anyone own an HP ze4400 w/ the built in wireless?

[randomlinh]

does your antennea suck too? i keep dropping the signal.. that and it's 2-3 bars.. compared to full signal on my ibook. This thing is really pissing me off... if i had known it was this crappy, i would have just bought a wireless card and saved the dough

 

[randomlinh]

no one eh?

 

[MatthewF01]

how is the graphics chip in that system?

what can/cant you run on it?


i kind of want to buy one of those guys... then id have to ditch my pocket PCs

 

[bogdan2]

I bought a ZE4430 back in August and I've fiddled around with both the wireless connection and the graphics, so here goes:

Wireless

From what I've read, it doesn't seem that HPs have terribly good wireless performance to begin with, but your performance will vary depending on what your setup is. Since I'm not sure of your setup, I'll tell you what happened with mine.

I ordered the 4430 with the 802.11g chipset, seeing as it's theoretially backwards compatible with the "b" standard and it's futureproof for at least the next two months. The backwards compatible part turned out to be a bit of a joke. I had an 802.11b access point from Belkin and the connection was absolutely horrible. Even with five bars, it kept dropping the link! Even turning the wi-fi on and off via the hardware button in front didn't always rermedy the situation. The DHCP server had a really hard time dishing out an IP address to the PC.

The problems were compounded exponentially by turning on Mac address filtering and WEP on my acess point. At that point it simply didn't connect, so I had to disable every security feature to even get it half working!

The solution? I upgraded to a Netgear 802.11g router (WGR614) and it made a world of difference. Even with two bars, sitting outside on the lawn and maybe 100+ feet from the access point, I can surf with no problem. It's not perfect, i.e. it still hangs every once in a while but it usually recovers in a few seconds. It's very useable now. If you have the 802.11g chipset, I'd highly recommend an upgrade to some sort of "g" router. I'm very happy with my Netgear.

If this isn't your situation, perhaps driver updates on the HP site might help.


Graphics

The chip in it is a Radeon IGP320M. Since it doesn't have its own dedicated memory, it borrows from main memory. The exact amount is selectable via a BIOS setting and can be anywere from 16 to 128MB.

Now I didn't buy this model for its graphics capability, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The IGP320M is based on the original Radeon Mobility, which means it has excellent DVD playback but no T&L. T&L is implemented in software, as far as I know. Gamewise, in my opinion, the shared memory isn't as much of a disadvantage as some people say. Yes, it does eat into main memory, but if you load it with 512MB RAM, you won't have a problem. Speed isn't too bad either, since I suspect the bandwitdh provided by the 266mhz DDR main memory is more than the graphics chip can handle.

The real advantage for such a budget chip though is the amount of memory you can allocate to video. For example, I am a fan of Neverwinter Nights, which can support 64MB textures. These look vastly better than the 32MB textures and this cards supports it! For a budget chipset, that's really nice! Neverwinter Nights probably looks better on the IGP320 than say on a Radeon 9000 with only 32MB of fixed SDRAM, though it most likely runs a tad faster on the latter.

Speedwise, I've played the following games at the LCD panel's native 1024x768 resolution with no problem, outside of some tweaking to reduce the graphics quality so I don't explode my PC!

- the aforementioned Neverwinter Nights and its expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide
- Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
- Civilization 3
- Lemmings Revolution
- Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions

The only game I've had issues with is Tiger Woods 2003 which refuses to recognize the card. It does run fairly well in software mode though. I've read that you can tweak the ATI Catalyst drivers to make them work on the IGP320M.

I've also read of others successfully playing Half Life, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament (though not the latest version). Overall, with a few tweaks to lower the graphics quality, I'd say you're safe with everything but latest games. This is definitely not a desktop replacement in terms of gaming, but then again it's not priced like one either! For sub-$1000 you can't go wrong!

If you haven't fallen asleep reading all this, I hope you've found some use in it.