> >very developed with many new notebooks. my dell runs for > >6-8 hours on batteries that would power a pc/104 computer or > >intel SBC for maybe 4 hours. and in addition, i can plug my many notebook computers operate quite well, because there has been a great deal of research and development toward reduction in power consumption, and battery life is a major selling feature. > Not saying you can't use a laptop, but be prepared to hack with the > battery system and be ready to get intimate with the internals of the > machine if necessary. Many times they are not designed for the > constant abuse. One way to avoid all this internals hacking is just to stuff the laptop computer into a backpack and put on a VGA. A lot less hacking around than a WearComp6 because you don't have to build anything. Also it's easy to work on if you have problems because you can open it up and use the keyboard and screen (e.g. if your twiddler driver dies, or your HMD dies, etc.). In many ways, a laptop based wearcomp is very much like having a wearcomp together with its docking/support base station (e.g. the fullsize keyboard and screen that you invariably need to carry with you when you travel unless you're not really tinkering much). > BTW, avoid Winbook notebooks at all costs. They are very shoddily > made and not well maintained. IBM ThinkPads are a better choice if > more $. Worth the investment to avoid breakage. Does anyone have actual statistics or actual personal experience in this regard? My experience has been quite different. I've used a Winbook in a version of WearComp5, and I also made a wearcomp out of an IBM ThinkPad. The Winbook gave me a lot less trouble than the ThinkPad. Part of this is because of the rule of inverse pricing: "you get inversely what you pay for", in the sense that there is a much larger Winbook user-base, and therefore many of the bugs are worked out due to both mass production and mass use (e.g. that there are a large number of users who have linux running on a Winbook). Also the Winbook does not attempt to push the frontier of human achievement (in hardware) quite so far, and therefore it doesn't run too hot and it's a little bit less "strange" in its design. Of course it depends on which features you need. steve Prof. S. Mann University of Toronto
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