The race had 3 finalists:
- HP nx6235 (in Romanian) - incredible low price, fully works (with some patches and except the fingerprint reader) (thanks Marc)
- Dell Inspiron 6400 (aka E1505)
- ASUS F3T-AP008
I have decided against the 64bits AMDs and in favour of long life batteries and Centrino Core 2 Duo architecture.
HP nx6235 failed to meet my criteria of design, reliability (I have heard that local HP service has problems with HP products; waranty is 1 year). The shared video memory was a concern regarding overall system performance.
Dell, well... Dell 32 bit arch... I would have been nice to jump into the 64bit wagon, but I guess that will have to wait for now. Design is nice, the hard disk is bigger by 20GB (we all know disk storage is never enough ;-), Centrino tehnology (Intel seems to be OS friendly and drivers seem to exist for all the components), battery time (I can wait to test the real battery time), has some video memory of its own (HyperMemory - some kind of video cache)
ASUS - the selling points over the Dell were the AMD Turion 64 x2 processor(s), the design (looks nicer than Dell, IMHO), the nVidia video card (which was also a concern due to the proprietary driver and its security holes - sorry, no link), and the not yet working built-in webcam. There was also an bonus: a bag and a mouse, but that almost never works for me. And I had to wait for at least a week for it.
The winner is the Dell Inspirion, they also have it on stock, I already placed the order and I will pick it up after I finnish this entry ;-) .
I can't wait to fire up Debian Installer on this baby.
Update: when I said I'll skip he 64 bit wagon I was thinking (for some reason) that the amd64 bit port does not perform well on the Intel Core 2 Duo processors and I would be forced to use the i386 arch. Thanks for correcting me.
Update: it seems eMag was using false information in their advertising regarding Dell, the system is NOT using Centrino technology since it has a Broadcom wireless lan.
8 comments:
If you get a Core 2 Duo processor for your Dell, you will get a 64 bit one.
Eddy, you must have drinked gas :-)
I know that HP service in Romania is crappy, but Dell's service is almost nil!
I would only recomment to _enemies_ top buy a Dell to be used in Romania!
Numai bine.
If you get a Core 2 Duo processor for your Dell, you will get a 64 bit one.
Seconded: all recent intel processor are 64 bit nowadays (well, except maybe some celerons)
Eddy, you must have drinked gas :-)
Well, nice translation, but it looses its meaning.
I know that HP service in Romania is crappy, but Dell's service is almost nil!
I would only recomment to _enemies_ top buy a Dell to be used in Romania!
Well, the alternative was ASUS and I never heard a bad word about Dell. HP, well, that's another story.
Plus, emag, the place where I bought it, they offer 3 year warranty.
Be serious. With Dell you wont ever need warranty :) At least with the Latitude models.
since when does dell keep stock? i thought they produce to order!
Well, the alternative was ASUS and I never heard a bad word about Dell
Except when self-combustion happens :-)
I have to admit though that I am tempted by some Dell models too, however their touchpads are crappy!
I am intensively using the Synaptics Touchpad on my old HP Omnibook XE3, which refuses to die!
Plus, emag, the place where I bought it, they offer 3 year warranty.
I don't believe in the warranty offered by online stores!
Let me tell you a story about a company that owns a lot of top-notch Dell servers + top PC models + top laptops. All very expensive (they're providing CAD/CAM/CAE engineering services and they're also developing software. Win32, Win64, plus Linux servers.)
They have never managed to get their Dell hardware repaired in Romania! They have waited 60 days for a new SCSI HDD, etc.!
It's better be working than calling for Dell's help! Their official channel sucks in this country!
OTOH, what can eMag do? Giving you another laptop in return? I very much doubt this could happen in the said country...
Well, when my laptop will eventually die, I will however consider eMag.ro. BTW, do you have any data on how Debian is supported by HP 500 Pentium M-740? (700 EUR, VAT included, for 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD.) I wouldn't bother buying any HP nxNNNN, because "nx" are actually Compaq.
Oh, I know HP sucks. And the batteries are prone to die.
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