Experiences with HP, Compaq?

[D. Michael McFarland]

Hello All,

Occasionally I drool over the laptops in places like Best Buy,
thinking, "If I had just one more computer, I wouldn't have to wrestle
VMware...," etc., etc.  Lately, the prices and specs have improved to
where I may finally be willing to put my money where my mouth is.  It
looks like about US$1150 (less rebates if I'm quick about it) would
get me either a Compaq Presario 2195US or an HP ze4560us, so I'm here
to ask if anyone can support my pipe dream by affirming FreeBSD runs
reasonably well on either of these machines.

The specs for the two notebooks are nearly identical: AMD Athlon XP-M
2500+, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD, ATI Mobility graphics, USB, FireWire,
CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.  I don't expect the built-in wireless (11g) will
ever work, but I'd like to know 100Base-T does.  "16-bit Sound
Blaster Pro-compatible audio" could be anything, I suppose.

Battery life, noise level, and weight are secondary to performance and
reliability to me, unless they're really abysmal.

Any opinions will be appreciated (except maybe, "Buy a Thinkpad."
Great hardware, but I can't afford it this time).

Best regards,
Michael

-- 
D. Michael McFarland, Visiting Senior Research Scientist
Department of Aerospace Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
dmmcf at uiuc.edu, www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/dmmcf