I am ordering a new laptop from HP (the L2000).
It is widescreen (WXGA 1280x768) and has an
option for "Brightview".

It looks like this is just a piece of glasslike material
over the same screen. I am not sure if I want this
because it will make the screen more reflective.
Can anyone recommend it over the regular matte
type screen, and does it add any weight to the
laptop?

How can I find out if the VGA port will drive an external
monitor in multimonitor rather than mirror mode. Is this
standard? It's not in the specs.

Is it safe to completely erase the laptop on arrival (XP home)
and install XP Pro which I already own?

Thanks,

--
Jim

Addressing the last part of your post, no, it's not safe to do this
straigh-off. You don't want to do this until you have a means of
getting back to the original configuration. The laptop may come with
reinstallation CDs or DVDs, or they may be available (either free or for
a hopefully small charge). If not, get and install an Image utility and
make an image of each partition on the hard drive (including the
manufacturer's "diagnostic" partition, if any) and burn these to CDs or
DVDs (on another machine, if necessary) so that you can restore the
original configuration when and if you need to (including, perhaps, when
you sell the machine years from now).


dynamorph@hotmail.com wrote:

Hey:

I've just got hold of a HP Compaq laptop with the Brightview WXGA
screen. The screen is amazing and the best of any laptop I've used
(even much more expensive ones). Though the top layer of the screen
seems more reflective this doesnt seem to be detrimental to the display
as evrything is really clear with excellent contrast.
Doesn't seem to add any weight penalty: my little V2200 series remains
very portable.

My lappy came with all the driver disks and an XP reinstall DVD, but as
I already had Pro I wiped clean and started over as HP load their
machines up with various rubbish. An important note: Make sure your
machine has at least the drivers for the graphics adaptor/ screen as
the WXGA screen works at a non-standard resolution which the XP drivers
doesn't natively support.

Hope this helps.

dan_xtc wrote:
users yearn for a drivers/OS DVD and that they like to get it in the
box. It might make a difference the day I buy my next laptop.

--
John Doue

John Doue <notwobe@yahoo.com> wrote:
I certainly don't! I haven't EVER used a cd in preference to the net
for installing an o/s in the last decade. And before that I think I
used tape, or floppies for a bootstrap, then net, and never ever a cd.
I certainly don't want another lump of useless plastic. One gets an
o/s from the net whenever one likes a new one.

Peter

Peter T. Breuer wrote:
downright impossible when your machine won't boot and you need to
reinstall. But everyone is entitled to his opinion and I value yours.

--
John Doue

John Doue <notwobe@yahoo.com> wrote:
I don't see anything impractical about it! You can boot your machine
any time you choose to put a boot record and a kernel on it, something
which requires rather less than the contents of a 1.44M floppy. Either
use another machine as a PXE net boot source, or put the disk in
another machine and copy a bootstrap system onto it. Then go from
there.

It sounds like you have some of MS's classical fear of the network!
It's always been easier to use the net rather than use what are
essentially (glorified) floppies. Home users just were always afraid
of the unfamiliar (to them).

Peter

"dynamorph@hotmail.com" <dynamorph@hotmail.com> wrote:

Shiny screens are great if you realize you need to shave before your
presentation and don't have access to a mirror. They are lousy if you
want to do any real work on the computer.