Laptop suggestions?

[Tom Evans]

On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 20:26 -0300, Carlos A. M. dos Santos wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 9:06 AM, Tom Evans <tevans.uk at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 21:45 -0300, Carlos A. M. dos Santos wrote:
> >> Please define "comfortable". I've been running FreeBSD 7.0 pretty
> >> comfortably on my HP nx6320 for several months now. I never attempted
> >> to use neither Bluetooth nor the fingerprint reader, so I don't miss
> >> them. The only real drawback I've found was that the memory card
> >> reader does not work. I also ran 8.0-CURRENT on a HP 6910p because 7.0
> >> did not support the WI-FI card.
> 
> > Another happy BSD user on HP - nc6320 this time though. intel(4x)
> > graphics, wpi(4) wifi, bge(4) networking, fwochi(4) firewire, serial
> > port, plenty of USB ports. Even the fingerprint scanner works
> > (security/libfprint).
> > I don't use bluetooth or the card reader, so cannot comment on them.
> >
> > The one down side of my HP laptop is the HP BIOS refuses to start up
> > with a different wifi card installed - I'd quite like to use an ath(4)
> > based card..
> 
> Do you have an up-to-date BIOS? I had some problems booting from USB
> that I could solve using the latest BIOS version.
> 

Yes, latest BIOS. If you search through the BIOS file, it is fairly easy
to find the list of 'approved' HP vendor/device ids that it will allow
to be put in the mini pci-e slot and still boot up (there are only 4
distinct device ids defined in the BIOS). I've considered just manually
editing it to replace one of the device ids with my replacement card,
but I fear I would probably brick the laptop!

Tom
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