Re: [LAU] query re: HP notebook

Dave, I own one but have never set Linux up on it. I have to have Windows on it for my options trading and with only 80GB there just isn't enough space left after putting some music in iTunes. 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. 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. Most likely everything will work great. I have had to send my machine back once. The motherboard died. they replaced it for free but the unit itself came back badly scratched. Frustrating, but not critical. There's no resale value in these things and I don't see the scratches day to day so it only bugs me when I move the unit around. If you want or need clarification on any of this contact me online or off. Hope this helps, Mark On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 6:51 AM, Dave Phillips <dlphillips(a)woh.rr.com> wrote: