--Just passing it on. Pretty much confirms the experience I've had with HP & Compaq - their home-user machines are crappy. Stuff like this is probably the reason some people are having trouble booting Knoppix.

Avoid HP & Compaq Laptops with ATI
by Anonymous Reader on 2003.04.04 8:52 (#48123)

This is a word of warning for anyone buying a new, consumer-class laptop: Avoid HP and Compaq like the plague.

They are shipping machines with the ATI 320 or 340 IGP, an "integrated" chip that purports to be a "Radeon" on the box, but isn't in reality.

The regular Radeon drivers do not work with this card under X -- there is -no- 3d acceleration, nor will there likely be for some time. 2d only works because some kind soul in the community hacked it together.

ATI has been completely unresponsive to this issue, and hp/compaq just throw their hands up.

Again: If you see a "consumer-grade" laptop that says it contains an ATI Radeon, it's likely an IGP, and will -not- work well with linux at all. This includes most new HP and Compaq consumer-grade machines.

( http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/03/28/1323227 )