A few thought on the performance of my HP Dv2415 NR laptop running various operating systems
A couple of weeks ago I received my HP Dv2415 laptop. I purchased it used, but surprisingly enough, I found a near mint laptop in the box. I quickly came upon a dilemma. I had to decide which OS I would use. I tried Vista 32, Vista 64, Windows 7, and Linux (ubuntu 8.10 and 8.04). Here is a laymans brief analysis of the performance of the laptop running each of the systems.
These are the specs of the laptop:
Processor AMD Turion 64 X2 mobile technology TL-56 / 1.8 GHz
RAM Installed Size 2 GB
Technology DDR II SDRAM
Hard Drive 160 GB – Serial ATA-150 – 5400 rpm
Optical Storage Type DVDRW (+R DL) / DVD-RAM
Card reader type 5 in 1 card reader
Supported flash memory cards Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, SD Memory Card, XD-Picture Card, Memory Stick Pro
Display Type 14.1 in TFT active matrix
Max Resolution 1280 x 800 ( WXGA )
Networking / Wireless LAN Supported Yes
Data link protocol Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Fast Ethernet
Networking standards IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
Interfaces: 3 x Hi-Speed USB – 4 pin USB Type A, 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire) – 4 pin FireWire, 1 x Display / video – VGA – 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15), 1 x Modem – Phone line – RJ-11, 1 x Network – Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX – RJ-45, 1 x Display / video – S-video output, 1 x Audio – SPDIF output, 1 x Microphone – Input – Mini-phone 3.5 mm, 1 x Docking / port replicator, 1 x Headphones – Output – Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm
WINDOWS 7 BETA 7000
Well, this will be the shortest review. In short, it doesn’t work. I get through the install and at the final reboot, I can’t get past the windows login screen. Perhaps I will try doing an update install from vista sp1, but for the purpose of reviewing it with this laptop, it’s sufficient to say it won’t work as a simple install; at least, not for me.
VISTA 64
Ahh yes, the power of 64 bits at your fingertips is irrresssistable. Unfortunately, it just didn’t do the trick for me. First off, I didn’t really notice any performance gains over a typical vista install. In fact, I immediately ran into problems installing the ricoh mediacard drivers. Apparently, there wasn’t a 64 bit installer for that driver. All the other drivers worked fine. HP has both 64 and 32 bit drivers, but they are all the same files. So, I suspect all the drivers are 32 bit version.
As I mentioned, the speed of my lappy seemed average. Firefox took about 13-15 seconds to load from a cold start. I clocked my startup time at roughly 50 seconds from shutdown to usability. Essentially, I was getting the same speed in vista as I seemed to be getting on a pentium mobile 1.7 ghz laptop, except now I had aero. Of course, multiple apps worked better. I like to work with skype, yahoo messenger, 10 tabs in firefox, and the regular slew of firewall and AV software running. So, with that in mind, I didn’t really see much lag when opening files and very little stuttering with the aero graphics.
Here is where the real problem came in. Resuming from standby was a nightmare. It would take at least 30 seconds to get to the desktop. So, I close the lid, walk away for an hour or so, come back, and have to waite 30 seconds for the lappy to be usable. This was unacceptable. So, with that said, I got rid of 64. I noticed no performance gains and the standby resume was a waste of time. Also, I’m only using 2gb of ram so, I don’t see the point in running 64 where I can’t install more than 2gb of ram anyway. Also, I ran some benchmarks, but all they told me was that the laptop is faster than a pentium D and slower than some Dual Cores. I really couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I also could not find any meaningful information from the benchmarks that you couldn’t figure out from looking at the specs of the lappy.
VISTA 32 bit
This was basically the same as 64 in most respects. The performace with apps opening and startup was similar to the 64 bit version. The major difference was that all drivers installed fine and the resume from standby was much quicker, about 10 seconds at most. While this time is not exceptional, its not terrible either. Also, the battery life seemed the same under both 32 and 64 bit version. In short, vista 32 beats out 64 with this lappy because all drivers install and the stanby resume time is far superior. Since all other functions and speeds seem about the same, I have no reason to go with 64, even though the lappy is 64 bit capable.
UBUNTU 8.10
For a long time, I have been playing around with various linux distros from suse to dreamlinux to damn small linux and others. Always, I mean always, some functions seemed to be lost that forced me to go back to windows. This holds true for Ubuntu 8.10 also. I used the Wubi installer and ran it. This was totally painless, but it did take about an hour since the installer must download the distro before it installs. I used 15 gb of my 160gb hard drive for ubuntu. Upon initial startup, I was pleasantly surprised when a notification popped up asking me if I’d like to use windows wireless drivers and nvidia drivers. Major bonus linux, congratulations. I installed the drivers and I was surfing the web in no time. I was pleasantly surprised how everything seemed to work effortlessly and it was snappy too. Resuming from standby took about 1 second. Yeah buddy I though to myself… I could get used to this.
Then came the problems. I wanted to install skype and use kopete with yahoo messengers video chat. No.. i’m sorry, your distro is to new for this operation quipped my laptop. I installed kopete and ran configuration. My webcam popped up and I thought I was good to go. But, apparently, with yahoo messenger, you must install jasper. I did this and instead of getting an error saying I need jasper when I click to invite someone to view my webcam, I get nothing. I did some reading, and it seems that the problem is due to ubuntu being a relatively new version and obviously, with new version, new problems.
Next, I decided to give skype a try. Nope, I’m sorry, once again, your distro is too new. Of course, I’m sure I could delve into the forums and make it work, but screw that. I have a life.
In fairness, I actually suspect that my problem was that I installed a 64 bit version of ubuntu, but I don’t really want to go back and figure it out. Needless to say, wubi installed ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop and I had problems with skype and kopete. Everything else seemed fine. I didn’t try hooking up a printer or anything else, except popping an sd card in my mediacard reader. It worked. Nevertheless, everything was quick and most things seemed to work. Except for Flash in firefox, which needed a command line prompt I found in some forum. So, that worked too, but it wasn’t a cakewalk. It was more of a pie walk. I decided that I’m digging Ubuntu either way, why not try 8.04.
UBUNTU 8.04
It works. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize at the time, but I had to have an ethernet connection set up initially and run the updater to get my windows based drivers. In version 8.10, It was all just there and my wireless card worked upon installation. After running the updater, installing 250 packages, and waiting an hour, everything was like in ubuntu 8.10. My wireless worked, my nvidia card let me run all the OS eyecandy, and it was good. Then, I tried kopete. Well… it also worked. Then, I tried installing skype. Well… that worked too. So, now I have a sweet linux distro, with everything working properly, nice eye candy, uhm.. for some reason super awesome screensavers, and of course…. I have my webcam stuffs working as well.
This screensaver is beautiful. The 3d motion is smooth and the graphics are crisp. I can’t understand why the windows screensavers are so lame.
I am a happy camper. Let me explain a little more. From a cold start, firefox opens in about 3 seconds. In vista, it was about 13-15 seconds. All my plugins work in firefox. I am a fan of stumbleupon and without it, the browser is nothing. I’m talking to you OPERA. I haven’t seen any lag in opening applications and everything reacts so quickly. The eyecandy is far superior to vista’s aero. I like the wiggly windows and I like how my windows fade out smoothly, unlike in vista. In vista, sometimes it would stutter a bit. Also, the 3d desktop feature (meaning the switch windows function) is cooler on ubuntu than vista. I didn’t really like the lame sideways row of windows areo did. It was sort of weak. But, ubuntu’s is a bit more eyecatching. You get the active window in front and then the previous and next window facing each other on opposite sides of the active windows.
This is pretty sweet. I like it much better than Aero.
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WILL READ IN THIS POST:
I have read many reviews about this laptop and read one thing that kinda scared me. The darned thing gets hot. You can’t put it on your lap or else you will burn yourself. I found this to be accurate,………………with vista. I would notice after 10-15 minutes of use that the bottom rear left hand side of the lappy got quite a bit warm. In fact, I would have to adjust the laptop because the heat was too much. Luckily, the power adapter attaches on the other side. I don’t think there will be issues of accidentally self soldering the power adapter to the motherboard by simple virtue of the heat the lappy puts out.
THIS IS NOT THE CASE WITH UBUNTU.
What I realized after playing in ubuntu for a while is that my thighs are not burnin’ up. In fact, I can say with 100% certainty that my laptop runs cooler under ubuntu and faster than under vista. Don’t ask me why, don’t ask me for specs or temps; it’s just what it is my friends. My laptop runs cooler using the same nvidia drivers and wireless drivers as in vista, but just cooler.
THE RESULTS:
After playing with each OS, yes you guessed it, i’m writting this blog in Ubuntu 8.04. I can do everything with it and it’s snappy, cool, and uhm… cool. The only problem for me is that I am required to have windows for law school. I will continue to keep a dual boot system with vista and Ubuntu 8.04. In fact, i’m about to install ubuntu on the desktop. I’m totally sold on Ubuntu. I always had problems with linux, but with this laptop, it just works. For obvious reasons, even if law school didn’t require me to have windows, I would still keep a dual boot vista/xp/ubuntu setup. There is too much software and freeware made for windows that just won’t work properly or easily with linux. But, for most things, Ubuntu is far superior. I surf the web, watch streaming movies, video chat, write papers, and conduct research with my laptop. I surmise that Ubuntu will work just fine for me. But just in case, i’m keeping my vista ready to go.
