HP Laptops

Since about 2 years ago I have started to use laptops and moved away from the desktop PC. For one reason or another I have owned HP laptops, using casually (not owning) IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell and ASUS laptops. I ended up with a HP Laptop specifically: nx8220, zx5000 and dv6000.

Comparing the 3 after using them for sometime, I can see the HP business laptop is more solidly built. They are dull and black, but they are better in terms of build quality and function. The dv6000 even being the latest of the 3 had the worst keyboard, although they are still better than your average laptop... still the older nx8220 is better. The nx8220 keyboard is not IBM Thinkpad grade, but they are pretty good. The old zx5000 gets hands down having the best speaker, the harmon/kardon are really good better than dv6000 altec lansing. The touchpad of the dv6000 is not good, more weight was put on the design than function. It sits on the center of the laptop, so my right hand keeps on touching it accidentally. I need to constantly turn off the touchpad of the dv6000. The nx8220 has the less creaks and flex, even if its already 2 years old. The nx8220 is solid and has almost no creaks while under normal use. The dv6000 is noisy, of course the zx5000 is more noisy but considering the zx5000 is using a p4 3.0ghz northwood processor and the dv6000 is using the cooler core 2 duo 2.0ghz... its surprising to hear the fan turn on and off. The nx8220 has the worse screen of the 3, its really crap compared to the other laptops.

The nx8220 is pretty good for development work, despite having a dull design and a poor screen. I guess I should buy a business laptop next time, it seems to fit my needs... they are just a bit expensive though. I was expecting more from the dv6000, however its really just a replacement for the zx5000... a consumer laptop is really just a consumer laptop.

HP/Laptop support index

Oracle XE 10g on Ubuntu Feisty Server

I had one small bump when I installed Oracle XE 10g on a Ubuntu Feisty server. It seems the scripts on Oracle XE is assuming your hostname must be a local loopback. I fixed the install by adding my hostname on /etc/hosts. Oracle XE is pretty good. Its relatively easy to install.

Feisty Suspend2 Nvidia does not go well

I can't get Nvidia and Suspend2 to work. The problem is that nvidia kernel module won't get unloaded if X is running even if I used to switch to text and dummy x server. The quick work around was to remove nvidia from /etc/hibernate/blacklisted-modules. Then use suspend to ram.

And the winner is.... Ubuntu

I installed Fedora 7, I found it not as appealing anymore as in the olden days. It seems Ubuntu 7,04 is more polished, also Automatix has swayed me in favor of Ubuntu. I have used Automatix for my work PC and my mom's, it really helps a lot. Before Ubuntu and Automatix I did most of customization before, I even had a short text file and some customs rpms before.

So far Ubuntu on my HP DV6000 is working pretty well. Despite having a Broadcom wireless card, which I thought will force me to use ndiswrapper or extract/hunt a firmware... but Ubuntu worked well.

My wireless is a (from lspci) "Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)". All I did was to install the bcm43xx-fwcutter and told the script to search and download the firmware. Using the command below:

sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter

I am still working on Suspend 2. It seems the binary nvidia drivers can't unload properly. The "nv" driver drive the Geforce go 7400 in 24 bit, it keeps on using 16 bit.

Fedora or Ubuntu?

I have been a long time user of Red Hat Linux, from RH 4.0 to be exact. I started with Slackware 1.0 or something and I really didn't know then what I was doing when I first installed Linux. Recently Ubuntu is really picking up and Fedora isn't as appealing. I have been using Ubuntu at work and my Mom is running Ubuntu, I have also been using apt-get on Red Hat since RH 9.0. So I like Ubuntu too.

I am going to install Linux on my other laptop, I wonder if its going to be Fedora or Ubuntu. I will give Red Hat one more version, Fedora 7 just came out and seems to be pretty good. We'll see...