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

[David Williams]

Thanks to everyone the responded, lots of great thoughts and suggestions.

--- On Sat, 12/25/10, Charles Hutchinson <chutchin at geekboi.org> wrote:

> From: Charles Hutchinson <chutchin at geekboi.org>
> Subject: Re: [clue-tech] Any experience w/HP Pavilion good or bad?
> To: clue-tech at cluedenver.org
> Date: Saturday, December 25, 2010, 9:31 PM
> 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
> 
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