Re: Laptop choice?
On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 18:13 -0800, Jeff Goodman wrote:
> > 2. HP of late has a filthy habit of boobytrapping their notebooks to
> > not take generic components. My nx6125, for example, will not work with
> > any hard disc other than the 80GB Seagate (with HP firmware) that it
> > came with. Sure you can put something else in, but it simply disables
> > DMA making it hardly usable. This leaves you with two problems. If you
> > run out of space, you can't put something bigger in, and b) if your disc
> > dies after the warranty ran out, you're going to pay through your nose
> > for a new drive. I can also not replace the wireless min-PCI card.
> > Mine shipped with a broadcom. At the time, ndiswrapper was quite
> > unstable, so I put an Atheros card in that I scavanged from an AP.
> > Notebook wouln't even post - says something like "Unsupported PCI
> > device, please remove." I thought, OK, I'll buy one from HP - got an HP
> > branded Intel 2200 card (which was listed as compatible with my
> > notebook) - same story.
> >
> I have to disagree. Recently bought a dv2130us for around a thousand
> bucks, has a Core 2 Duo, 1GB (since updated to 2GB), 14" screen (for
> portability) and 3.5 hour battery. Swapped out the harddisk with an old
> 40GB Hitachi that was laying around, and effortlessly installed Kubuntu
> Dapper. Pretty much everything worked out-of the-box, including
> wireless, suspend, hibernate, etc. Frankly, I was floored!
My boss' HP nx9010 is cool with swapping drives too, but mine is not.
You're welcome to look up on the nx6125. After buying the HP Intel
ipw2200 I phoned HP to complain. They confirmed that it is not
supported and at the same time they pulled the page that listed it as
compatible (which I had luckily saved when I ordered).
My point is that when you buy an HP you don't know if you're going to
have issues like that.
Incidently, my extra disc is also a Hitaschi 40GB (5400rpm 8mb). The
notebook picks it up, but it runs so slowly. I popped in the HP Windows
CD when I got home after work. By the time I went to bed it was still
busy with the first phase.
My extra hard drive worked perfectly in my old Compaq P-III as now in an
external enclosure. The Intel card I sold off to a friend who's using
it in his Dell.
Hans
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