Enabling Virtual Machine supportn of virtualization. (buying virtualization support)

[Lloyd Kvam]

On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 11:01 -0400, Ben Scott wrote:
> But I will make this general observation: The processor does not
> exist in a vacuum.  A working computer is a system, of which the
> processor is but one part.  If one needs/wants virtualization but one
> is shopping solely by processor, I wouldn't be surprised to hear
> things don't work as expected.

No argument with that from me.  

But shopping for virtualization in a laptop seems to be pretty hopeless.
I could not find any mention of virtualization in any of the laptop spec
pages.  I tried to use the Dell sale support service.  The Dell folks
supplied a laptop spec with an Intel T6400.  Fortunately, I checked the
Intel site and saw that the T6400 does not support virtualization.  In
desperation, I used the Intel and AMD sites to cross check the CPU's
that were listed in the newegg laptop selection menu.

That resulted in buying this HP dv7-2170us model which I otherwise like.
I believe that Intel misrepresented the P7550 CPU and that it does not
in fact support virtualization.

I did email a suggestion to newegg that virtualization would be a nice
addition to the menu options.  They thanked me for the suggestion,
waived my shipping charges(!), and said they'd consider the idea.

I am in touch with HP trying to get a list of models that support
virtualization.  They did say that laptops with a T9550 processor
support virtualization.  I searched out a laptop (elitebook 6930p) with
a T9550 processor and there was no mention of virtualization in the
spec.

-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp
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