DarylDawkins.net

HP 1245DX Review

The good: Attractive design skips the usual gray and black; good battery life for a desktop replacement; touch-sensitive multimedia controls; Linux Friendly(relatively)

The bad: Slower performance than core 2 duo; low-res screen not ideal for HD content.

The bottom line: HP’s attractive, multimedia-friendly Pavilion dv7-1245dx is an inexpensive choice for a desktop replacement, as long as you don’t need too much horsepower under the hood.

Here is my review of the HP Pavillion DV7 1245 dx. I purchased in Feb 2009 and now just getting around to this review after some months with it.

My requirements for a laptop were simple. I didnt need the most powerful machine because my QuadCore Desktop will get utilized for any truly CPU intensive task. I needed somthing that had a large screen, full sized keyboard, good battery life and 64bit CPU. I needed something that would compliment my desktop system when I was away. Pretty simple. In that regards I did not need to spend alot of money so my goal was to find these qualities in a machine under $800.

The 1245DX seemed at the time the best choice for what I needed. It had all the requirements, including $700 price tag at the time. While the Turion X2 processor may not have been as fast as a similar spec core 2 duo, it is no slouch. Seeing how I was moving from a 32 bit single core CPU to this, I noticed a huge gain in performance in task such as Video encoding and ISO file creation.

The design of the dv7-1245dx is very similar to the smaller 15-inch dv5-1235dx. HP wisely makes the current dv line of laptops stand out from the crowd, skipping the typical glossy gray-and-black designs for a subtle cross-hatch pattern with a bronze tint, which is more likely to fit into your post-dorm-room decor. I also like the laptop’s single, long hinge, which keeps the display from wobbling.

The touch pad (which has wide-screen-like dimensions) and mouse buttons have a highly reflective mirrored finish. It shows fingerprints and smudges easily, but also offsets the bronze chassis color nicely. One other complaint: the mirrored finish on the touch pad glides less easily against the finger than a traditional touch-pad finish, causing a little bit of finger drag.

For a budget system, the series of lighted, touch-sensitive media controls above the keyboard look especially nice, glowing either white or orange depending on status (Wi-Fi on vs. off, for example which only works on windows.). There’s also a volume slider, but for sensitive volume tweaks I still prefer a physical wheel; touch-controlled volume sliders are finicky and lack the ability to do very fine adjustments. When the system is off or asleep, the button labels literally vanish into the mirrored strip above the keyboard.

The 17-inch wide-screen LCD display offers a 1,440×900 native resolution, which is typical in less expensive desktop replacements, but the more common 1,600×1,200 screens are better for watching HD video content. The glossy screen makes video content pop, but can cause distracting glare while trying to read or type, depending on the lighting in the room.

First Off there are some quick tips that you can do to make this faster right out of the box(for a little more cash however). The stock 5400 RPM drive provided the greatest opportunity for improvement so I decided to go with a Western Digital Scorpio 320GB 7200 RPM drive

This added an additional $89(newegg.com) to the price but was well worth it, especially since this laptop has 2 drive bays! The downside to running two drives however is decreased battery life. Right now my Scorpio has plenty of space still so I am only running 1 drive in it for now.

The other good part of adding a new drive to this is that you can keep the preinstalled copy of windows vista on the stock drive in case you need to sell the machine later on.

As the title implies, my plan was to install linux on this bad boy and see what I could squeeze out of it as far as performance goes and how that would compare to my previous 32bit P4.

So first thing was to crack open the machine and replace the hard drive, pretty simple task.

The two drive bays are visible in the picture above. I simply unscrewed the two black mounting screws from the mount tray and pulled the tab to remove the drive.

I then removed the original drive from the drive tray and replaced it with my new Scorpio (note that to use both drives at the same time, an additional drive tray is needed and not included, I found one using google)

After getting the drive back in, I was ready to install my OS. I first tried Fedora but due to some issues with the version of the kernel in Fedora 11 and unavailable ATI drives for it, I went with a more stable distro in Debian Lenny.

In both distros the install went very well, all hardware included wireless card, camera and mic were all detected.

One thing to note is that the included remote will not work unless you are running windoze.

As well, the touch controls may or may not need to be configured per app. Surprisingly in both KDE and GNOME my touch volume slider worked to control the volume. The media control buttons also work but need to be mapped per application first.

The wireless touch button also works in linux, however it does not change colors to indicate on or off. Mine stays an Amber color whether on or off. After a long bout of trying to figure out why my laptop could not see my SSID on my router which was 3 feet away, I used ‘iwlist’ tool to determine that the wireless card was not even on.

The 1245dx also has an ESATA port which is convenient for connecting external storage devices. I have found that linux kernel support for this does not seem to work until at least kernel version 2.6.30 which is in Fedora 11, but unfortunately not Debian lenny.

I ultimately choose Debian Lenny over Fedora because stability is more important than bleeding edge on my laptop. I dont want to be out on the road trying to fix drivers or something else crazy like that. Fedora is an excellent distro but better suited for my desktop right now.

Debian is stable, fast, small footprint, and has an excellent package management system. It also does not hold your hands like an Ubuntu distro. Very flexible and similar in alot of ways to my favoured OS, Slackware, Debian is the perfect compliment to this machine.

I use this machine mainly for development work, writing and compiling c/c++ code, as well as some multi media work such as encoding videos, creating and burning ISO files, and watching the occasional movie.

The 1440×900 resolution is certainly lower than the res on most 17″ monitors but certainly still HD quality(higher than 720p) and very much enjoyable to watch on. ATI drivers dont seem to be quite as up to par as nvidia drivers but they get the job needed for this non gaming system. Most of the issues I had revolve around getting the correct driver with support for the kernel you are running. Right now catalyst 9.9 has been released and this seems to work ok except for a few issues when running compiz.

All said, I am pretty happy with what I got for the price I paid. Under $800 including the Scorpio hard drive and I have a very capable system of being my desktop away from home

Since there aren’t any native 64 bit packages of skype for linux, it has been somewhat of a challenge to get a workable solution. I’ve gone through the pain so you can enjoy.

My Specs:

HP DV7-1245DX laptop
AMD Turion X2 64 bit dual core 2.1 Ghz
Fedora 10 x86_64
KDE 3.5
Linux TeK360 2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Feb 23 13:00:23 EST 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

You can install Skype with either static or dynamically linked libraries. I recommend the dynamic version, since it makes use of the existing system libraries that are managed by Fedora. This will minimize any potential library conflicts.
The only thing necessary for you to check is to make sure you have all the 32-bit versions of the libraries Skype requires.
you can use “ldd” to analyze the library requirements for skype. I have conveniently done this step for you and compiled the appropriate yum statement.

as root:

yum install alsa-lib.i386 dbus-libs.i386 e2fsprogs-libs.i386 expat.i386 fontconfig.i386 freetype.i386 glib2.i386 glibc.i686 keyutils-libs.i386 krb5-libs.i386 libcap.i386 libgcc.i386 libICE.i386 libpng.i386 libselinux.i386 libSM.i386 libstdc++.i386 libX11.i386 libXau.i386 libxcb.i386 libXcursor.i386 libXdmcp.i386 libXext.i386 libXfixes.i386 libXi.i386 libXinerama.i386 libXrandr.i386 libXrender.i386 libXScrnSaver.i386 libXv.i386 openssl.i386 qt.i386 qt-x11.i386 zlib.i386

Now, you can install the dynamic version of Skype from here

Choose “Dynamic”, near the lower left of the box in the middle of the page.
you should be downloading the file “skype-2.0.0.72.tar.bz2″

Now, open up a new terminal window, and “cd” into the directory that you downloaded Skype into, and extract and run Skype.

cd ~/skype
tar -jxvf skype-2.0.0.72.tar.bz2
cd skype-2.0.0.72
./skype

Skype should come right up, since you now have all the libraries.

Log in. Skype should now be up and running.

In the main Skype window, hit the “S” in the lower left corner to bring up the menu, then choose Options.

Skype sound device setting:

In Skype, go to Sound Devices. I recommend setting your sound devices to something that contains “hw:SB,0″ in its name. Do this for all 3 choices: sound in, sound out, and ringing. Choose the name of your device that best matches the hardware you want to use. Definitely avoid generic single-word names like “default”, “hdmi”, “pulse”, and so on.
mine looks like:
HDA ATI SB (hw:SB,0)

Skype video settings:

In Skype, go to Video Devices. Try selecting your webcam from the list, and hit Test. My integrated HP webcam was previously setup automatically when I installed Fedora. Fedora has really improved their webcam support in this latest release. Almost every known webcam should work by now.

Now, you’re ready to make a call. Call “echo123″ first, to make sure your sound works. Call your friends, to make sure your video works

And thats pretty much it. Enjoy Skype 2 on 64 bit linux!

Myths

• “You don’t need 64-bit software with less than 3 GB RAM”
• “There are less drivers for 64-bit OS”
• “You will need all new software, all 64-bit”
• “64-bit software is twice as fast”

read more…

Myths and facts about 64-bit Linux(®).