OK so I need to replace my laptop and I really do like HP laptops and have it narrowed down to 2. My questions is does anyone have either of these and which one do you guys feel would be best? I plan for it to be a "day to day" laptop to surf the web, watch movies and music and just basic stuff. I will install Ubuntu on it. Not really looking to do to much at once. So here they are.

http://www.officemax.com/technology/...eValue~17.3%22


And

http://www.officemax.com/technology/...eValue~17.3%22

Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks

While switchable graphics does work there are still some limitations. So if you want to get the switchable one, be prepared to be a little patient and wait a couple of kernels/xorg versions for things to be smoothed out.

switchable graphics? What do you mean by that?

Well it depends on what you're installing on your machine.

If you're using Windows then I suggest laptop #2. The reason is because it has 512MB of dedicated graphics memory and there's a 7200RPM hard drive in it.

• Dedicated graphics memory is both useful and recommended. The dedicated graphics memory is completely separate from your system memory (RAM). It is faster than system memory for graphics because it is located closer to the graphics chipset. The draw back of shared memory which is what the other computer uses is it takes away from system memory and dedicates it to the video. So if you have 4GB of RAM and have 1GB of shared memory for the graphics then in reality your system can only use 3GB of RAM.
• In these modern times the huge bottleneck for a system is hard drive speed. So the speed will be noticeably different between a 5400 RPM hard drive and a 7200RPM hard drive. That's not to say you can't upgrade your hard drive to a lightning fast SSD such as the Crucial C300 which gets 355MB/s read speed. As a comparison 7200RPM single hard drives can only get around 50MB/s.

If you're going to be running Linux then I suggest laptop #1 because of the processor/graphics combo.

• Traditionally the age old battle of AMD/ATI vs. Linux has always been crappy. The support is non-existent and the drivers rarely work the way you wish them to. For this reason I always recommend the Intel/nVidia or Intel/Intel combo because of driver support.
• Times may have changed for ATI and Linux but my last experience with it was a nightmare. So I stick with what works. The save in headache is well worth the slight degrade in specs if that is the choice for the same price.

Needless to say both machines will accomplish the tasks you have intended for them so you can't really go wrong with either.

Look i don't have any of this laptop but as i see in hardware i would buy this one HP PAVILION DV7-4051NR ENTERTAINMENT NOTEBOOK PC. About ubuntu now. Laptops are supporting linux installation and HP is one of the best linux-compatible manufacturer especially in printers and multi-printers.

You are right at this point. Nowadys there are two drivers to install. 1) The "closed" driver from ati. 2) An open-source driver fgrlrx

Ah I remember fglrx. Though from my recollection fglrx, which was provided by ATI when they were an independent company, was closed source.

The newer catalyst driver is the driver pumped out by AMD. Don't get me wrong, Linux support has exponentially increased for ATI since AMD took over. But they still aren't as good and reliable as nVidia or Intel graphics support.

I don't try to get you wrong of cource. I told you that you are wright from the beggining of the post. Wikipedia says that fglrx is open source. Personally i prefer intel with nvidia. In my laptop i have intel and nvidia not ati. But i read about tecnology news.

1 members found this post helpful.

fglrx will not work with the switchable gpu laptop there. it probably *never* will.

On the basis of an HP of my acquaintance...

If you are thinking of installing linux on either of these machines, be aware that HP may already have allocated the permitted four Primary partitions. If there are four ordinary Primary partitions, and the last is "HP_Tools", it may be eliminated. Its contents can be downloaded as a .exe file from HP support.

Of the others, the System partition is said to have the Win bootloader, there is a Recovery partition that can prove useful, and a partition with Windows itself.

However, HP recently has been known to partition using two "basic" and two "dynamic" partitions, the last two a form of logical partition that does not seem to be shrinkable. The only way to reduce their size in order to free space for linux is to convert them to "basic", that is re-format them, erasing Windows. Google for Windows basic and dynamic for more details.

The best approach in such a case might be to activate Windows, then immediately make the permitted set of back-up DVDs and use them to reinstall Windows with a better partitioning scheme. The same method might be used in the first case, changing the way Windows is installed on its four Primary partitions. Google again for details and dangers.

HP and Windows have made it difficult and risky to set up dual-booting on HP machines.

Back up everything and Good Luck.

Note: I like the simplicity of the first system.

I was able to setup dual boot on an HP machine just fine. I removed the recovery partition (after creating a restore DVD) and tools partition. I also removed the windows "boot" partition. I installed grub to the MBR and everything works great.

However, before I removed the recovery partition (just in case), I had some logicals:

A warning about HP laptops: I have a Compaq Presario A900, and ACPI has some serious issues with the battery. From what I've searched, this seems like an HP/Compaq problem. Perhaps the later models don't have this issue, but you should be aware of this. (I'm running Slack13.1)

Here's a laptop reliability graph:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/l...-win-hp-fails/