Over the weekend, I bought a HP Presario R3140US laptop from MicroCenter. The specs on the laptop is fairly impressive: AMD64, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB HD, 1280×800 WXGA, DVD+RW, and built-in 802.11g. All this for $1,549.99. I got the last unit in the store, so I got the display unit for an additional 5% off. And there is a $250 mail-in rebate on it. And, by getting a MicroCenter credit card, there’s another $100 rebate. So, it’ll ultimately cost less than $1200 for a 64 bit laptop with a DVD burner.
I did a fresh install of WinXP Home Edition and had no problems getting everything going. The wireless picked up my network with no problems. And the wide screen is really nice. The only major negative I see about it so far is that this thing is heavy. It’s over 7 lbs. But, since it has most all the features of a desktop that I’d want, I can live with it.
I then tried to install 64 bit version of Fedora on another partition. However, it did not have support for the ALPS touchpad. Come on, no support for touchpads? There isn’t a connector for an external mouse except through USB. And I don’t have a USB mouse. I tried Fedora first since it’s a free 64 bit Linux. I guess I might have to splurge and spend $90 for SuSE 9.1 Professional.