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Which laptop?


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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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