HP EliteBook 2530p works with Ubuntu 9.10

HP EliteBook 2530p is (most likely) the new Haaga-Helia student laptop. It works out of the box with Ubuntu Linux 9.10 live CD. All important things work out of the box. The machine will need more testing with Linux before it’s distributed to Haaga-Helia students.

This article is based on very brief testing. I have not used or tested this laptop extensively. Some of the notes were written from memory, after the whole test.

Important Things Work

Device	Status
Display	OK, automatically
Keyboard	OK, automatically
Mousepad	OK, automatically
Joystick	OK, automatically
Special keys	OK, automatically
Wireless	OK, automatically
Sound	OK, automatically
Suspend-to-RAM	OK, automatically; Fails extended test

Some Components Not Tested Yet

Device
HP L2245wg External Display with DVI-D	Untested
Video Projector with VGA	Untested
Wired Ethernet network	Untested
External USB mouse	Untested
External USB keyboard	Untested
Firewire	Untested
Audio 3,5 mm	Untested
Microphone, builtin	Untested
Microphone, external 3,5 mm	Untested
Camera, builtin	Untested

There may be other untested parts too. In general, stability in longer use (eg. 14 days) without reboot is not tested.

Does EliteBook 2530p have these:

Device
Bluetooth
Port replicator

Live CD and Web Browsing

I booted the machine from Ubuntu 9.10 amd64 Destktop Live CD. From boot loader menu I chose English, Try without any change. Ubuntu logged me in automatically. Display resolution looked correct. A sound was played. I found a wireless network from menu in panel and logged in with a 128-bit WEP passphrase. I opened a web browser, googled “Tero Karvinen” and opened a page. Thus, keyboard, mouse, display and wireless network work.

I set the Finnish keyboard with Applications: Accessories: Terminal

$ setxkbmap fi

Suspend to RAM

From panel menu on top right I chose suspend. The fan went silent and display went dark, so I assumed machine went to ACPI S2/S3 suspend to RAM. I waited a while and pressed a key on a keyboard, which did not resume suspend. I briefly clicked power button, and machine resumed. I browsed the web for a while, and noticed that machine still works after suspend.

I also played some media from “Examples” on the desktop. Speex sound and some video played correctly.

I ran Ubuntu automatic suspend test

$ sudo bash /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/suspend_test --full

but it could not automatically wake up EliteBook, so it could not run unattended. However, it did not show any errors and it did leave the machine stable after partial test.

First Impressions

HP EliteBook 2530p looks nice, and even better than the previous Haaga-Helia student laptop Travelmate 6293. Especially EliteBook has much better keyboard.

EliteBook looks and feels cool. It has a beautiful metal frame. I like the mini flashlight above display. Joystick is a nice addition, it’s just like the one on Thinkpad. But it has mousepad too.

Specs are nice, including a dual core processor and 4 GB of 800 MHz RAM. Display has good contrast.

EliteBook comes with unnecessary Microsoft tax, as it has Windows Vista Basic license bundled.

It will be interesting to see if EliteBook can live up to the expectations that this first impression created.

Technical Details with Machinotero

I collected technical details with Machinotero. This is the same live CD on same session where display, mouse, keyboard and wireless network work.

Model: Hewlett-Packard EliteBook 2530p
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU L9400, 2 cores 1.86 GHz each, amd64
RAM: 4 GB (2 * 2 GB DDR2 800 MHz Samsung)
Motherboard: HP 30E1
- HP BIOS 68PSU Ver. F.0E (09/14/2009)
- Mobile 4 Series Chipset
- 82567LM Gigabit Network
- 82801I (ICH9 Family)
WLAN: PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection
Disk: ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller, 160 GB TOSHIBA MK1629GS
CDROM: DVDRAM GSA-U20N
Battery: MS06055 (vendor: SMP-LG26) 5,1 Wh, 10,8 V

Final system given to Haaga-Helia students will probably have a bigger hard drive.

Read all the details, including log excerpts from a working system: Full Machinotero report hp-elitebook-2530p-ubuntu-9-10-amd64-2009w49.txt