Linux Laptop

[ward at pong.be (Ward Vandewege)]

On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 04:41:23AM -0400, James Kramer wrote:
> I need a new laptop.  The HP NX6125 sounds like my type of machine.

It's almost perfect. A colleague got one and is very happy with it. All but
for one important detail.

The BIOS has DRM.

The machine has a mini-pci slot. The machine can come with a mini-pci wifi
card. HP charges $70 for an HP-branded intel card. This card is identical to
the intel card that you can pick up separately from newegg, but for the pci
ic. The firmware is identical. The non-hp branded intel card is about $40 at
newegg.

But; you can also buy a Ralink card made by MSI at newegg, for $20.

Now get this: the HP bios checks the pci id of the mini-pci card, and
*REFUSES TO BOOT* if you don't have an HP-branded card in there. It says
'illegal mini-pci card detected' or something along those lines.

Just for the heck of it, my colleague even tried an old modem mini-pci card
that we had lying around. Same problem.

HP is not the only company to do this. IBM does it too. Dell, notably, does
NOT. Nonsense about FCC requirements is just that - the third-party cards
that are sold (e.g. the MSI one) _are FCC approved_. And if Dell can get away
with not DRM'ing their machines, why on earth can HP and IBM not do this?

So; to get working wifi under linux, you need to pay a $50 HP premium. The
broadcom option (the default) does not work if you get a recent model nx6125:
1. broadcom does not release linux drivers
2. broadcom does not release 64-bit drivers
3. so ndiswrapper + asus windows drivers is the way forward
4. there are no asus drivers yet for the newest revisions of the card

Besides; ndiswrapper is a workaround. Ralink releases GPL'd drivers. They
work. Their hardware works. It's cheap.

I don't think this is acceptable. What's next - only HP branded RAM to be
used in HP laptops? At a small premium of, say, 250% of the going price?

Maybe someone will sue HP/IBM over this. They deserve it.

Ward.

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