[clue-tech] Any experience w/HP Pavilion good or bad?

[Charles Hutchinson]

On 12/23/2010 02:58 PM, David Williams wrote:
> Hey Guys,
> 
> Was thinking about getting a small laptop and loading some variant of Linux on it for a dual boot.
> We use HP at work and so far I have been pretty impressed w/them so I am thinking an HP machine.
> I thought that I heard a few groans in the group when someone mentioned HP in the past.
> Generally I have found that newer hardware seems to require some work on the installers part since driver support on Linux seems to lag a bit.  CentOS had a hard time working with a NIC and Fedora didn't want to hear about a wireless NIC on previous installs.  CentOS got resolved with latest release at the time, Fedora never got resolved but lost access to the hardware so not great loss.
> 
> Any thoughts welcome.
> 
> -David

Here is a very informative report on laptop quality.  My personal
experience with laptops over the last 15 years come pretty close to
matching these results.  We were issued all new HP laptops at my
previous job.  Of the 8 Omnibook 6930P laptops our department were
given, 3 had to go in for service within the year.  One was never quite
right even after going in for service three times.  My years as a bench
tech also largely mirrors this data.  I would never spend my own money
on an HP laptop.  My wife worked for DEC/Compaq and then HP.  Even they
had nothing but trouble with the Compaq and HP laptops they were issued.
 Her Ex. is still frustrated by his company issued systems.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-survey-asus-and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/

I have had really good luck with Toshiba, IBM and Dell laptops
personally.  The thing I like most about Dell is the ability to order
the laptop with almost exactly the parts I want.  When I ordered my last
desktop replacement laptop for work, the website only offered the model
with a dell wireless controller that is based on the Broadcom chip set
and had horrible Linux support.  I saved the config to my cart and
called a representative who was able to reconfigure the order with a
much better Intel controller that has been very reliable and works very
well with Linux.

That being said, I have had to make more support calls for Dell than I
ever did for Toshiba.  The ability to customize the laptop so that I am
sure that it will run Linux with the least amount of headaches has been
a good compromise in for me.

It has become less and less difficult to get Linux working well on every
laptop I've dealt with in the last few years.  Wireless and video have
been the most problematic followed by audio.  My time has become much
more important to me over the years so I do not want to waste it trying
to get the basic things to work as they should.  I also do not want to
waste it waiting for support to fix defective products.


Charlie