HP 8510w
I mentioned awhile ago that I was looking for a new laptop. Folks who commented -- online, and off -- had good points to make about their preferences, and I took a lot of them to heart as I evaluated what, specifically, I was looking for.
Last week I bought an HP 8510w laptop. I had seven days to return it if I decided I didn't want it. That week has passed, so I guess I'm keeping it! Now I feel comfortable posting the details about this laptop.
The "w" indicates that this is the "workstation" class laptop (indeed, on the case it even says "mobile workstation"). This is intended as a desktop replacement, suitable for hefty applications. This is the laptop that is being recommended by the college of Engineering for students to buy, because it has the oomph to execute the applications used in our college. The biggest difference between the 8510w and the 8510p, which is the step-down professional consumer model, is the graphics card. The 8510w comes with an Nvidia Quadro FX 570M graphics card, and 512MB graphics memory. As I mentioned in my post linked above, hardware OpenGL acceleration was a requirement in a new laptop.
Predictably, I installed Ubuntu 8.04 onto this laptop. I installed the x64 version. To my delight, everything I needed worked right out of the box: wired and wireless network, touchpad and thumbstick, hardware WiFi kill switch, Bluetooth, and the volume slider at the top of the keyboard. I installed the binary Nvidia drivers to enjoy the fancy new desktop effects in Ubuntu.
When I got the laptop home, I connected it to my television via the HDMI connector. Using the nvidia-settings application, I was able to access the TV as either a mirror of the laptop display, or as a second display. The laptop also has an analog VGA connector on the back.
Both suspend and hibernation work. The wireless network re-initializes just fine after waking up, so I've taken to putting the laptop to sleep rather than shutting it down most of the time. For reasons now forgotten, I never used either suspend or hibernate on my previous laptop.
I get just under 3 hours of battery life when using the laptop on a regular basis. If I leave it on but not doing anything, the battery seems to last well over three hours, though I admit that I haven't bothered trying to quantify this. Putting the laptop into sleep mode uses almost no battery: I put the laptop to sleep with a full charge, then left it unplugged in my office through the work day. When I finally woke it up, the battery reported it had more than 2.5 hours of charge left. HP sells an extended life battery, which when combined with the stock battery provides more than ten hours of battery life. I've considered getting this extra battery, but frankly I don't need that much battery capacity right now.
The only thing I didn't try was the fingerprint reader, for which I have no real use. There do exists a few libraries and suites of applications for various fingerprint readers. The fingerprint reader in the 8510w is supported by at least one of these. However, since the libraries are not yet integrated into Ubuntu, I've not bothered to compile them. I'd prefer to wait for them to trickle into the distributions so that I know everything continues to Just Work.
Here's the output from lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HBM (ICH8M-E) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Quadro FX 570M (rev a1)
02:06.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b9)
02:06.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b9)
02:06.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 03)
02:06.3 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 20)
02:06.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 10)
10:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61)
And here's the output from lsusb:
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 005: ID 08ff:2580 AuthenTec, Inc.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 03f0:171d Hewlett-Packard
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Laptops
I am in the market for a new laptop. My current laptop is literally falling apart, as some of the case screws have fallen out. I could replace those, but that would only fix one small problem. Also problematic is the fact that my battery only holds about 25 minutes worth of charge. And lately, doing anything remotely CPU intensive causes the system to overheat and shutdown. I've taken the system apart several times, inspecting the system fan and looking for obvious problems that might cause overheating. Alas, I've found nothing. So I've been forcibly setting the CPU frequency to its lowest setting, which makes the whole thing more sluggish than I would like.
So I'm looking for something new. Through the OSU technology store I can purchase a Hewlett Packard 8510w laptop. This is the "workstation" caliber laptop, with a sturdy metal case instead of cheap consumer plastic. It also comes with a high-end Nvidia graphics card -- something I've really missed on my current laptop (I miss playing Quake, surprisingly). Other features include 2 GB RAM, roomy hard disk, Bluetooth, and a 3-year accidental damage warranty. That last is extremely appealing.
If I get that laptop, I'll install GNU/Linux onto it. Before I purchase it, I intend to take an Ubuntu LiveCD to the store to try it on the floor model, to get an idea of what hardware works and what doesn't work. I expect most of the hardware will work. Certainly the NVidia card will be supported by closed-source drivers. Bluetooth should work. The wireless chipset should work (though may require a binary closed-source firmware blob). Audio may require some fussing to make work; though I might be presently surprised. Assuming all the hardware works, after installing Ubuntu I'd have to install all the proprietary audio and video codecs so prevalent today (though I could consider purchasing the Fluendo closed-source GStreamer plugins).
I did use an Ubuntu LiveCD on the HP 8510p -- the consumer model of this laptop, with the ATI graphics card instead of the NVidia. Most everything worked just fine: volume control buttons, WiFi kill switch, touchpad -- including the scroll portion -- and Bluetooth. That was all very refreshing, and helped solidify my interest in the 8510w. This page about Debian on the 8510w leaves me more than a little concerned, though, as it describes considerable more hoop-jumping than I'm inclined to do.
In the interest of comparative research and being an informed consumer, I picked DrBacchus's brain about his satisfaction with his Apple laptop. A long-time GNU/Linux user, several years ago he purchases an Apple laptop and has been using a Apple ever since. He's mostly satisfied with it. He came to the conclusion that he was tired of trying to get all his laptop hardware fully supported and properly working with the various GNU/Linux distributions. I share his frustrations on this issue. He's grown to appreciate most of the iLife products (iPhoto, in particular), and he raves about Keynote for his presentations. I don't give many presentations, so that's not too big a deal to me.
My sister has been using a Mac for a number of years, and she seems fairly well satisfied. At least, I haven't heard her complaining about it lately. She purchased a Mac specifically for the ease-of-use when she joined the Peace Corps: she didn't want to suffer through system instabilities or application failures when she was literally isolated from any meaningful technical support. This seems to have been a good choice for her, and worked fairly well.
While chatting with Carina the other night, I admitted I was growing increasingly frustrated by all the hoop-jumping required to enjoy various multimedia in GNU/Linux, and that the ease of a Mac had a very strong appeal. She admitted that she intended to purchase an Apple when her current laptop expires. But then I remember that I don't particularly like OSX; nor am I keen to pay Apple every year for operating system upgrades. I'm also reminded of Mark Pilgrim's juggling oranges and when the bough breaks essays detailing his dissatisfaction with Apple. His comments really hit home for me, highlighting the subtle importance of "Free as in Freeom".
I don't expect to use iTunes, primarily for philosophical reasons; but also because I don't use my computers to listen to a lot of music (in fact, I don't listen to a lot of music). I might be willing to try iPhoto, but I've been working happily enough to date just making directories for groups of photos based on date, then manually selecting the ones to upload to Flickr and finally burning to DVD when I have several gigs worth of photos. I might enjoy using iDVD, since I find the GNU/Linux DVD authoring utilities to be more frustrating than they need to be most of the time. Time Machine doesn't interest me much; and the OSX Dashboard and widgets don't interest me too much, either.
The real value of purchasing a Mac would be the knowledge that all the hardware was absolutely supported by the software. Of course, I could also try running Ubuntu (or another distribution of GNU/Linux) on a Mac laptop, as I know folks do, but it would require time and effort to get everything set up. I expect that the latter would exhaust the former, and I'd be left with something that was almost but just not quite working perfectly. If I'm going to be in that situation, why should I pay the premium that Apple commands for their hardware? Better to save money and get less expensive hardware that is equally poorly supported!
Complicating my decision making process is my intense aversion to spending money. I particularly hate to spend large quantities of money, as I almost always experience buyer's remorse. I know that as soon as I purchase a laptop it will be largely out of date. I don't intend to purchase another laptop for at least three years (preferably longer), so I need to make sure that I can be content with whatever I purchase for at least that long. I expect the Apple to work through that time frame, and be well supported. I imagine that the HP hardware would last that long, though I'm not entirely keen on the way Ubuntu has been developing lately, as features and services continue to be added that I don't use and which will only suck up battery life (things like the Tracker service: I don't lose files, so I don't have a need for a file indexing service -- yes of course I can turn this off, but that's more hoop-jumping, dammit!).
And then I keep remembering that the overwhelming use of this laptop will be for low-resource tasks like email and news reading. Occasionally I'll record something for LibriVox, or produce a DVD of video of the kids. As previously mentioned I would sometimes like to enjoy the diversion of Quake and similar games. I could invest in a (reasonably) powerful desktop computer for these more demanding activities, and then continue to make do with my current laptop for mobility when reading email. I would prefer, however, to minimize the number of computers in my home, and using a laptop exclusively seems like the best way to do that.
This is the first time I've ever seriously considered purchasing a computer and not running GNU/Linux on it. In some ways I feel like I'd be selling out, but that's not a particularly compelling reason to avoid the Mac. I've certainly enjoyed the benefits of Free Software for many years, and in that time I've almost entirely ignored any benefits I might receive from proprietary software. I wonder if I could be happy using a proprietary system for three years? The fact of the matter is that I'm not a developer, I'm a user. What little development I do do is entirely web-based. So while I appreciate the benefits of Free Software, it's not something to which I am fundamentally connected.
I had hoped that distilling my thoughts into this post would help me reach some sort of conclusion; but I'm afraid all I've done is ramble! I guess that should be indicative of the fact that I'm not yet ready to make a decision. If anyone has any input on the matter, I would like to hear it.
One Laptop Per Room
The XO laptop I ordered was waiting for me when we returned from vacation, and I've been playing with it on and off since. It's a very clever little gadget, and while it's not the kind of thing I'm likely to use for everyday computing, I'm glad I bought it. I'd like to sit down with the twins and try to introduce some basic computer programming to them on the XO, but I don't know that either one is particularly interested in learning how things work. Maybe I'm selling them short, though.
There are lots of XO reviews online, so I'm not inclined to provide any in-depth coverage of the system. I really wish that someone in my neighborhood had one of these laptops, so that I could experiment with the mesh networking and activity sharing -- what I consider to be the real benefit of the device. Last night I installed Doom for the XO and enjoyed playing that for a few minutes -- deathmatch on the XO might be a fun diversion.
The acquisition of the XO laptop brings the total number of laptops in the house to six: the twins each have their own laptop, Carina has her's, and I have mine. In addition, I have an Apple PowerBook I purchased moons ago. And now the XO.
I've been struggling to find a way to justify having all this technology. I am currently planning on hooking the PowerBook to the television in our bedroom, so that we can watch movies stored on the NSLU2 storage device. I think that the PowerBook running VideoLAN plus a wireless mouse will provide almost all of the functionality I would have hoped for from a MythTV installation (since we don't watch broadcast or cable television).
I guess the XO laptop will finally be a good motivator to learn Python so that I can figure out some fun uses for that device around the house.
Ubuntu 7.10 on Acer Aspire 3680
After giving up on the notion of the Eee PC for the twins, I purchased a pair of Acer Aspire 3680 laptops for them. A quick search revealed that these were fairly well supported, with a couple of odd quirks, so I felt reasonably comfortable making the purchase. I confirmed last night that they would run Ubuntu by taking a Live CD into the store with me, just to make sure.
From the store, these laptops came with some version of Windows Vista (I didn't even inspect the stickers to see which flavor of Windows Vista, specifically). When I told the sales clerk that I wanted to buy a pair of them, he immediately suggested a RAM upgrade. I said "Thanks, but no thanks, I'll be running Linux on these." The clerk must not have heard me, because he said "Huh?" I calmly explained "I'll be running Ubuntu GNU/Linux on these laptops, so 512MB RAM is more than sufficient for right now." (Carina claims I was being harsh in my tone of voice, but I think she's making that up.) Once I had said this, the clerk walked off to get the laptops for me, and didn't offer a single other upgrade or add-on, which I found rather telling: these guys live for the extra commission earned by add-on sales.
As mentioned on this post about Linux on the Aspire 3680, the default audio device is seen as surround, which means you need to make a few adjustments in order to get sound working correctly:
- Right-click the speaker icon
- Click "Open Volume Control"
- Click the "Edit" menu
- Select "Preferences"
- Enable Surround from the list of tracks to make visible
- Click "Close"
- Close Volume Control
- Right-click the speaker icon again
- Click "Preferences"
- Select Surround as the track to control
- Click "Close"
Acer must have refreshed the hardware in these laptops for the specific sub-model of 3680 I purchased, because everywhere I've seen online so far suggests that these laptops come with Atheros wireless cards, whereas ours claim to use Broadcom BCM94311MCG mini-PCI cards. If you enable the Ubuntu Universe repository, you can use the restricted drivers with the bcm43xx-fwcutter package to have fully-functional wireless networking.
- Click the System menu at the top
- Click Administration
- Select "Synaptic Package Manager"
- Click the "Settings" menu
- Click "Repositories"
- Select "Community-maintained Open Source sofware (universe)"
- Click "Close"
- Click the "Reload" button at the top-left of the Synaptic screen
- Close Synaptic
- Click The System menu at the top again
- Click Administration
- Click "Restricted Drivers Manager
- Click to enable "Firmware for Broadcom 43xx chipset family"
- Agree to all the prompts
- When prompted for the firmware location, select "Internet" to have the firmware automatically downloaded
I must admit that I share Theodore Ts'o's enthusiasm for when things just work: once the Broadcom driver was activated, wireless networking worked straight away. To make things even better, I was able to install the Adobe Flash plugin and the Sun Java plugin all through the browser, without ever using a command-line. I wouldn't have minded had I been required to drop to a shell -- after all, I'm setting these laptops up so that the kids won't have to -- but I was extremely pleased that I was able to do it all in the way in which you would expect plugins to be installed: through the browser!
My initial reaction is that this is a decent little low-cost laptop. I don't expect we'll get superb battery life, and I know it's not a workhorse machine; but for the way the kids will use it (playing Club Penguin and Runescape, watching YouTube videos, email, and school work) it looks to be a fine choice.
I can't wait for the kids to come home from school so that I can see their reaction!
Eee
I read with interest Ben Armstrong's post about his Asus Eee Pc 4G. I've long been casually interested in ultra-portable computing devices, and this thing looks like a real winner. Solid state storage means fast boot times and no worry about failed mechanical parts. The specs look decent for the price, and I'm sorely tempted to buy one for myself. Amazon sells the Eee for $399.
We've decided to get the twins laptops for Christmas this year, and I immediately thought of them as I reviewed the Eee specs. Small, sturdy, low-power consumption, and it runs a free-as-in-speech operating system! I think the kids could easily enjoy using something like this, as it should support all of their major activities: word processing for school, email and web, YouTube (and presumably Club Penguin), and I could install a JVM so that they could play RuneScape. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with them using something rugged like this as opposed to a traditional laptop with a hard drive that is susceptible to the not-always delicate handlings of a 10 year old.
I also thought, briefly, about the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop for the kids. In November the project is running a Give 1 Get 1 campaign, whereby you buy two laptops: one for yourself and one for donation to a kid in Africa. I think the XO laptop would be a lot of fun to use personally, but I think it's a little too do-it-yourself for my kids at this time: they've grown up using computers, and have certain expectations about what they can do with them. It's not clear to me that the XO would satisfy their YouTube and RuneScape requirements.
Finally, for $100 more, I can get a name-brand traditional laptop. Best Buy currently has a Compaq for $499, complete with 1GB RAM and 120GB hard drive. It comes with Microsoft Vista, but that should be easily remedied (although I'd try to boot an Ubuntu LiveCD at the store to confirm hardware compatibility before purchasing). A traditional laptop computer would probably be the best choice for the kids, as much as I'd love to see them use something more unique. After all, 7" is quite small and probably not the best long-term choice for a general-purpose computing device.
