[Leaplist] Re: Fedora 9 on Gateway P-7811FX "Centrino 2" notebook (more testing)

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 07:08 -0700, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> I just picked up one of these:  
>   http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668123.php  
> Understand that "Centrino 2" was just announced by Intel in
> July, and the first notebooks are just hitting ...

Okay, I've had a ten (10) days with the unit now.

I've done the following ...  
- Continued to use the existing Fedora 9 i386 (from a HP nVidia/Turion)
- Installed Fedora 9 i386
- Installed Fedora 9 x86-64
- Used the pre-installed Vista x64

Here's the deal ...

EVERYTHING WORKS IN ALL FEDORA 9 ARCHITECTURES
(sans the WPA2 issue which also plagues Vista)
I can't say the same for the pre-installed Vista x64.

This includes ...

- Hibernate _and_ Suspend -- flawless
- Audio, _including_ "software switch" headphones -- Vista sucks here
- SD, HDMI, FireWire/USB, eSATA, etc... -- Vista has some issues

Hibernate and Suspend work _flawlessly_.  Everything comes down and up
without issue.  This includes interrupting Suspend mid-Suspend.  Vista
has recovery issues with Hibernate and Suspend has just "hung" on more
than one occasion.  Trust me, I tried to cause the same in Fedora 9 i386
and x86-64, and I was unable to (even killing X, pressing the power
button and doing other, "stupid/impatient user" things -- short of the
4s power button press, which always kills power in hardware).

Regarding audio, I cannot believe a vendor can ship pre-installed OS
that has issues on its own product.  Vista has issues with the "software
switch" on audio, whereby the external speakers continue when I plug in
headphones.  It's _only_ when I switch to headphones in the setup that
it uses it, and the "software switch" between the external speakers and
headphones is "flaky" in Vista.  Flawless in GNOME and command-line,
thanx to outstanding ALSA support.

Furthermore, although I did have to "map" the top DVD/audio keys in
GNOME (which it correctly identified as "multimedia keys"), they work --
period -- in Linux.  I can bring the audio up and down.  I can not only
bring audio up and down in GNOME, but I can still bring audio up and
down in OpenGL games and even under WINE!  Under Vista, there are even
Vista logo games where those buttons are _useless_!  Man, that is
pathetic.

I have been using the SD, HDMI (nVidia panel), FireWire/USB, eSATA and
other devices without issues.  Vista _crashed_ on one SD card insert (a
RiData Lightning 16GB SDHC) and it also _corrupted_ a NTFS filesystem
over eSATA (yeah, I was _pissed_ but luckily there was nothing
important).

I tried contacting Gateway earlier this week about support of the lack
of WPA2 support in the Wireless as well as getting a BIOS update that
will work in Vista x64, as their BIOS update requires XP or Vista
32-bit.  They told me this is a Best Buy special product that I have to
take to Best Buy to get support.  Should have figured given the price.

I probably won't go this weekend or the next, but I'll give it a month
before I go to Best Buy and smack the hell out of Geek Squad with some
of these issues under Vista.  Although I loathe having an A+ and MCSE,
it does help when dealing with people who cop an attitude and try to
blame you for issues with a product they sold that had those issues.  ;)

-- Bryan

P.S.  [Off-topic] For those buying SD/SDHC cards, I just did a _write_
performance test (not read, which is useless/not applicable when it
comes to performance in cameras) of various Ritek RiData SD/SDHC
products under Linux using dd and rsync:  
  http://photo.net/pentax-camera-forum/00Qpcx  


-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
-------------------------------------------------------------
           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution


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