Several months ago I posted the tale of my adventures trying to get video and audio through the HDMI port on my Toshiba Laptop with an Nvidia video card. It took me the better part of three days of trial and error to figure out, and it still takes a lot of patience to switch audio & video functionality from onboard to HDMI or back.
A couple of weeks ago I received a new laptop. Since it was intended to be strictly a work machine I didn't care whether the HDMI port functioned or not, and I never tried it. This morning I woke up to find the LCD on the new lappy was dead. The PC still boots, and I can still see the files in the Public folder over the LAN, so I know it's running, but with no video it's pretty much worthless. Unfortunately I'd stored some very important files on it yesterday, and, since I planned to do a backup today I hadn't made a copy of them. The files have to be retrieved before the PC goes back to ASUS for warranty repair.
Before I tore out the last of my hair out I tried plugging in an HDMI cable. Then I booted up and watched the video pop up on the TV "right out of the box". In no time I was able to log right in and start a backup. Once the backup was done my curiosity got the better of me. When I looked at the Configuration window in Pavucontrol I saw a couple of options for directing output to HDMI. I selected one and then loaded up a movie. Lo and behold, sound and video.. right out of the box.
I'm beginning to rethink my long affair with nvidia devices. This lowly Intel 3000 is pretty impressive. of course I'm not a gamer, but it does almost all I'd ever need it to do and with minimal frustration.
BTW: the new laptop is an ASUS X53e, and I put 12.1 on it with KDE 4.9. Every single component worked right out of the box! The only tweaking I had to do was to get the trackpad to disable during typing. Even Skype work with no fuss. Assuming the vendor makes good on his promise to exchange the PC for a new one as soon as I bring it in (I'm flying to the States and will find out next week), I'll be very happy with this laptop despite the LCD failure.
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