MS1057 questions

I am thinking about buying a 1057 to replace my 1013, and I am trying to figure out exactly which wireless card I would need to buy. I've read here that it has to be pci-express, but, if I understand correctly, the Intel 3945ABG cards will work even though all of the sellers list them as just mini pci. Also, the only card I've found that is explicitly listed as pci-express is a card from Lenovo using the Intel chip. I'm hoping that I am correct in my guess that a 3945 will do.

I wish I could wait on the 1058 to come around, but I'm having stability problems with my 1013, which has put me off of AMD laptop chips for a while, mostly because of the lack of a really good/well supported chipsets to go with them. My 1013 has this nasty little habit of locking up hard ( and I mean hard -- the cdrom won't even eject it's tray when I push the button ) in Ubuntu.

I would also like to be able to utilize the virtualization features of the core duo to run linux and windows side by side to make my life easier ( stupid Internet Explorer ). Has anyone had any experience with virtualization, or is it even enabled in the 1057 bios?

One last thing, and then I'll shut up. In the choice between DDR2 533mhz and 667mhz, which is faster? Sure the 667 is the faster bus speed, but all of the chips have a ridiculous latency compared to the already not-so-hot latency of the 533 chips. In your experience, does the faster bus make up for the latency, or should I go with the 533s?

Thanks, Chris

 

I think I answered my own main question by comparing a mini pci-e card and a plain mini pci card. It seems that the connecting edge on the pci-e card gives it away, so I ordered the Intel 3945. Hopefully that's correct.

For the curious ( and to relieve my urge to brag ) I also ordered a Core Duo T2600, 2gb of pc5400 ram, and a Hitachi 100gb 7200 rpm hdisk to go with my shiny new black ms1057. All for a fairly reasonable $1515, shipped. This is to replace my similarly configured, mostly white ms1013 with an MT40, 1gb pc3200 ram, which is of course underclocked due to wsod issues, a seagate 100gb 7200rpm drive, and the MSI bluetooth/802.11 G card. I'm hoping that I will get a fair performance increase since I do a lot of multitasking, and 2gb of ram never hurt anyone. I'm also hoping that the 1057 will have better wireless performance, since my 1013 doesn't like to hold a connection to my 802.11g router, but will plug along fine with the ancient 802.11b router.

It's a real shame that there aren't any reasonable competitors for MSI in the whitebook thin-and-light realm. If there was someone to push them a little, I think they would put out amazing hardware. Not that what they put out isn't pretty darn good already. A decent dedicated graphics card would be nice, but that's about all they really lack. I guess the new 12" Dell XPS machine is coming to add competition to this niche, though it can hardly be classed as thin.

Thanks, Chris

 

The intel 3945 will work, but a better card is the atheros AR5006EX. It's a bit more expensive than the intel but it gets much better reception and is a higher quality card.

The only problem is that it's hard to find an online retailer for these cards since they are usually OEM'd to laptop manufacturers.

However, you can get one for $65 by emailing [email protected] and telling them you want the atheros AR5005EX mini-PCI express card. This is where I got mine.

 

Thanks for the tip. If the Intel card gives me any troubles, I'll hunt one of those down.

Thanks, Chris