So I bought a new laptop.
I have been using my HP NX7010 for about three years now, and I am very pleased with it. In general I tend to think that HP make good computers.
So when datorbutiken.com sold HP computers for under 3000 SKr, I hooked on the deal.
The newcomer is a HP530, and it was never ment to replace the older NX7010. Instead it was time to give the other family members some happieness as well. The family computer, placed in the library, is used for homework, some work, surfing, banking and gaming. The one being replaced is a Compac Armada 1750. It has served well and still works fine. I have tweaked and pushed it for years now, but it never liked SuSE9. And my wife sure had a point when she was complaining about the sluggishness in open office.
I have learned that some information about HP and the 530 makes life easier. It will put down the information I know here. Maybe I can supply you with some tricks.
First you need to know that the HP530 comes with two different wireless NIC’s. One from Intel, and it works right out of the box with SuSE10. The other NIC (the one I have), is made by Broadcom. The only solution to make this NIC work is to run it under NDIS wrapper, because Broadcom has failed to write a linux driver for it. Sad!
The other thing you would like to know is even more sad. HP has started to white list hardware in BIOS!!! As stupid as it sounds, this means that your computer wont boot just because you have put an non HP branded NIC in the PCI slot. DUH! Wake up HP! Proprietary hardware have killed many companies. And as if some guys never learn, IBM has started to do the same thing. Silly, ugly and stupid if you ask me. And just to top it of with even more stupidity, they are applying white lists in BIOS upgrades. That means your computer can refuse to boot after a BIOS upgrade. Now that is something, isnt it!
Well, apart from theese sad stories (you will learn HP, wont you?) the 530 is a nice little laptop. The hardware acceleration works, but you have to manually activate it under sax2. The headphones does mute the speakers if you add “laptop” in the model tag under YAST2, hardware, sound.
Since the processor does not support freq. scaling the battery life is quite short. And that isnt made better by some bug in BIOS that does not dim the LCD after the first wake from sleepmode when you run it without power connected. That problem turns up in Vista as well.
And one last tip. Dont even bother to run Vista on it. You will have doubble the joy and speed in SuSE according to me. But what the heck… that goes for all computers!
