Are compaq/hp laptops inheritantly bad?

MasterC · 05-22-2003, 02:53 AM

A co-worker of mine recently purchased what sounds to be a bad-a$$ laptop, however I've always leaned WAY away from compaq/hp products for desktop use. How goes the laptop market for these companies (or company now they've merged)? Anyone have any good/bad experiences specific to these lappies?

Thanks for any replies!

Cool

finegan · 05-22-2003, 06:40 AM

I've got a Presario 1200 around that is a neat little machine, but its just made cheaper than the more or less similarly spec'ed thinkpad. The keyboard, the touchpanel, the frame, its all just so much more fragile.

Then there's the fact that it spontaneously reboots now, no OS or kernel change, its just gone flaky.

That and when there's a wireless card in the pcmcia slot, the speaker crackles when there's network traffic. Minor alright, but there's something that's just not correctly grounded there.

Cheers,

Finegan

Pcghost · 05-22-2003, 03:34 PM

After buying three Toshiba Satellite 1415S-173 laptops, all of which died in a week or less, I purchased my HP Pavilion ze4230. I can not only say it is the best laptop I have used so far (of 5 models including dell,toshiba,acer, and compaq) but it has been happily running Red Hat 9 for quite a while without a single glitch. I did end up recompiling the 2.4.20 kernel to include ACPI and wi-fi support, but that was just gravy.

The things I like about my 4230:
The 15 inch screen is nice
Battery life in roughly 3 hours
No floppy drive ( I always hated those)
64mb ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics card (64mb rare in notebooks)
The single best touchpad I have seen thus far.
Parallel and serial ports
Cost me less than $1200 US

Things I dont like about the HP ze 4200 series.
Only one pcmcia slot
A little loud when fan is running
Comes with Windoze XP homely edition.

I was told recently that all Compaq laptops currently in stores are just HP machines with the logo changed. If that is so, I would highly recommend HP and Compaq laptops.
Hope that helps..

MasterC · 05-22-2003, 09:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pcghost
...I was told recently that all Compaq laptops currently in stores are just HP machines with the logo changed. If that is so, I would highly recommend HP and Compaq laptops.
Hope that helps..

Wouldn't that be pretty sweet? That helps quite a bit!

Thanks guys

Cool

rmartine · 05-23-2003, 01:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pcghost
After buying three Toshiba Satellite 1415S-173 laptops, all of which died in a week or less,

I own an 1415-S173 and love it. I just about threw my HP Omni-book out the window when I tried to install Linux. I guess everyone's experiences are different.

I'll never buy an HP/Compaq again... my 2 cents.

MissMetal · 05-23-2003, 04:30 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pcghost
The things I like about my 4230:
The 15 inch screen is nice
Battery life in roughly 3 hours
No floppy drive ( I always hated those)
64mb ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics card (64mb rare in notebooks)
The single best touchpad I have seen thus far.
Parallel and serial ports

*chokes* You got a nice deal there, buddy. Yer making me jealous

Pcghost · 05-23-2003, 02:21 PM

I too liked the 1415-S173, until the first one blew its power supply, the second one its video card, and the third one its bios. I think it was a bad batch or something. All within three weeks.

"*chokes* You got a nice deal there, buddy. Yer making me jealous "
If you could see the custom kernel running on this HP, you would be....

rmartine · 05-23-2003, 03:34 PM

Again....

I guess no two Linux experiances are the same... even using the same machines...

Pcghost · 05-23-2003, 04:08 PM

Yeah, I work for an electronics (AV switchers) manufacturing company. It's amazing the variations in production line efficiency and the variety of issues that can be associated with a single batch. Quality control is a 24/7/365 job. Glad I left the production area for IT. Much better here...

trumpetgirl · 05-26-2003, 08:50 PM

I started with a Compaq 2100 pressario, then according to the tech guy at best buy after about a month of usage, "The hard drive pooped out on you." So they gave me a toshiba 1415-S173 and I love the thing. And so far no problems with it after partitioning and installing Mandrake 9.0. The only cranks I have with it, is that I can't use my modem.