j_cricket's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Pavilion g60-440US (NW144UA) PC No...
This laptop took a lot of tweaking to make me happy, but once I did, I was very happy with it.
There is a webcam that auto adjusts brightness. There is an internal microphone as well, so Skype (and other videophone apps) works well out of the box on the first try, both in Windows and in Linux. (I tested the 64-bit Skype in Kubuntu Jaunty Linux as well as in the pre-installed version of Windows Vista Home Premium).
The widescreen is 16:9, which is ok for widescreen movies, but actually doesn't seem as nice to me as 16:10 laptop screens. Nevertheless, the extra screen real estate horizontally the wider means that I can see more applications when they are open simultaneously.
There is a disadvantage of the wider case: the keyboard is way to the left, because a number keypad is added to the right. The touchpad is also off-center to the left, which is disconcerting to me. Also, the keys are in odd places and some (like the arrow keys) are smaller to accomodate all the extra keys from the number pad. If you type a lot on your laptop, this will be very difficult to get used to.
I don't like Windows Vista much, and it took me about 5 hours (as usual) to tweak the Home Premium version that was pre-installed so that it was just usable. HP added a lot of junkware that is pretty irritating to me as a power user, but perhaps is appealing to a clueless granny. (It took another hour to uninstall it as well as the nagware, such as Norton Security, that insisted I install it for a subscription fee, every minute.
The Recovery Disk is worthless -- it erases your entire hard drive and re-installs Windows Vista and all the HP junkware all over again, making it unusable. Fortunately, with help from the Internet, I was able to shrink the Vista partition down to less than 70GB and use the remainder of the 320GB hard drive for Kubuntu Linux (64-bit).
Kubuntu Linux installed and worked out of the box on this system. The webcam, internal mic, wireless card (a B/G/N Atheros card) all worked out of the box on Kubuntu Linux (Jaunty). The graphics, sound, and all hardware and software worked seamlessly.
This makes this laptop a clear winner for me, and it has become my favorite out of my 4 laptops for this reason.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 499 Operating System: Linux Processor: Intel Pentium III Processor speed: over 1000 Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches RAM: More than 256 Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
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