*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

For now, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy what I have already. I'm sure that someone somewhere will do a QX9300 swap and report it. We know the X9000 will work and that is a big step up from the T8100 I have now.

 

Doesn't the multiplier change during the various Speedstep stages? Yes, it does. (rhetorical question). So, if Speedstep can change it, why can't something else (software) change it?

 

Hey, I'm just your average middle-class working stiff, too. I just happen to excel at getting in on good deals, knowing that I can make some $$$ and at the same time have the opportunity to "play" with the latest and greatest. I got a tremdously good deal on my HDX20 (around $1100) and added the RAM and hard drives myself at the best possible prices (or free). I am confident that I can sell the HDX20, should I decide to do that, and make a comfortable profit. It's my business. It doesn't scare me to do buy and sell. Worse case is I break even and someone gets a terrific deal, but I'm pretty sure I can bank some buck if I sold my Dragon right now.

I just got my "Order Accepted" email from HP on my HDX18t (both of them ). So, slated to ship on 10/14/08. Can't wait to try out that Quad core with Tunebite!

 

Because you also need a PLL, voltage regulator and BIOS that supports overclocking. HDX ain't go it. That's why the dashed hope of a work around was to adjust the FSB instead which also overclocks the RAM and anything connected to the FSB.

In the desktop world, especially with ASUS mobos, you can adjust FSB, voltages, timings, multipliers, etc in BIOS. For those in the desktop world who do not have a BIOS that allows access to these vitals, one looks to alter the FSB clock. You can't overclock as high with this method as things get unstable sooner.

 

Both the QX9300 and the X9000 Detail sheets refer to the same design document page.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/DetailsPrinterFriendly.aspx?sSpec=SLB5J

http://processorfinder.intel.com/DetailsPrinterFriendly.aspx?sSpec=SLAZ3

The page is here:
http://developer.intel.com/design/core2XE/documentation.htm

We should be able to learn what we need from this.

 

2.0

You once said that the HDX can take SSDs. What else can it take internally other than SATA?

Thanks

 

In the drive bays? Any type of SATA storage device in the 2.5" form factor. SSD or HDD.

 

Will drives be made for SATA for some time to come...including SSDs?

Thanks

 

from SIW report

ohci1394 RICOH OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller 6.0.6001.18000 Kernel Driver Running Demand Start system32\DRIVERS\ohci1394.sys 1394 OpenHCI Port Driver / Microsoft® Windows® Operating System

02 / 06 / 00 PCI OHCI FireWire Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE-1394 Controller Hewlett-Packard Company

IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers || RICOH OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

 

Not really a problem, more of an oddity really, but I just noticed something on my HDX9000...


When I am in "Theater Mode", my touchpad lock light flashes very rapidly the amber-orange color. It goes away when I press the lock button (when the light should be blue).

You can barely notice it -- but then again, I DID notice it. It isn't bright enough of a flash to even be noticeable if you're watching a movie.

Anybody else have their HDX do this?

 

You think with the quad core the HDX18 would beat the HDX 20 inch even though it has half the power in its GPU?

 

Could you let me/us know how the two compare when you get it? I'm trying to narrow down my options for an HDX20 but a quad core does look nice..

 

Is the 8800GTS faster than the 9600GT? The quad core is nice on the HDX18t.

 

Hi there.
My first posting, I got a Dragon with the T7700 processor; on page 51 2.0 said: "You can upgrade the processor with any Penryn processor later if you like. The Santa Rosa motherboard you have is socket P. In fact when the quad core QX9300 debuts later this year, you can go ahead and drop that one in." My question is, will it matter the two processors being different? I mean 45nm, and 65nm, and also, will the bios have to be changed? Thank you..
Oscar

 

I have something strange with my Dragon. Every once in a while there is a dull but audible "pop" sound. I think its coming from the monitor. I don't think its the speakers, it sounds like its coming from inside the plastic. It just happens randomly, doesn't seem to be connected to anything the laptop is doing. It just happened now while the laptop was idle, only running the Vista screensaver. I haven't touched it for hours.

Anyone know what it could be?

 

Yes the 8800GTS is a faster card. The 9600GT is made to be more power efficient for laptops sacrificing speed. The 8800GTS was originally a desktop model that was adopted for notebooks. It uses more power and which allows better speed.

The 9800 is the combination of the two, not as much power as the 8800gts, but faster.

Here is a comparison of the 2:

8800m GTS

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8800M-GTS.6934.0.html

9600m GT

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html

You can do a search on the site for the 9800m. There are a couple versions.

 

Sure you can drop it in, but it will never run at full power due to the HDX20 having a locked bus speed of 800 MHz and the Quads need 1066 MHz.

That is best case scenario. The BIOS may not even recognize the CPU and just give you post errors. If that is the case it is extremely unlikely that HP will release an update to support quad core when the bus is not able to.

At the time he posted that it was not yet known that the quad would use 1066 MHz bus, and I believe that was before we had determined that the HDX20 motherboard is completly unable to overclock.

 

It depends on what you are doing. If you are gaming or doing any thing 3D related then no. The GPU is your bottle neck. Now if you compared a HDX20 with an 8100 to the quad core with the 8800gts GPU you would see some FPS increases, but with the 9600 GT you could have a 100 core 999.9 GHz CPU and not have any FPS change. (With the way games and OS's are programmed today).

If you are doing video and/or audio conversion, or compiling code. Then yes it will blow the HDX20 away. Especially if you are doing more then one of these at a time. That is were the quad core really shines: multi-tasking

 

Thanks CompTrekkie for the explanation.
Guess I'll leave the unit as it is, not worth the risk of putting the quad and then find out that it isn't recognized.

 

No problem! Pretty soon, though, there won't be any HDX20's left, and your choice will be simple! (especially since you want a WUXGA model, right?)

 

No problem, happy to be of help

 

Hi guys,
This isn't strictly a HDX related problem but rather something to do w\ vista64:

When I play games they all occasionally minimize themself (about once every hour) - The games are fine and probably some hidden application is just popping up with an update or something like that. It has been going on for a while and I have already tried in a 'somewhat' methodic manner to narrow down the problem by either unistalling stuff or trying to disable updates in all sensitive applications (win defender, firewall...) - but I got nowhere (I have to say I am not an expert with this kind of things) -

Can anyone suggest a way to figure out which application (s) is (are) doing it? I use AVG antivirus with all options on (so I should be aware if there is a trojan or some spyware that could be responsible) but I have also tried to uninstall AVG in case the antivirus itself was causing it -

I am wondering if by checking the date and time of events in the administrative tools I could manage to narrow down the possible causes... any brilliant solutions?

Thanks

 

With all the talk about upgrading processors and the demise of the Dragon, I am somewhat regretting my purchase.

Not the Dragon in itself, but my config.

I passed on the 1080P screen because I thought, and still really do not know, that I would not be able to calibrate it for photography with an eye one display 2 colorimeter.

The second bad choice was to cheap out on the processor. I went with:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T5850 (2.16GHz)

My question is can I upgrade that to the fastest available for the HDX? What would the improvement be. Maybe there is hope there as it seems like the advise for those with processors in the midrange of the HDX line would see little benefit. However maybe I would get a better bang here being at the lower end of the processor spectrum.

My fear is mine has a different chipset or something that would prevent the upgrade...

Regards,
Scott

 

Thanks. Thats that I thought..Blah. I wants me a HDXx9000.

 

I am wondering if I should keep my Dragon. I need some advice.

I had a zd7000 laptop. It died last summer. Apparently these laptops have known motherboard problems and, in fact, there is a class action lawsuit about this. HP fixed my laptop 6x and everytime it quit after a short period of use. Now they are offering to replace it.

I use my laptop for work as a desktop replacement. I never play games. I do some photography work on it too. I do a lot of document editing and CAD work.

I generally work from a home office. I occasionally work from other sites. I like to take my laptop on holidays and away with me on weekend trips. I generally drive to all these locations, though I do sometimes fly.

My zd7000 had the gorgeous 17 inch Ultrabright 1680x1050 screen. That is why I bought it. I spend hours and hours in front of my laptop. I also generally run an external 20 inch monitor when I am not on the road. (80% of the time.)

It has taken HP a long time to get this resolved. I was running a slow desktop computer and sick of that, so I went out and bought an hdx9494 last weekend. It has a 2 week hassle free return period.

HP can't give me a replacement laptop with the 1680x1050 screen. They don't have any in their warranty inventory. The best they can come up with is a dv7-1177. It has a 17 inch 1440x900 screen. The specs are here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...mp;dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_CAEN

The dv7-1177 is or can be faster than my hdx9494. The dv7 can go to 8GB of RAM. My Dragon can only go to 4GB. The video board is faster. Nvidia 9600 versus the 8800, though they are related. The 1177 has a 1066MHz front side bus, versus the 800 MHz on the hdx9494. The dv7-1177 will obviously be much nicer to carry, but my zd7000 wasn't light either and I didn't mind it.

I am loving my Dragon.

I love, love, love the screen. Mine has the 1680x1050 and its nicer than the 20 inch Dell widescreen LCD that I use as the second monitor. The screen on my zd was nice, but the 20 inch LCD on the Dragon is way nicer. With the zd, I used my Dell monitor as the main display. Now I use the Dragon as the main display. Its just brighter and clearer. I spent hours and hours on my laptop editing documents and doing CAD work. My eyes aren't the best. I'm loving the Dragon display.

I love the Dragon keyboard. Its the best laptop keyboard I have ever used. With my zd, I carried a USB keyboard and used it. I would probably do the same with the dv7. I do this because a) I didn't care for the zd keyboard compared to the USB keyboard, although it wasn't too bad and b) the ergonomic setup of the screen size, distance, etc, wasn't right for me. The Dragon has excellent ergonomics for me.

I LOVE the fact that the Dragon comes with 2 hard drive bays. I'm a photographer and the file sizes on digital cameras keep growing and growing. I could store all my photos with an external drive, but I find that a pain because I often want to work on photos when travelling, etc and that means I need to bring along the external drive.

Both the dv7 and the hdx20 have an eSATA port. Much, much better than USB for storage purposes.

My zd had a single 80 GB drive and it was always full. I've wasted a lot of time moving stuff aound trying to make it fit into limited hard drive space on laptops. The 2 hard drive bays and the eSATA port on the Dragon are a godsend for a guy like me.

I'm bummed that the HDX20 has a 4GB RAM limit. I'm a linux power user and I am running compilers, CAD, etc. simultaneously. 4 GB is a good amount of RAM, but more is better.

The T8100 processor in the Dragon is about the same as the P7350 in the Passmark benchmark. I think the T processor line will allow more future upgrades, ie X9000 or even a QX9300. I'm not sure what the upgrade path is for P processors.

I wonder how long the Dragon will remain fast enough to keep me happy. My zd had a 3.2 GHz dual core Pentium 4 with 1 GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM hard drive. It was OK for speed, but now that I run my Dragon, I would find it slow. Very slow. My Dragon is very fast running the 32bit version of Fedora 8.

I wonder how I will like travelling with the Dragon. I always carry my laptop as carry on luggage when I fly. That means it gets carried around airports. While the Dragon is a lot heavier than a regular high end 17 inch laptop, I don't have to bring along an external hard drive or a USB keyboard as I would with one of them. The spec sheet weight difference is 16 pounds versus 8 pounds, but the actual weight that gets carried is probably more like 16 pounds versus 12 pounds.

I also carry an SLR camera as carry on luggage when I fly. I realize I will not be travelling light when I go on holidays !

Money is also a factor here. I paid big money for my zd. Nearly $3000 with the spare battery. That is what a high end laptop cost back in 2005. In fact, if you go on Dell's website and spec a high end 17 inch business laptop, they are still $2500+.

I don't regret spending $3000 on the zd7000. I needed it at the time and it worked great for 20 months. I took my work with me wherever I went and I could work comfortably from it. I am, however, bummed that it became unreliable after 20 months of use and I then went through a year of hell while HP tried to get it working properly. And now here I am looking at spending more money on a high end HP laptop.

My Dragon cost $1600. I think that is an incredible value. So much hardware and it works so well for a very reasonable price.

The dv7-1177 I'll be getting from HP listed for $1500 when HP sold it. The dv7-1027 is similar and it sells for $1550 on HP's site. I've advertised the dv7 locally and I'll be lucky to get $1000 for it.

I paid $1600 for the Dragon. If I keep the dv7 and return the Dragon, this will cost me nothing. Although, after running the Dragon I find my Dell widescreen to have poor image quality and I would probably go out and buy a 20 inch HP monitor as a second monitor. They are about $300.

If I keep the Dragon, this will cost me $600. Is a Dragon worth $600 more than the dv7 ?

I guess it really bugs me that I spent big dollars for my zd7000 and didn't get a very long useful life from it. And here I am again spending another $600 on a high end HP laptop. Is this going to be money well spent ? I could make the dv7 work.

I'd be happy spending another $600 if my Dragon worked well for 3 to 5 years. No doubt there will be faster and better laptops in a few years, but laptops depreciate quickly and I don't want to get into the habit of upgrading every couple years. It quickly gets expensive. I am somewhat doing this with digital cameras and I don't want to be doing it with laptops as well.

So is a Dragon worth $600 more than the dv7 ? Will it work well for 3 to 5 years ?

Sorry for the long sob story. Any and all comments and advice is welcome.

Thanks

 

Scott,
I'll let 2.0 answer the processor question, but you don't see speed increase just with a processor upgrade -you need to upgrade your RAM as well to really see a major improvement. Of course it depends on what programs you're running also, but the calibration issue leads me to think you're not running any Adobe programs - or at least not the full versions.

I'm curious as to why you think it's a problem with color calibration for the display? Or maybe you've never heard of Color Profiles for graphics editing software?

 

I am an amateur photographer and I think the Dragon (1680x1050) is an excellent photography laptop.

I am not aware of any reason why any display could not be calibrated. I run Linux and I have 2 avenues to adjust monitor color attributes. Nvidia ships a display setup tool that allows color correction and my KDE desktop environment allows gamma adjustment as well.

The 1680x1050 is very bright and crisp. It also seems to have a very deep black level and can display shadow detail much better than other laptops. Maybe not as good as high end LCD TVs or even plasma TVs, but that is what the HDMI port is for.

As far as 1920x1200 versus 1680x1050, neither of these displays will display any modern digital image at full size, they will all be cropped or rescaled. So to me, it doesn't really matter which display the machine has.

On the processing side, the Dragon has really good processing power via the higher end T processors (T8100, T9500) all the way up to the X9000 and possibly the QX9300.

The Dragon is a bit short on RAM capabilities. It will allow 4GB. It would be nice if it would allow 8GB.

The Dragon has 2 hard drive bays ! The Canon 50D is now 15 MP. The raw files are nearly 20MB each.

I know that a lot of photographers use the small, ultralight laptops in the field. They are, however, extremely limited in what they can do. If you need to process images in the field, I can hardly think of a better laptop than the HDX20.

 

I was under the impression that people on this forum have installed 8GB RAM on the Dragon, recognized and usable in 64 Bit.

 

Hey,

I've got a HDX9250EA using Vista x64. I'm trying to connect my speakers to it, and have music both coming out of the 'in-built' speakers + my external speakers.

If I connect it to the front ports, only the external speakers will play.

If I connect it to the back and go into the Sound Config and select Quadraphonic, it works when I test it in there, but no music software will play it through the external speakers.

Any tips?

Thanks
Stephen

 

No I think you misunderstand or I was not clear. Probablly not clear on my part.

I run the full adobe CS3 suite. I am a photographer. I calibrate my system with a Gretag Mcbeth I1D2(Eye One). Now when I went to buy the Dragon, I was thinking that in the calibration SW I had noticed a calibration for plasma displays, but it was greyed out. I assumed it applied to calibrating the new flat screen TV's. So my thought was I would not be able to calibrate a 1080P laptop screen, thinking TV world. But the more I think about it, I think I could profile it. Were talking software here, not a TV. My reasoniong was flawed.... I also soft proof photos going to the lab with a profile for the specific equipment used at the lab. I use WHCC.com BTW, great job with prints.

I'd say I'm fairly informed about color profiles. But I am fairly UNinformed on 1080P screens, high def TV or any of that. That was my confusion.

I am also running 4gig Ram. May go to 8 when PSCS4 comes out.

ST

 

I hope you are right... it would make my day to know I could upgrade to 8GB of RAM.

The specification sheet here states that it has a 4GB limit. I don't understand why it would, especially when it ships with a 64bit OS, but that is what it states.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01490775&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3747924

Does anyone have 8 GB of RAM in their Dragon ? Do all the Dragons use the same MB, or are there different versions ?

Thanks.

Edit: user Lancorp on page 209 of this thread lists a 20" Dragon with 8 GB of RAM in his signature. Do these machines support 8GB ?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=169232&page=209

 

2.0

Currently I have the 2x160 GB 7200. Will I run out of options to upgrade these with the industry moving away from SATA drives? If I get the 320s would I just swap out the caddies? Actually I suppose I could replace one drive for the boot drive. But SSD would be nice for speed and battery.

How much snappier is yours with the upgraded drives?

I would imagine that the Dragon is better for video and audio than the HDX 16 and 18.

Have you heard anything about eyestrain with LED backlit displays?

Much thanks for all your shared wisdom.

 

elmerfud:

It looks like you might have finally caught up with that cwazy wabbit.
From an earlier post:

" Originally Posted by lancorp

OK, now for the good news. First, a 4GB SODIMM module seems to work fine in the HDX. As a matter of fact TWO of them work great!

I installed two of the fantastically-priced 4GB DDR2-667 G.Skill SODIMM's purchased from Newegg. Price was $170 each! (nearest competitor was $389 (Kingston) and $479 (Crucial) EACH! (Click-thru using Fatwallet and get an extra 3% back...just enough to pay for the shipping!)

My F.39 BIOS shows 8192MB installed.

Vista 64 shows 8190 Physical Memory Total, and so does CPU-Z. The modules are 5-5-5-15, which is what the 2GB modules I was using, so no RAM performance losses.

So, now I have a fully working HDX w/8GB RAM!! Yippee!! "

Be vewy vewy quiet.

 

Straight from the horses mouth...YES, the Dragon does support 8GB RAM. I have it and am using it.

 

You guys just made my day.

The Dragon has an excellent hardware base. The biggest single gripe I have about laptops in general is their lack of upgradeability.

I am very happy to hear that I could perform significant upgrades to the processor and memory so that it will be able to keep up with my future computing needs.

 

Make sure, obviously, you get Vista 64 bit.

 

64 bit Linux, baby. It rocks, for me anyway.

Unfortunately, I installed 32 bit Linux, thinking I could never go to 8 GB. Now I need to reinstall/upgrade. Again. : (

 

The memory issue was already answered for you. 8 GB baby!! Now for some more good news. The 8800 is faster than the 9600. Here is some data for you:

9600

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html

8800

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8800M-GTS.6934.0.html

The 9600 is newer but is specifically made for laptops. It is made to use lower voltage, so they are powered down. The 8800 is more powerful and uses more power. It is aimed at the Desktop Replacement crowd.

 

Thanks.

So the hdx9494 has the same memory capacity (although cheaper because 800 MHz bus instead of 1066 MHz) and a better video card. Good. Its also got the 2 hard drive bays and the much, much nicer 20 inch display. Its getting easier and easier to justify my Dragon.

Anyone care to comment on the upgradeability of the P7350 versus the T8100 ? The P7350 is a 25 watt device. Can the dv7 be upgraded to a T processor or even and x900x processor ?

Thanks

Its funny that the HDX20s run 8GB of RAM because this brochure also says they won't.

http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/05/ds_hdx1.gif
http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/05/ds_hdx2.gif

 

I remember when IBM/LENOVO told me that I couldn't install more than a 60 GB HD on my Thinkpad.

Balderdash

 

2.0

Help!

When I called to purchase Naturally Speaking, Nuance said the v. 10 won't run on 64 bit Vista!

Do you know of any solutions?

Thanks

 

Hi all, I'm a new hdx user, the model is 9494nr. I'm using a projector in dual screen setup to watch movies. Is there a way to turn off the main monitor (1680*1050 laptop screen) and keep the second screen on?

thanks.

 

Yes, press: fn and f4 at the same time. It will cycle through both on, just the main, and just the secondary.

fn is located on the bottom left next to the windows key.

 

Hi.
I'm new to the forums.
My HDX 9494NR arrived yesterday. WOW! BIG AND MEAN! I love it.
Just two things I want to add to this forum.
First, I bought the 8GB (2x4gb) ram upgrade from Newegg by GSKILL. It works just fine, but my WEI score for ram is a very low 5.0. Anyone else with 8gb's of GSKILL willing to let me know what there's is?
I may pop the stock ram in and see if my score is any different.

The other thing is. I've had an Alienware Odyssey backpack for two years, but when my HDX arrived yesterday I was sad to see it didn't fit!
So, anyone who has an Alienware Odyssey mALX backpack shoot me a PM! I'll buy it off of you.
And too anyone trying to get one themselves. WATCH OUT! The standard Alienware backpacks look exactly the same as the mALX ones.

 

Welcome to the 8 GIG CLUB!! I have the same RAM in my HDX. My WEI memory score is also 5.0. Keep in mind, this ram is slower 667 RAM with 5-5-5-18 timings. Nothing spectacular. It's quantity, not quality, if you know what I mean!

Bags? I know all about 'em. I have the mALX bag by Alienware. But, I don't want to sell it! It's the first 20"-capable bag I like! Keep an eye out on ebay. The Alienware store puts them up every now and then. If you want, do the "ask the seller" thing if they have more. They are very nice people. The standard one does LOOK like the mALX, sort of. The mALX is more square at the top.

In any case, enjoy your new Dragon! When you have a free day, read through all the posts here...there is a wealth of info from some pretty nice people.

 

The industry won't moved away from SATA any time soon. They're still making PATA drives.

As for the improvement going from 160GB 7200RPM to 320BG 7200 Seagate...

In a word: ****!

Maybe the 16, but I don't know about it being better than the HDX18. HDX 9000 is better for games, I'll tell you that. I'm having a ball playing games on this thing.

High nit (measure of brightness) screens that have high DPI can cause headaches/migraines at near max brightness.

Thanks for the compliment.

 

Craptatstic! A program like that unable to run in Vista x64. Nuance has to be bloody kidding me.

Anyway, here's a workaround to get it to work:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6035_102-0.html?forumID=44&threadID=280578&messageID=2780353

Look at post #5.

I'll see if I can find other workarounds later...

 

What kernel are you using?

 

$ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.26.5-28.fc8 #1 SMP Sat Sep 20 09:32:58 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

It doesn't see all 4GB of RAM, only the lowest 3GB. I have been told that will be fixed with 2.6.27. We'll see.

Most things work really well in Fedora 8. WiFi worked automagically at the first boot up. The Nvidia did too, once I installed kod-nvidia, which took all of 30 seconds. Everything is sweet except that for some reason the CDROM drive doesn't work with a CD, sound only works through the headphones and I can't get the eSATA port to work.

I think these issues will be resolved shortly.

The HDX and Fedora/Linux are a natural fit. A very elegant/powerful laptop with a very versatile, stable OS. I am in love.

 

2.0:

LEDs apparently can be dangerous to look at, and I wonder how that might impact backlit LED displays. Some Mac Book Pro LED backlit screen owners have reported some significant eyestrain and other effects.

Thanks for thinking about the Naturally Speaking problem.