Re: [LAU] query re: HP notebook

On Tuesday November 11 2008 16:49:54 Dave Phillips wrote:

> > I will say that I like the screen a lot. It's a 17" wide screen and
> > looks quite nice playing movies. It's an AMD/nvidia box like the one
> > you're talking about, although likely not the same model as I got mine
> > 18 months ago.
>
> Pretty close though. The hd is much larger on the machine I'm considering.

Hi Dave,

the NVIDIA thing could cause some trouble.

I own a Packard Bell notebook that has NVIDIA graphics adapter onboard. The
problem is the driver for it. You can choose from either an x-org driver (nv)
which does not support dual head (so one screen only) and does not support
3D. The latter might not be an issue for You, but You can get 3D only while
using a proprietary binary NVIDIA driver. And that is something that might
cause trouble with real time for audio, though I myself have not noticed any
issues related to that so far.

Other than that it would be interesting to see what kind of onboard sound the
HPs have (we all remember long intel-hda threads), even if You say You will
not need it.

>
> > I would personally NEVER buy a laptop without first at least
> > booting a Gentoo install CD, and likely 2 or 3 others, to ensure that
> > it can see all the hardware. Once the install CD has booted you can
> > run something like lspci and get readings on what hardware is in the
> > box. Check to see that you're getting full speed from the disk drives
> > as that's probably the most critical for making the machine useful
> > early on. If you don't get full speed disks don't buy it unless you
> > are certain you can get chip set support later on.
>
> Ah, that one has me stumped. How do I check for full speed operations ?
> With hdparm or something else ?
>
> I figured I'd slip a Dyne live disc in the thing to see if everything
> works. I also have a 64 Studio live disc to take along.

You might want to give sidux a try. It is a debian sid type distro that comes
as a live-CD/DVD version and can be installed on harddisc really easily. It
is fast and there is a guy nicknamed makke who prepares RT kernels that can
be installed via apt-get, so no hassle with kernel finetuning. And another
guy has prepared dssi-vst packages ;-)

Sidux comes with everything You need, boots really fast and You can check the
HP notebook's hardware with it as well.

>
> > If you want or need clarification on any of this contact me online or
> > off.
>
> Many thanks (again), Mark. :)
>
> Best,
>
> dp
>

Kind regards,
Crypto.
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Received on Tue Nov 11 20:15:05 2008