A note about PowerNotebooks.com service.

For all you people that have second thoughts about using PowerNotebooks.com as (edited for jokers ) your notebook vendor, or all you people that say you love the machine but you have no idea about the 24hour service department...

THEY ARE GREAT! <-- What more can I say? I can say this....

A real person immediatly picked up the phone, not a machine... and it wasn't someone just asking me to go on hold until a tech is ready... it was the actual technician that helped me through my quirk. The technician was speedy and polite, easy to understand, and didn't try to give me any run arounds.

Lastly... the issue required I wait until normal operating hours for a solution, and low and behold.... I had a voicemail from Donald right about when I was getting ready to go to work (must have missed the ringer while running around) the very next morning and everything was taken care of without another word from me.

As for my new toy (HEL80).. These machines are physically sturdy! Even with my 1.66ghz battlefield 2 was smooth as butter with settings jacked up. *standard clock and mem speeds* No regrets on the Matte screen for gaming, nice evenly lit view. No stuck or dead pixels.

Back to the main point.... I've had my share of service departments over the years as both a consumer and a technician, and more recently as an engineer... This positive experience was a first for me, and I highly recommend people interested in a notebook to atleast give them a call.

 

I saw powernotebooks.com help a little old lady cross the street.
Thank you, powernotebooks.com!

 

I hope that isn't sarcasm, because I was being sincere...

On that same note, reading your reply made me think of the "What would brian boitano do" song from South Park...

 

I am sure Katicflis was offering humor...I read it to everyone here in the office and we all CRACKED UP

On the off chance it was intended as sarcasm...it was just too funny to be effective as sarcasm.

And pyro9219, I can't thank you enough for your kind words

 

I never thought about using PowerNotebooks.com as a laptop, how do I do that ?

 

No!
I am a factual witness to powernotebook.com's genuine concern for the elderly.


You know what else?
Donald Stratton always buys three boxes of cookies from the cookie-selling girlscout. Cause that's just the kind of man Donald Stratton is.
Now, Donald Stratton was off-duty ... but we can assume Donald Stratton represents the collective good-will of powernotebooks.com.
And there's no doubt ... Donald Stratton shares his girlscout cookies.

Thanks again, powernotebooks.com!

 

Very cute

Edited that now that I read it again... I was in a hurry trying to get to work when I wrote it... gimme a break =P

 

pyro, yours and reseller ratings comments on powernotebooks is making me pull the trigger and get an hel80! i'm so excited, should be calling donald today or tomorrow about my laptop.

one question, since you are running ubuntu 6.06, have you found a quick and dirty way to use xmodmap to remap the fn/ctrl keys (switch them basically). also, do the volume buttons work in gnome?

thanks and i can't wait to join the ranks of "purchased from" powernotebook.com laptop owners.

 

So far the volume buttons do not work for me in KDE (running kubuntu here). But I found the following article and will try this as soon as I get home!


Some special keys are probably driven by the BIOS, and work without problem like:
- Fn-F3 to switch between laptop-screen and external screen;
- Fn-Up and Fn-Down to modify the screen luminosity
- Fn-F9 to Num-lock
Some other probably depend upon the OS and do not always work out of the box:
- Screen Print (Impr. écran on my french keyboard), to lauch a screen capture sofware.
* In Gnome, <Print> is configured by default to launch a screen capture, and <Alt><Print> to launch a window capture. However, it seems ther is a bug in gnome-2.6 because even if the <Print> key IS recognized, no action is performed. It seems this bug will be fixed if you update your xorg package http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2146
* It works in KDE.
- Fn-F4 to hibernate: to configure it, add the following file in /etc/acpi/events/ and the following file in /etc/acpi/actions/. You may need to change the permission with:
chmod 755 /etc/acpi/events/suspend
chmod 755 /etc/acpi/actions/suspend
It should be configured by default. This is a Mandrake bug: http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5698.
- Power Button to stop the system: like Fn-F4, it should probably send an acpi event, but it does not...
- Fn-PageUp, Fn-PageDown and Fn-LeftTopArrow to modify the volume
* In Gnome, you can configure it in gnome-keybinding-properties (Applications>Desktop settings>keyboard shorcuts). Note however that it is not mapped in X as XF86LowerVolume and XF86RaiseVolume. The raw keysym value is used.
* In KDE, you can configure that in Kmix, but it does not work with this keys-combination, probably because it is not mapped in X.
- The Window$ keys, to lauch the main menu.
* in Gnome, you can configure it in gnome-keybinding-properties.
* Works out of the box in KDE.
- Help (Aide in french), the F1 key.
* In Gnome, it is already the default shortcut for the help in various applications. It is not configured as default to launch the help center on the desktop though.
* In KDE, (in kmenuedit) it don't want to use the F1 shorcut for the help menu because it says it is already used as the "standard help" action. However, nothing happens if you press <F1> in KDE, and it does not seem to be the standard shortcut for the help in the applications...
- Fn-F10 (Arrêt Défil on my french keyboard), I don't know what it is supposed to do
- Fn-F11 (Pause), I don't know what it is supposed to do
- Fn-F12 (Attn), I don't know what it is supposed to do
- Syst, I don't know what it is supposed to do
- the multimedia keys for internet navigation, e-mail, and start.
See http://shift.free.fr/?item=ordi_clavier_logitech to configure them.
Note that I am able to configure the e-Mail key, but not the other keys. They don't produce an X event with xev.
* In Gnome, the newly defined XF86Mail key is not detected. Strange.
* In KDE, you can configure it in kmenuedit.


Otto.

 

good find otto, i'll give these a shot when i get my hel80.

 

Excellent! This has to be the best laptop since my old Compaq M300 I had almost 10 years ago. I actually only got the laptop yesturday mid-afternoon, so I'm still setting things up (other then a short *cough* excursion to BF2 which ran great!)..

As far as Ubuntu goes, believe in the power of the IRC and hit up irc.freenode.net in #Ubuntu and many other more specific rooms. They have been a great source of information for tricky little things that I've had to fight with while getting back into linux after a 5-6 year break. I've been back since 6.06 was released and so far I'm impressed with how well my other systems have been supported.

When it comes to those nifty little keys all over the place on laptops, you either have to find the keycode and map to it, or you have to find the acpi address to call the function (not so easy, but doable). Looks like the previous poster is well on his way to perhaps having an answer for you.

SIDE NOTE:
UBUNTU and SUSE and KORORRAH LiveCD's have all worked great. (3D Desktop's are so much fun, but not very useful)

 

now only if they can help me get my loan faster...

 

Being in Oregon, I appreciate your signature =P

 

I always hear it as "Oar-gun". Do you all dislike that pronunciation?