Compal I/FL90 vs H/EL80

Hello

I have been wondering how the compal FL/IFL90 compares against the EL/HEL80.

I currently own an EL80 and certain things annoy me, so I wonder if it's worth upgrading to the FL90 since the prices are almost the same and I'd rather sell now when the EL80 still has some market value.

The things that annoy me on the EL80 (well not directly annoy, but would annoy me definetly had I gone through the upgrade and found out that I have gained nothing in these areas) are as follows:

* the keyboard - my fingers sometimes get caught under keys, and it's generally the lowest quality of the whole build. it's far from hp, lenovo, ibm. how does it look compared to EL80 on the FL90 ?

* the noise (cooling) - it might be just my machine, but the fan certainly has it's flaws (according to lm_sensors it's 43 core0, 46 core1 and 41 for nvidia, and the fan I can hear from the next room (running at level2, there's 3 levels i can distinguish). then it suddelny shuts itself off, as the temperatures really don't change much. what's the treshhold??). is that fixed on the fl90 ? is the treshold higher, the fan stays off more often? what are the average temperatures for 2D work on the FL90 ? I get about 41-44 on nvidia, 43-50 on cores. one core is often hotter than the other. This is celsius. There is also a low basic hum, much worse from the fan, being passed onto the front and back right rubber feet of the notebook, similar to the harddisk hum (see below) but unlike it, quite audible.

* the noise (harddisk) - this one is a tricky one. it's well ridiculous - the HD leaves a faint zzzzzzzz-like noise non-stop. it's not audible (that much) when I play music, but it still shouldn't be there! also, vibrations from the HD pass onto the lower right corner of the notebook, causing a very nasty low, basic resonating hum when the notebook is placed on a table or the like. It's almost non-audible but I figured it would be worth mentioning. The hum passed when the fan is on is a lot worse.

* the screen - well, while it's not the worst screen I have seen, it certainly isn't the best. I have a WXGA, 1280x800, shiny. It's okay but the viewing angles could use some work. How are they on the FL90 ?

* booting - how quickly does it boot? the EL80 of mine takes a few seconds to think about only it (and the designers) knows what. I could be picky here, and it's acceptable for me, but had it been downsized in the FL90 that would be great

* linux support - how's Linux on FL90? is the video camera supported? could someone paste 'lsusb' output from theirs? is the power button supported and generates acpi events? are media buttons supported? what brand wired network card does it have? is the microphone reasonably (I can't get it to boost even with +20dB with alsa on my EL80. I have to lean really close to it to get some response) loud?

* speakers - this is a thumbs up option, I am very content with sound quality on my EL80 (as goes speakers, at least ). Is this quality kept up on the FL90, or maybe even better (?) ?

I would gladly appreciate any information from someone who owns the FL90 or has seen it and can compare the two. I don't need people saying 'oh the FL90 keyboard is generally robust' if they had not seen the EL80. I need comparison

I'd gladly go and see for myself, somewhere, but it's hard to find resellers with the hardware on the spot, close to me

Also, I'm aware there has been some threads similar to this, but some of them if not most have gone offtopic, and besides I wanted specific information so no need to clutter a more generic topiced thread.

Regards,

//m.