[Wolves] HP Mininote 2133 for £200

[Adam Sweet]

On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 08:26 +0000, Jim Prince wrote:
> 
> 2009/3/8 Adam Sweet adam at adamsweet.org
> 
>          
>         Yes it can. The one I saw in PC World was configured badly too
>         and it
>         crashed when I tried to change the res. Not a promising start
>         but I
>         bought one anyway and this one is running at the advertised
>         resolution.
>  
> In that case I think I'll buy one too, excellent thanks.

> If I buy one I think I'll try it with Ubuntu

It looks like I ran into the BIOS bug, or at least the Ubuntu problem
with Mininote BIOS as detailed at the top of here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/HP2133

I installed Ubuntu Jaunty alpha 5 late last night and it installed fine.
The package management works much faster so it is that SLED's package
manager is just very slow. Also, it seems that the BBC News video I
watched was choppy itself, a Youtube video played ok.

I haven't tested every possible hardware device yet, but the machine
appears to work. Sound works but I haven't tried the mic and headphone
sockets (see link), graphics work though with the OpenChrome driver
rather than the official Via one, I haven't tried playing with that yet,
wireless works - the restricted driver manager offered me a proprietary
driver but the wireless already works so I'll take the Freedom option.
Webcam works in Cheese, I haven't tried anything else (see link),
bluetooth is detected but I haven't used it.

CPU frequency scaling doesn't work, so the CPU runs at full speed all
the time which makes the unit run hot, there is a fix in the above link
which I haven't tried yet.

Under both SLED and Ubuntu, I notice that the CPU doesn't do 2 or more
demanding tasks too well, it does them but the CPU is maxed out for
longer than you would think. That said, this is a single core 1.2GHz CPU
optimisted for low voltage (5 watts!):

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/c7-m_ulv/index.jsp

My main machine is a dual core 2.13 GHz with 4 GB RAM, so you're going
to feel the pinch on this machine, but it feels roughly comparable the
Atom in the Dell Mini 9, sometimes better, sometime slower. Watching a
Youtube clip in it's default res keeps the CPU around 85%, full screen
it becomes choppy, but I am using the Free driver.

Overall, I'm very happy with it. I was a bit disappointed with the Dell
Mini 9, it was just too pokey for me, this is much nicer. I'm going to
see what the Via driver and the CPU frequency scaling fix can do.

Battery life of a reported 2 and half hours sounds no worse from what I
get on the Mini 9 in practice.

Only downside I can see at the moment is that my neck is getting stiff
from looking down at the screen all the time, but I was on it from
something like 7:30 pm yesterday until 2:30 am this morning and another
hour when I got up.

Regards,

Adam Sweet

-- 

http://blog.adamsweet.org/