*HP HDX18 Owners Lounge*

If you're having trouble burning recovery discs, try burning in Safe Mode. This worked for me. Thanks to Bird333 for this helpful tip.

 

I am downloading Windows 7 now at a very slow 300 KB/sec.

Heck, even when I leach off Rapidshare it is faster than that!!!

 

Many, many thanks!

I've been reading this book by Lynne McTaggart, The Intention Experiment, which talks about how people's intention seems to be able to affect things. Hopefully, all the positive wishes we give to each other on this awesome board will help us all get wonderful HDXs!

 

Great! I will take a look, I always like weird books out there, not your typical trendy books that people read, like that female book, "He's just not that into you."

LOL....

 

Finally got around to installing W7 64bit on a new Dell deskop XPS Studio with the new i7 Core CPU and 6GB DDR3.

I decided against trying it on one of my laptops because NOBODY will have drivers for all the esoteric stuff like fingerprint readers, and maybe even audio, etc., so I thought my newest cutting-edge desktop would be a good choice.

So far, it installed perfectly and seems to be working well. New eye-candy to check out now!

Good luck!

 

Yes! I am installing it now via Vmware! I like the new colors and shading....

Afterwards if it runs perfectly, I will try it on my tablet to give it a true test for hardware compatibility...

Vista already comes with touchscreen support so Win7 should also...
I don't expect the fingerprint reader to work either like you said...

It will be a fun night between this and football!

 

So far win7 seems pretty good I suppose. I think I should prolly find out what features win7 has before I can really tell the difference between Win7 and Vista.

I do like the new look though. Uses good colors...

It did crash on me when I was trying to shutdown, I had my cursor on the shutdown button for about 5 seconds, and right before I was about to click on it, I got the blue screen of death!!!!!!!


But:

1) this is beta
2) I was doing this via VMware

 

I hope Windows 7 works out. The press seemed to jump all over Vista, mostly because the hardware manufacturers did not get their drivers out in time. I've used Vista since it came out and think it's a great OS. Of course, I never tried to run it on a piece of crap home made box with out of date components!

It makes me cringe when I hear people with no computer skills refer to Vista as another "WinME". WinME sucked, Vista is far from ME.

Now back to those of us loving our HDX 18's!

 

Hey! I wasn't trying to be condensending! I was just trying to get you there, without knowing if you were unsure of using REGEDIT or not. Sorry if it came off that way, but it was not how I intended to sound.

 

I have a premium account with them due to one of my hobbies (surround sound preservation), so it's no big deal for me to use it. As it turns out, it's really reasonable to use (as a premium member), and it's totally free of those pop up ads and other crap that you might find on other file sharing sites.

 

It's definitely a weird book. She summarizes all these studies -- some from major universities -- that suggest that people's intention can change things in the world.

Wild, wacky stuff.

 

For anyone interested...

I've heard people rave about Amazon Web Services, which has incredible pricing on storing and retrieving data. I believe you need your own site to access it and there's a bit of programming involved that's easy to master.

$0.15/month to store a gig (yes, that's 15 cents). $0.10 to transfer a gig in. $0.17 to transfer a gig out.

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing

Not the same as an easy-to-use commercial site, but may be a great option for some people. I plan on checking it out when I need storage space.

 

Yeah, that is true, Vista really came out too soon before most people could take advantage of it with their hardware. Things are different now. I do hope that Win7 is the real "XP" of the next version of windows.
WinME was just an absolutely disgusting OS, when it came out, it was NOT a hardware issue! It was the OS!!

I wish I could believe in that stuff, I'm not against it. We really don't know what our brains are capable of so it can be possible. I notice that most positive people succeed for the simple fact that they are positive!
Take away faith, prayers and any of that other stuff....it's YOU that are making things possible for yourself!

That is really cheap. Might be good for saving personal items? Amazon is really reaching out into other services other than selling books...

 

It's alive!!!
FedEx delivered my HDX 18 this morning.
So far so good.

 

Congrats! Let us know how it goes after a full inspection!

 

There's a nice HP coupon out there today...

 

Good job. Here is the info incase anyone is too lazy to move their mouse over the link, use their finger and click on it....



Use code NB8818 to save 30% off $899.00+ on this HP notebook.

 

Woo-hoo!!

Thanks for sharing the great news with us.

Hope your HDX is perfect and amazing and serves you well for many years.

 

Thanks.
So far so good.
First I downloaded revouninstaller to get rid of yahoo toolbar and norton.
Second I downloaded AVG and firefox.
Now I'm downloading MS updates and 3 HP ones too.
Will keep you posted.

 

Laura,

Thank you for the well wishes.
I think I may have lucked out thus far.
A perfect HDX 16 last week and a perfect HDX 18 today.
I do need to acquire more data though.
All I can say is WOW!!!
Both are indeed awesome in their own way.

 

Anybody get the coupon to work? I wanted to get my girl a matching HDX18t that I have, but it says to check the "coupon requirements." It won't do the 30% off like the previous coupons do.

 

The coupon only works if you add an accessory.

The $7.99 cleaning cloth counts, and the $6.99 earbuds don't (I believe).

What an amazing gift for her -- hope you guys get an awesome one!

 

What's so funny is that her name is Laura too! Seriously. My only problem now is whether or not to get her the HDTV tuner. She wants one. But I don't know how it'll work.

I read on here that Chaz made a review of it. Does anyone have a link to it? I can't seem to search for it.

 

From what I hear, the TV tuner is pure crap.

 

This is my first official post from my HDX 18.
Having ripped some cds to mp3's and playing them I can't complain about the sound quality or volume. As a matter of fact my daughter told me it was too loud. I love the keyboard. The display as is out of the box is very nice. One day I will see if I can tweak it. As far as fan noise I have to say it is very quiet. I have the quad QX9300 and it is also running cool to my standards. So is the HDX 16. If anyone who is having an issue with soft keys and the like would like to know processes etc. let me know what I can do. I would miss the eject button too. I'm not having any issues with the sound controls on either HDX. One thing of note is I went to download spyware doctor for free via google pack and was told that it was already installed. I call HP tech support and they said it isn't. My best guess is it's time to read the manual one of these days. More to come as time permits.

 

I'm sorry, but where has the QX9300 gone? It seems to be missing from the HP Home & Home Office Store. Am I the only one that noticed that it has been missing for a few days?

 

Once a part sells out it's taken out of the customization list. It's probably temporarily sold out and thus it's not there. Similar to the TV Tuner a few weeks back.

 

Interesting, considering they jacked the price of the part to $1500 above the base processor.

 

I noticed it was missing yesterday and they wanted $1,100.00 for the other quad chip. It is probably out of stock.

 

Hey Hates BSOD!

Wow, at least you got one!

Congrats on getting a good HDX18. Mine has been great and no way it's going back.

How is your display colors. Any setting adjustments required?

 

I got the internal tuner, as I didn't want any other h/w on the desk. I received my brand new HDX18 today, and set it up. The tuner card is NOT WORKING. I have cable w/ analog and local channels under QAM. A digital channel scan finds nothing. An analog channel scan finds 50 or so channels, but they are all very snowy and the entire thing pixelates once or twice a second -- completely unusable. I called tech support, and the guy (who was nice enough) had never even tried a TV tuner card. *sigh*. He had me try to uninstall and reinstall the TV tuner, and the system blue-screen-of-deathed on the uninstall. The re-install didn't help. He was going to mail me a replacement card, but found out it isn't user servicable. Time to send it into the shop... *arg*

 

Amazon also has an easy-to-use program that uses AWS (Amazon Web Services) called JUNGLEDISK (jungledisk.com). It costs 20 bucks and 1 per year.

It's for grown-ups... the charging scheme is componentized, so you pay per gig for uploads, commands sent to the service (get put etc.), downloads, and online storage.

However, the prices are very low - 1/10 of a cent to 10 cents a gig for the various services. I was paying Iron Mountain (Connected) 79 bucks for 30 gigs online. Then they changed the client-side software to a completely new program that just plain doesn't work or barely works (for everyone according to hints from tech support).

The only catch on JungleDisk (Jungle... Amazon... get it?) is that it guides you through a second set up for AWS.

So you need:

Amazon account (regular old account if you're a shopper there)
AWS account
JungleDisk account

And if you encrypt your backups, that's another password/phrase, so write them all down!

I got the JungleDisk Pro and I'm liking it a lot...

 

I did more experimentation. It turns out the TV tuner is extremely snowy and pixelating whenever the unit is on AC power. As soon as I go to battery power, the picture becomes fine. I've tried separating the cables as much as possible, and putting the power brick as far away as possible, but this doesn't help at all. Perhaps my unit is missing some internal shielding or something??

 

Thanks, CyberBeach. JungleDisk sounds awesome.

JungleDisk is the missing link that I didn't know existed. Being able to drag/drop files from your computer to your AWS account and back up data to your AWS account automatically for super-cheap --- wow.

Hearing that it works for you in real life really helps me trust it.

Thanks again for the info on this cool resource.

 

Oblio,
Thanks and congrats on yours being great too.
The display is great and I plan on playing with it in the future.
Too many other things to try and discover right now.
"Enjoy the ride!"

 

Can anyone tell me what the difference is between these two x18's? http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3806904-3806906-3806906-3769212-3816528.html and http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3806904-3806906-3806906-3769212-3812227.html
Living in the UK, these are the only options available to me

 

HOT* 30% off web-only coupon for the purchase of an HP Pavilion dv7t, tx2z, HDX 16t, or HDX 18t Notebook PC NB8818

and the QX9300 is not available:-(

 

The 1010ea has lightscribe bluray player and the 1005ea has bluray. There seems to be more external ports on the 1010ea not sure why. edit pretty sure the 1010 has the 1gb graphics card vs. the 512mb on the other one

 

I've since noticed the different screens, what is the difference between 18.4" Diagonal High Definition HP Ultra Brightview Infinity Display and 18.4" Dual channel LVDS FHD AG Dual Lamps with BrightView Infinity Display? Can someone explain which is best?

 

That sucks.

Though it may be a blessing in disguise, since the latest price for the QX9300 was insane IMHO, even with the 30% discount.

My philosophy -- hold out for what you want. The prices change. The options change. The coupons come back. (The 30% off one rolls around every few weeks.) It'll work out.

Here's hoping we all get great deals on exactly what we want and receive perfect HDXs!

 

They are both dual lamp 1920x1080p resolution, not sure there is a difference. Ultra Brightview is dual lamp--Brightview is single lamp.

 

Yeah, I was just telling myself the other day, theres no way the QX9300 will be available with a 30% off coupon. The demand is high and supply is low for that particular processor. The T9600 is the best option anyway because it has the highest clockspeed. Why pay for an extreme overclockable processor that HP BIOS doesn't allow to be OC'd? Very few applications benefit from the additional cores anyway right?

 

I think it's just CRAP!!!

 

I'm glad I did not get the tuner. For some reason, it was not offered when I ordered my HDX18. I probably would have ordered it if it were available, even though I would rarely use it.

 

My guess is that the QX9300 will be available when there's a 30% off coupon some time in the next month or two.

I tend to avoid the cutting edge processors -- with the type of stuff I do, the significant increase in price isn't worth the relatively smaller increase in performance. Most likely, it'll be the T9400 for me.

It seems like the QX9300 would provide a serious advantage for running lots of applications at once, but I don't know if that's true.

Then there's the extra heat (and probably fan noise) to consider.

Also, I believe the T9800 is out already. I wonder when it'll hit the HDX.

 

USB tuners are looking pretty fine right about now.

 

Sorry if this is getting slightly off topic, but what are some good choices for a USB hybrid TV tuner to use with the HDX18?

What would make me really super happy would be a tuner+sw pair that can handle both analog cable and digital QAM, without having to be re-configured. Guide info for analog cable is a must, while guide info for digital QAM is a nice-to-have.

 

I have found an area for which I think this laptop doesn't work.

Me and my brother bought a HDX18 each, with the T9400 CPU, dual 250 GB drives, 4 GB ram, planning on using it in professional audio production. I've tried to get audio equipment to work with the built in firewire port and even with expresscard firewire cards without success.
I am mostly using Yamaha audio hardware and their protocol over firewire is refered to as mlan.
The built in firewire is recognised by the audio hardware but the software reports errors and no audio/midi is available.
Using an expresscard with a TI X2200 firewire chip (which by the way is recommended by people in the profession) works a lot better but there are dropouts in the sound once in a while and that makes it useless. The same card works flawlessly on another laptop by the way.

I'm running Vista Ultimate 32.
I've tried everything I can think of: device drivers, disabling stuff not used, turned of aero, set computer optimized to background tasks etc.
I even tried to make it work by installing Windows XP (as suggested in other posts here).

I have talked to the dealer and they say it is a HP problem and I've contacted them aswell trying to solve things. As a last resort I tried to convince them to take it back so I could get something else but that was a no go. HP Sweden regretted that it didn't work but they can't take responsibility for compatibility with external devices.

So here we stand with a couple of very cool laptops in general but of no use to what we really wanted them for
I guess the only solution will be to ebay them or something and take the loss and try to get something that works but with the caliber of this beast (It really looked like the perfect piece of hardware).

 

Just a thought before you go the ebay route...try Wubi and Ubuntu Linux.
www.download.com search for Wubi which is the Windows Ubuntu Installer.
Download it and when you execute it the 700Mb package will download and install.
Wubi allows you to dual boot with Vista without partitioning your hard drive and can be removed via add/remove programs.
Just a thought.
Once Ubuntu is on your HDX you can download lots of free software and it may work.
You may want to research Wubi and Linux there may be a better distro for you and your needs.
I started a separate thread for HDX and Linux on this forum.
Let us know your results.
Good luck and I hope this helps.

 

I did some research about mlan drivers for linux and found out that none is available unfortunately. It would have been great as another way of verifying the hardware working or not.