New Notebook

Plaisio makes built-to-order notebooks which are rebranded Clevo units with local warranty and max 48 hours replacement in case of hardware failure. The model number of the chassis is M120W, meaning it has a 12" screen with 1200x800 resolution in 16:9 ratio. This chassis is also very lightweight, less than 2 kilos. The processor is a Pentium M at 1.6 GHz, it has 512 MB RAM, 60 GB harddisk; the rest of the system has WiFi, a camera on the lid, Bluetooth, a single PCMCIA port and a CD/DVD recorder combo.

This is the output of lspci:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Host Bridge (rev 02)
0000:00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Memory I/O Control Registers (rev 02)
0000:00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Configuration Process Registers (rev 02)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB 2.0 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 83)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4) Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
0000:02:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:02:07.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
0000:02:08.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)

This is the output of lsusb:

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0ac8:301b Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. Sansun SN-510 WebCam [hv713d]
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

What works: Almost everything. X works, with hardware 3D acceleration. PCMCIA, WiFi (kernel <= 2.6.10 had problems on suspend and hibernate), Bluetooth out out the box, CPU throttling, suspend to both RAM and disk, sound, USB devices, ethernet, CD / DVD writing.

What does not work: the modem is a WinModem, the IRDA port is not recognized by lm-sensors.

What has issues: ACPI does not always detect the charging/discharging state of the battery or that an AC adapter ahs been plugged in. Sometimes the battery state is misrepresented, especially if a suspend/resume cycle has taken place. With the newest kernel, the special button it has for hibernation stopped emitting signals, but suspend/hibernate works correctly without hosing the touchpad. The drivers for the internal camera are experimental and not in the main tree at the moment of writing, and sometimes they produce color-shifted images.

What's bad: This notebook has a cover with a very stylish, semi-transparent blue platic that can be scratched very easily. Mine for example got scratched from within the carrying case. The internal bluetooth chip suddenly disappeared from my laptop after a while, and at the store they won't investigate this, as they obly do Windows machines. The screen, while having good resolution, has mediocre response times and a field-of-view that is outmatched by my previous, 4 year old laptop.

What's good: The battery lasts easily 4 hours when not doing processor-intensive stuff. Very lightweight. Very good compatibility with Linux.