Re: hp Notebooks?
From: General Schvantzkoph (schvantzkoph_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/19/04
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Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:39:08 -0500
On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 16:58:01 +0000, Dennis J. Tuchler wrote:
> Has anyone any experience with HewlettPackard notebooks? I am in the
> market and wonder about their solidity, reliability and service.
>
> Any information would be gratefully received.
>
> dj tuchler
I have the Compaq R3000z with an Athlon64 3400+, the HP5000z is identical
except for price, the Compaq is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper for
an identical configuration. It works fine with Fedora Core 3 (both 32 and
64 bit). The processor is very fast, doing Verilog simulations and FPGA
place and routes it's equivalent to a 5.2GHz Xeon. The built in wireless
is the Broadcom 54G which is unsupported in Linux however I've gotten it
to work with Ndiswrapper and an XP driver but you can only do that with 32
bit Linux because the XP driver is 32 bits. The built in Nvidia Graphics
chip is bottom of the line but adequate for most uses. Also I'm having
trouble getting it to work with the latest Nvidia binary drivers although
it works fine with the Xorg drivers. I have gotten earlier versions of the
Nvidia drivers to work on Fedora Core 2 but the last couple of releases
haven't worked.
I have the 1680x1050 screen, if I had it to over again I'd buy the smaller
screen. I was able to get the big screen to work by hand editing the
xorg.conf file but the configuration tools in both Fedora Core 3 and
Mandrake 10.1 don't understand 1680x1050 screen. The big screen makes
the laptop wider and heavier without really enhancing it's usability.
BTW Mandrake 10.0 and 10.1 don't work with this laptop, they crash.
Fedora 2 and 3 are completely stable.
The keyboard is mediocre, I particularly don't like the space bar which
needs to be pressed in the middle, I'm constantly missing spaces.
I also have the 12 cell battery. I always run the laptop off of wall
current so the 12 cell battery was a mistake. Unless battery life is
important to you, save the weight and get the standard 8 cell battery.
All HP/Compaq notebooks share the same set of cases and screens, so my
comments about the keyboard, the screen, the battery apply to everything
they make.
The R3000z does represent very good value for money. I paid around $1500
for mine (back in August) for an Athlon 64 3400+, 1G DDR, 60G drive,
1680x1050 screen, Broadcom 54G 802.11G, and XP Pro. You can't get it
without XP, it comes standard with XP Home. I paid them the extra $50 for
XP Pro even though I don't use Windows because on those rare occasions
that I might need it I wanted the version that worked. The changes to the
configuration that I would make if I were buying one today are, 1) smaller
screen, 8 cell battery, and an 80G 5400 RPM drive. When I bought mine they
were only offering 4400RPM drives, the one slow thing on this laptop is
the drive so upgrading to the 5400RPM drive is a good investment.
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