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Zacate 11.6" laptop now available from HP

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Well, I just got mine, and it looks good. I'm probably not the best person to ask for a review, as this is my first ever laptop. I got it to supplement my desktop, and some of the fundamental differences are overshadowing any particular impressions I have of the laptop itself. Moving from two 24-inch IPS monitors to a tiny 11.6-inch TN laptop screen is a bit jarring. 🙂

For you linux lovers out there, I'll suggest holding off on this purchase: booting from an Ubuntu 10.10 USB key, I noticed that the "clickpad" just can't handle clicking and dragging. The cursor jumps erratically around the screen when you try to click with one finger and drag with another. Windows 7 handles this fine, which indicates to me that the linux drivers just aren't there yet. Hopefully the situation will improve with 11.04.

One thing that I did find annoying: the laptop, in addition to the normal deluge of crapware you see from all pre-built machines, has all four primary partitions occupied. There's the Windows C drive, a partition labelled "RECOVERY" which presumably contains some sort of backup of the original software loadout, and two others, one labelled "HP TOOLS" and the other labelled "SYSTEM", neither of which I can discern a use for, but which I won't delete yet because they may be needed for something. It means there are no primary partitions left on which to install a separate OS, again, only a problem for linux users I suppose, or people who want to build a Hackintosh.
 
Eyeless Blond said:
...
One thing that I did find annoying: the laptop, in addition to the normal deluge of crapware you see from all pre-built machines, has all four primary partitions occupied. There's the Windows C drive, a partition labelled "RECOVERY" which presumably contains some sort of backup of the original software loadout, and two others, one labelled "HP TOOLS" and the other labelled "SYSTEM", neither of which I can discern a use for, but which I won't delete yet because they may be needed for something. It means there are no primary partitions left on which to install a separate OS, again, only a problem for linux users I suppose, or people who want to build a Hackintosh.
Click to expand...

Interesting with the 4 partitions. Those of you here who reinstalled win7 on this; did you just wipe everything, reformat and just install windows, and not worry about the recovery/HPtools stuff that comes with it? I've never used any of that stuff that comes from OEMs, but it's been a while since I bought a laptop so wondering if they have any use now, or if they're necessary for anything?
 
Ok, i've been playing with this laptop for a couple of days now.

overall, it is what i expected, but battery life hasn't been great, can't seem to get more than 4 hours on a charge.

also, has anyone else noticed that this device runs pretty hot. i can't seem to get this thing to stay less than 55c for any length of time and has peaked at about 71c.

also, initially the .net precompiler, ngen.exe was causing all kinds of problems, i had it run all queued processes and it seems to be less of a problem, but the cpu is definitely not the fastest on the market.
 
PlatinumGold said:
overall, it is what i expected, but battery life hasn't been great, can't seem to get more than 4 hours on a charge.

also, has anyone else noticed that this device runs pretty hot. i can't seem to get this thing to stay less than 55c for any length of time and has peaked at about 71c.
Click to expand...

Something's wrong with yours. That's waaaay too hot for this cpu and model. Here's what Notebookreviews found on the unit they tested - note these temps are in F not C!
 
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Yeah, seriously, 55C? Yikes. I am a little annoyed by the audible fan noise coming from mine, but then I've always been a silent PC enthusiast, so any fans annoy me, but I'm not having any problem with the temperatures; the whole computer is cool the the touch almost all the time, even when doing relatively streesful (for a netbook, anyway) tasks.

BTW, what program are you using to monitor the CPU temps?
 
PlatinumGold said:
Ok, i've been playing with this laptop for a couple of days now.

overall, it is what i expected, but battery life hasn't been great, can't seem to get more than 4 hours on a charge.

also, has anyone else noticed that this device runs pretty hot. i can't seem to get this thing to stay less than 55c for any length of time and has peaked at about 71c.

also, initially the .net precompiler, ngen.exe was causing all kinds of problems, i had it run all queued processes and it seems to be less of a problem, but the cpu is definitely not the fastest on the market.
Click to expand...

I have not experienced heat like that. Its a little warm, but no where near that hot. Battery life seems to be a bit under 6 hours.
 
PlatinumGold said:
overall, it is what i expected, but battery life hasn't been great, can't seem to get more than 4 hours on a charge.

also, has anyone else noticed that this device runs pretty hot.
Click to expand...

Is the CPU utilization always high? That could explain the temperatures and the low battery life.

Also, battery life usually goes up after a handful of charge/discharge cycles.
 
Eyeless Blond said:
Yeah, seriously, 55C? Yikes. I am a little annoyed by the audible fan noise coming from mine, but then I've always been a silent PC enthusiast, so any fans annoy me, but I'm not having any problem with the temperatures; the whole computer is cool the the touch almost all the time, even when doing relatively streesful (for a netbook, anyway) tasks.

BTW, what program are you using to monitor the CPU temps?
Click to expand...

i'm using coretemp.

it was getting as high as 71c, but there was a .net precompiler program that kept running and pegging the cpu. anyway, i let that go for about 4 hours and now, it doesn't seem to be running. i think installing office 2010 is where that started. but precompiler should only run once. so, i'll monitor it for another week or so, if it stays normal, i'll keep it, if it reoccurs, i'll try reloading windows 7 with none of HP's stuff except drivers and see if that fixes it, if not, it'll go back.
 
I've had my eye on this netbook for a while now. Looks impressive so far. Can any owners comment on 1080p mkv playback? Bitrate? Any trouble's hooking it up to an HDTV? Thx.
 
PlatinumGold said:
i'm using coretemp.

it was getting as high as 71c, but there was a .net precompiler program that kept running and pegging the cpu. anyway, i let that go for about 4 hours and now, it doesn't seem to be running. i think installing office 2010 is where that started. but precompiler should only run once. so, i'll monitor it for another week or so, if it stays normal, i'll keep it, if it reoccurs, i'll try reloading windows 7 with none of HP's stuff except drivers and see if that fixes it, if not, it'll go back.
Click to expand...


Did you say that it ran on battery for 4 hours with a program pegging the CPU before it died? That's impressive.
 
Slickone said:
Think Acer and/or ASUS will have a 11.6" E350 netbook soon?

Acer does have a 10" C-50 Ontario coming, model AO522:
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=28143
But only a 6 hour battery life.

And ASUS has a 10" C-50 coming, model 1015B:
http://www.netbooknews.com/18717/asus-eee-pc-1015b-comes-with-ontario-apu-not-zacate/

At only 1Ghz, how would the C-50 compare to the N550 with Intel GMA for non-gaming stuff?
Click to expand...
Looks like ASUS does have an E-350 coming: the 1215B. I just wish they made one a little smaller. Even if it's only down to 11". A 12"+ case defeats the purpose of 'netbook', and I wouldn't call it a netbook.
 
OMFG right now take another $75 off with code cacc13581 so ends up being $375+tax. If I didn't already have like 5 notebooks I'd be all over this.
 
Oh man, I had it in my cart probably 15 minutes ago and the code worked, but tried it again and now it's saying the code is expired. Anyone else getting this? Must have had a very limited number of uses.

Probably for the best, I didn't need it anyway, lol. 😛
 
Question for those of you installing a fresh Win7: if I have an OEM copy of Win7 Home already, can I use the HP license, or do I have to buy another cd (license) of Win7?
 
in the low-volt computing world, this is pretty much like intel first coming out with the conroe chips.

finally, battery life that makes sense while still being capable of doing most anything a desktop does minus the high-def gaming.

i also like the idea that current atom netbooks are going to have nearly zero demand. they are still great for modd projects, because if you only use them for one thing (like a jukebox) they still are valuable. but to most people theyll be worth less then $100... not much excuse for even homeless people to not have a pc now!
 
BrandonT said:
Question for those of you installing a fresh Win7: if I have an OEM copy of Win7 Home already, can I use the HP license, or do I have to buy another cd (license) of Win7?
Click to expand...

I used an unaltered MSDN ISO that I . . . err acquired. Had to activate via the automated phone system, but it worked fine.
 
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