[sf-lug] hardware blues

[aaleksey at ucla.edu]

Greetings,

I am a recent Linux convert. It was during my last quarter in college  
that I became acquainted with the penguin, and now, far removed from  
the UCLA LUG, I come to you seeking sage counsel.

In my closet rests a [Clevo M570RU clone] Sager NP5790 with a dead  
[NVIDIA 7900GTX] video card and what seems to me to be an iffy power  
supply (I think it's the power supply anyway, as the computer will  
randomly turn off depending on whether or not it's connected to its  
charger).

In any case, I am interested in using Ubuntu Studio for audio  
production and was hoping that I might be able to salvage this  
computer for just that purpose. Unfortunately, I am currently running  
a VESA driver, which gives me a whopping 800x600 pixels to work with  
(along with some funky artifacts) and this random shutting down of the  
computer does nothing to make the experience more enjoyable.

I understand that laptops are a pain to work with but, assuming that  
the housing is not an issue (building a new one has been a  
long-standing project of mine, as the computer has always had cooling  
problems), how much hassle would resurrecting this beast entail? I  
called Sager to inquire about the video card and they estimated the  
total cost of repair to be ~$500, which would very nearly buy me a new  
computer. The thing is, I probably don't need a 512MB dedicated  
graphics card anymore (ah, video games, how I miss you) but it would  
be nice to see more than a fraction of Ardour at a time.

Please let me know if you've got some advice for me. Thank you for your time!