than not.

And silence is very important to me... For a frame of reference: a Thinkpad T60 is just barely acceptable to me, and that's WITH using tpfancontrol.

Technically the Santa Rosa X3100 graphics should work with the most recent Intel drivers, but Phoronix will not be conducting any Linux graphics tests with the Santa Rosa for a few more weeks.

[bimbo]

I know that support technically should be there (there reports of it being somewhat of a rocky road still but I can live with that, Intel will fix it, I'm sure).

So performance is the interesting point (goes to dig out the aiglx benchmark article

I guess I could wait until end of June for a test (or try to get a 6710b to hear for myself ...

[Kakumba]

Originally Posted by bimbo

I know that support technically should be there (there reports of it being somewhat of a rocky road still but I can live with that, Intel will fix it, I'm sure).

So performance is the interesting point (goes to dig out the aiglx benchmark article

I guess I could wait until end of June for a test (or try to get a 6710b to hear for myself ...

Well, thought I should join in here. I have a 6710b, and am planning on loading up Fedora 7 on it later this week. Being new to Linux, in so far as installing on real hardware, this could be interesting. I am more used to dealing with already installed Linux, or installing in VMs, the easy stuff.

Whether or not Fedora 7 works, are there any other distros you guys would like me to load up? I am happy to play around for a while (with some help) if it would help anyone else. Don't expect a full review, jsut a quick does it work and how hard is it.