So in a little over an hour you go from full charge to nothing just by using the laptop the way it was intended to be used. So despite its small size, the 2133 was never really designed to be too far away from a charger for too long. It is almost like having a car like a Honda Jazz with a petrol tank the size of a coffee cup. “Yes it is frugal, sir, but it will only go for a half a kilometre no matter how you drive it.”

Recently I discovered the wonderful Linux Mint 8 (Helena), while searching for a desktop linux distro to install as a virtual machine on my MacBook Pro. Despite all the misgivings that I have had in the past for the various Linux distros, I must say that they have been improving all the time. The last time I tried to install Linux on the 2133 was when Ubuntu 9.10 came out. What a disaster that was. Wifi did not want to work, then I went back to 9.04 but found that I could just not get my Vodafone Prepaid Mobile Broadband stick to work (K3520). In the end, out of frustration and spite I decided to whack XP back on and because I needed a little mobile word processor.

Linux Mint seems to run with a little bit of lag sometimes, but overall the experience has made my faith in Linux desktop distro strong again. Using Helena I could use my Vodafone Prepaid Broadband to connect to the net and wifi worked right out of the box.

If you need a decent desktop distro that looks half decent (who like brown anyway?) and works well out of the box for your 2133, then I can recommend Linux Mint 8 (Helena).

I suspect the new OS will be based on one of the pre-existing Linux distro (Ubuntu?) with the Google layer built on top to enable constant synchronising of data when online and caching mode when offline (ala Google Gears?). When it is released, hopefully it will free us all from having to worry what or which computer we are working on at any given time. To a certain extent, I have already implemented some of the ideas of cloud computing by using Google services to synchronise my calendar on my notebooks and phones. I guess the only other thing that I would like with the Google Chrome OS is cheaper data rates. This issue of data charges is what prevent a lot of people from utlising cloud-based services more often on their wireless devices (phones).

The only issue that can be noted is with the wifi connection manager. It seems after a few hibernates that the connection is stuck at the “getting ip address…” stage. This can be quickly fixed with a reboot. Other than this issue, I have not found any major ones to mention. Sound works flawlessly, Bluetooth works normally and the webcam works with Cheese (I have not tested it to work with Skype or anything like that).

Recently, I also purchased the 6-cell battery for the Mini-note, which makes the notebook (or netbook, if you like) much more usable. Since I use this notebook mainly for writing text, coding and web browsing, I have found that having that extra amount of battery capacity makes the notebook a little easier to use. No longer staring at the battery icon every few minutes to see if I will have time to finish what I am doing. It puts the usability of this little notebook on par with my MacBook and my Dell Inspiron laptop. Using it with little power management and with wifi on seems to give around 3-3.5 hrs of uninterrupted use. What joy!

Had this notebook shipped with Jackalope instead of Windows Vista Basic (standard on all Mini-notes shipped in Australia), it would have been a winner from the start. A 6-cell battery, even though it adds a little to the price should have been standard on all models.

Having upgraded the BIOS last time around, this time installation was quite sane and smooth. It was so smooth that it happened while I was watching TV without a single glitch. When install was done, I rebooted and voila! The screen worked OK, there was no need for funny hacks or even VIA’s driver to install and Wifi and Bluetooth worked out of the box! When I plugged in my USB modem from Three networks (Huawei E220), it was recognised straight away.

When I was done entering my wifi configuration, I was online surfing the net with a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04 on my HP mini-note 2133. I have not tested everything so far, but everything that I need from a basic notebook perspective was working quite well.

UPDATE

I have now had sometime to test the webcam and bluetooth and they are both working fine. Webcam works fine through Cheese, but I have not tested through Skype.

My third notebook is the first portable machine that I bought around 4 years ago which died at the end of 2006 and then was resurrected about 12 months ago, thanks to some kind soul who sold me a brand new replacement motherboard on Ebay. By the way, the cost of the motherboard was around one fifth what Toshiba quoted for replacing it. After spending three hours pulling the machine apart with photographic evidence so I can retrace my steps and then putting it back together slowly over three days (we all have to go to work, huh?), I ended up with an almost brand new notebook (except for a few creaky plastic panels and a spare screw).

While on Ebay I also purchased some accessories for my old Toshiba, including a second battery for the multi-bay, a dock, an intel wifi mini-pci card (ipw2100) and a higher capacity main battery. Considering the notebook was quite old by then, everything was reasonably cheap. I got everything for under $200 and got a second charger thrown in with the dock (thanks, buddy!).

What the whole process created for me was not just a notebook but also a project to get my dream Linux notebook. Ever since I stopped having a desktop machine in 2004, I have always wanted to have a notebook that can run Linux properly or rather to have a Linux OS that can run a notebook properly. While it was not entirely impossible, it was difficult.

Most distros at that time seemed to be focused on the desktop machine. I vividly remember installing Mandrake 10 on a notebook only to discover that by default the PCMCIA module was always disabled. This was not to mention things such as wifi cards, etc. Did I mention that when you plug an external drive into the machine you have to manually mount it?

After the sore disappointment with Mandrake (which was great as the basis of my server) I discovered Knoppix. It was truly eye-opening to discover an OS (live CD as well) that would automatically recognise the many important pieces of hardware that a notebook has, including wifi and the PCMCIA slots as well as beautifully auto-mounting any drive that I plugged in.

For a while I was running a Poor Man’s Install of Knoppix, which was basically a live cd that was stored on the Hard Drive as a bootable iso image. While it was great for doing things online and for experimental hacking, it did not allow much in the way of software installation. So if you’re missing a kernel module or you want to try a driver for some new piece of hardware, then too bad.

To be continued

Read part 2 of this article