[linux-audio-user] Centrino Duo and AD1981HD Sound Card: Good for Linux Audio?

Hey there collective intelligence, I have an oppurtunity to get a really good deal on an HP NC4400, and as I'm looking for a new laptop, I'm thinking of grabbing it. It's got 1.5 Gigs of RAM, an SATA 5400RPM hard drive, and a 2GHz Centrino Duo. Any experiences with this sound codec? It seems to be supported with the snd-intel-hda alsa module, but I can't find any info about performance. I think that it's used in a lot of the newer HP and IBM laptops. What distinguishes an "HD" sound card? One of the reasons I've been looking to replace my current laptop is that the sound card and video card seem to compete for control of whichever bus they're on, so I get lots of xruns with any latency less than about 60ms. This computer won't be used for my heavy multitrack recording sessions, I mostly want it for synth and audio processing, maybe also generating visuals in a live performance environment, so the low latency is pretty critical when I've got audio running through the computer for processing. Thanks a lot! spencer Thanks a lot, spencer