Anyone have HP ZE4805US laptop working (US$900)

[Stuart Barkley]

My old laptop has finally given up the ghost and I'm searching for a
replacement.  CompUSA, Best Buy and Circuit City are all selling the
HP ZE4805US for about 900 USD and it looks like about the right
machine for my needs.

  - AMD Athlon XP-M processor
  - 256MB (upgradable)
  - 60GB hard drive
  - DVD/CD-RW
  - ATI Radeon based video (1024x768)
  - Integrated wireless
  - Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
  - Modem
  - 2x USB 1.1
  - 1x PCMCIA slot
  - Printer port
  - Serial port
  - Headphone out/Mic in

I would prefer USB 2.0, a second PCMCIA slot and would really like to
have a line-in port.  Otherwise this looks like a reasonable
configuration.

Has anyone had success running FreeBSD on this or other HP/Compaq
machines.  I've seen queries (usually unanswered publicly) about
various HP/Compaq laptops over the past several months.  Most of the
discussion here seems to be about Dells (I've been happy with them at
previous jobs), IBMs (sound good) and Toshibas (I'm pretty
dissatisfied with my old Toshiba laptop).

I tried booting the FreeSBIE CD on the HP ZE4805 and it looked like
there where problems reading from the CD drive later in the booting
process.  I also tried booting the FreeBSIE CD on another random HP
laptop and it appeared to lockup just after loading the acpi module.
I've seen reports about needing special acpi tables for some systems.

Stuart
-- 
I've never been lost; I was once bewildered for three days, but never lost!
                                        --  Daniel Boone