Hi,

I am looking to buy a 17", large hard drive laptop really soon. I am having a problem finding one with a suitable graphics card. I would really like a graphics card that either has an open source (not binary only) 3D accelerated
driver or will have one sometime in the future. I suppose
this rules out any nVidia Graphics card. Most current laptops
have ATI >= X700 cards. Are any of these going to be well
supported in the future ? Has ATI gone the nVidia way and
decided to only provide binary drivers and not give specs
to open source developers ? Can you suggest some laptop models ?

regards
b thomas

I don't think either nVidia or ATI show much signs of releasing a 3D accelerated driver anytime soon. How much acceleration do you need? The Intel GMA chips have more acceleration these days, particularly the GMA950 on the latest Intel chipsets (generally those with a Duo Core processor). If you don't play 3D games the GMA950 is probably fine. The older GMA900 has good support by now; I think the GMA950 support is still in development, but Intel is supporting it and it will be coming.

Plus, this way you'll save a considerable amount of power (hence battery life) and weight, although with a 17 inch that's maybe not such a big consideration.

I'm not sure if anybody actually puts the GMA950 in such a large laptop, though.