So, my new laptop, the HP dv8000z is a mixed bag when it comes to hardware support -- no surprise.

• Video - Video isn't quite working right, which is to say that it works fine, but isn't quite the resolution it should be. The native resolution for the HP's screen is 1680x1050. Unfortunately, the vesa driver does not like that resolution, and won't be convinced, modeline or not, to even try it. It is happy with the nearby resolution of 1400x1050, which works for me -- the actual pixel size/shape is native, it just leaves two black bands on the left and right side of the screen. I tried grabbing ATI's binary drivers (fglrx64_6_8_0-8.19.10-1.x86_64.rpm), but they rely on some kernel syscalls that were taken out in the most recent kernels (register_ioctl32_conversion and friends). This isn't a big deal for now -- I'll try the native drivers again when a new version comes out, and perhaps moving to Fedora 5 beta when it comes out will make hardware support better
• Sound - Sound quality is quite good
• Mouse - I am surprised this is an issue, but the trackpad doesn't behave well. It easily gets confused on which buttons are being pressed down and which are not, making it hard to resize or move windows. This is damned frustrating! Every time it happens, I get a flurry of activity like this in the system logs: psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 - lost sync at byte 1 psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 - driver resynched. and similar. I suddenly started getting this on my old laptop with a kernel update though, so I suspect that it's not the hardware misbehaving. Brief googling suggests that ACPI and the mouse may interfere with each other if done too frequently.
• Network - Wired works, wireless does not work out of the box (and I haven't had the time to even do the obvious tinkering on that front)
• Speed - The system is decently fast. Although the disk should be slow given its specs, copying things around is faster than its specs indicate it should. Then again, perhaps this is a driver bonus
• Buttons - There are a lot of very glowy buttons on the keyboard. The two Quickplay keys do not generate scancodes, but the volume control keys do (meaning I can map them via my window manager to adjust volume) and the calculator key does too (no idea what I'm going to map that to) -- Correction: The volume control keys have the same scancodes as on my old Dell laptop, so no need to redo that. Cool!
• Keyboard - Still hard to get used to. Every time I use the tiny dell keyboard on my other laptop, my fingers shift back to remembering where those keys are, and I type gibberish on the HP. I'll get used to it eventually.
• Ports - It's actually kind of convenient that there are no ports on the back of the system -- I can set it on my desk and not need to turn it around to get it all hooked up.