New Computer HP Pavilion DV7

I recently traded my Dell Inspiron 1750 for a HP Pavilion DV7. I think I had the Inspiron for close to 5 years, it will be missed ! My mother asked me to fix her HP Pavilion DV7 to give to my father. She didn't have any backup disks, and lost the Windows disks to install MS Windows. I told her there was nothing I could do unless she bought a new windows disk.

The HP Pavilion was in almost new condition. I think my mother used it for a couple months, didn't like it, through it in the closet and it sat there for the last 2 or 3 years. I told her I still had the windows disk to my Dell and if she wanted I would put Windows on it, and trade her for the DV7, and she said sure.

So I've been using the DV7 for about 2 weeks now and it's taking some getting used to. I installed openSUSE 13.2 on it and it's working great. The install went real smooth , and the wireless drivers, and networking worked right out of the box. That was refreshing.

I was surprised that the Linux install went so smoothly. I literally had to configure nothing. Everything worked ! I installed openSUSE, did a few of my usual security modifications, and I was up and running in under an hour.

As far as performance I think the Dell Inspiron 1750 performed a bit better than the DV7, the Dell had a Pentium, and the HP runs an AMD chip. This is the first AMD computer I've had, but after a couple weeks of use, I think the Pentium is far superior performance wise. I'm even running 2 gigs of additional memory compared to the Dell.

The difference in performance is really noticeable when  multi-tasking and I'm almost always multi-tasking.The DV7 however seems to have superior video,and sound. I'm going to be playing around with some different configurations, and maybe do an additional memory upgrade.  Anyway, if your thinking about installing openSUSE 13.2 on a HP Pavilion DV7, I strongly recommend it. The install went great, and everything seems to work right out of the box.