riseringseeker Posted March 28, 2007 Report Share Posted March 28, 2007 I have a HP ze4911us that works fine with Mdv, or I should say did, when it booted. Now it does not power up at all, the power cord/supply seems to still work, and the only thing I get at all is the battery charging light come on when I hit the on switch, nothing else. I have/had Mdv2007 installed on it and the only thing that never worked was the win-modem, which I never expected anyway. The wireless was a little bit of a pain (an PCI LinkSys), but got that straightened out in short order. Given the above, I find myself in the market for a new laptop (of course if anyone has any suggestions about a quick cheap fix for the 4911, I am all ears). I am looking to spend somewhere in the $1000-$1500 range, but can and will go more. I need a laptop with a fairly large HD (I have a 40GB on the HP, which got tight fast), wireless connectivity is an absolute requirement, and bluetooth would be very nice (I have a dongle, but built-in and working would be better - less to lose.) Weight is definately a consideration, as I literally will drag this all around the world (thinking in the < 6 lbs range - as light as possible). DVD burning would also be a major plus, but not an absolute requirement. Another nice thing would be a video out and/or in port, but again, not a requirement. If the 56K modem also worked I would be surprised, but happy. I've been happy overall with the HP, and it's size (14.1 inch monitor) works well. If there is a HP that will fit the bill that's great, but am not married to the brand. If anyone can give me some ideas on what I can currently purchase in the US fitting the above, I would be grateful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEberger Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 I've been looking at Dells. Most of their laptops have been pretty compatible. i've been looking at the D620 and it seems like a nice laptop. I've got two friends running different Linux flavors on their D820s. They both perform admirably in linux. I know nothing of the modem. I doubt they work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 I have an Acer with an AMD processor. I don't care for the SiS chipset, (no 3-d) but it all works just fine. I bought it because it was very reasonable in price, but I would get a 64 bit processor with nvidia chipset if I just picked without concern for cost. The brand is not really as relevant as the parts inside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEberger Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 Btw, the Intel Core Duo 2s apparently are better performing chips from what I've seen in the AMD chips in tests on Tomshardware.com and other sites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 I've got an Intel Core 2 Duo. Just be careful with the ones that have Intel HDA Audio (and chances are they all will have this). My sound only works through the headphone socket and not the speakers. Logged a bug with the kernel team, so just have to wait and see what happens next. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 (edited) Maybe you could take a look at http://www.system76.com ? Also there are others like EmperorLinux and Tuxmachine (or something like that). But I've heard/read good things about System 76. So that might be worth a look. Edited March 29, 2007 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 I don't have a laptop right now, but my 12-year old daughter has a FujitsuSiemens Amilo Pi1536 lappy (Core2Duo@2Ghz, 2GB RAM, 120G HD), which is running PCLInuxOS 0.94 TR3. Three things aren't working, namely hotkeys, the SM56 winmodem and the Ti card reader. There's an alpha driver for the cardreader, which I haven't tested yet, while the hotkeys and the Motorola winmodem are unlikely to ever work. Everything else, including advanced ACPI abilities, is running great. Price in Greece was 1,130 euros, incl. 13% VAT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 Have you tried adding mmc_block to /etc/modprobe.preload to fix the SD card reader slot problem? You might have to add sdhci also to modprobe.preload. I had to do this with Mandriva, as it wouldn't work otherwise. Then it was fine. I know PCLinuxOS is similar to Mandriva, and thought maybe you need to do the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 Just be careful with the ones that have Intel HDA Audio (and chances are they all will have this). My sound only works through the headphone socket and not the speakers. I have an Intel-HDA-based motherboard, and the manual says one should use the "front" (this is the label, not the location) plug for usage with 2 speakers. You may want to try this... Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 I have this in my control list, but doesn't work, tried already unfortunately, seems to be a big problem with my card. Only headphone socket will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 I recently purchased an ASUS W7J. A Kubuntu/WinXP dual boot seems to be working well. Well, other than the poor KDE implementation. Mandriva's KDE implementation seems to be more refined,,,,, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 Get something intel based, the intel cards have wonderful drivers, as far as drivers for integrated wireless goes in linux. Work out of the box on any decent distro. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted March 29, 2007 Report Share Posted March 29, 2007 Indeed, the Intel ipw3945 driver works fantastically well on the Amilo's wifi- had no problems draining my 256 KB/sec network pipe- and it's rock solid. Tried it both on Arch and PCLOS with zero problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riseringseeker Posted March 30, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 30, 2007 I am seriously looking at Emperorlinux T60 Thinkpads. They show that Mandrake 10.1 is available as an optional install. I asked whether they were *really* using a 2+ year old version, and was told that page was out of date (by 2 years!!!?) and Fedora was STRONGLY recommended over Mandrake if I wanted to stick with an RPM based distribution. Comments? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted April 4, 2007 Report Share Posted April 4, 2007 There nothing wrong with either Mandriva or Fedora. I am not sure why they would say that, unless Fedora is what they currently have. Mandriva has a better gui tool section for setup, but both work just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.