Robson or DVB-T?

I'm going to buy a Compal IFL90 based laptop and i have to choose between a 1 gb Robson 1 gb NAND card or a DVB-T card in the PCIe slot. The price is pretty much the same, but neither are supported under Linux right now. Which one will be most useful later on?

 

DVB-T.

Robson really is not helping anything at this moment, and several refreshes of either the hardware or the software drivers will be needed in order for it to ever be useful. Even then, Robson probably will not help as much as say...upgrading a hard drive or getting more RAM.

At least with the tuner you might find a better use for it.

 

Depends. You could probably use the Robson card as a fast swap location, if you wanted. Would you ever need a DVB-T card, if the drivers got working? It's your decision, mainly If you're going to use Linux only, and never use Windows on the machine, a DVB-T card that doesn't have drivers (and may not ever have drivers) is almost useless, whereas a Robson card might have some use. But if you want a real opinion, I'd say spend the money on more RAM, or on some nice accessories like a Bluetooth mouse or something. Accessories really make the computer, and people often forget that...

 

Is it plausible that the Robson card will be supported under Linux as a normal blockdevice? A debian installation could be fit in the 1 gb space with everything i need. A 2 gb SD or MS card for /home and the harddrive could be disabled most of the time.

I'm going for 3 gb RAM, so i probably wont need swap. And i already have a bluetooth mouse.

As for the DVB-T card, a USB device would be just as useful.

 

I'm not a believer in Robson so I bought my Sager NP2090 (a Compal IFL90 sold by Sager) without Robson.

If you find anything about how well Robson works in Linux on an IFL90, please add a comment to this page and I will include your discoveries to the guide.