bl1nk

I have been using a HP Mini-Note 2133 for about a month. It ain’t no MacBook Pro but then again it ain’t no Vaio either. Here is what I have found.

Base specs:

• 1.6GHz AMD K7 processor – about the processing equivalent of three hamsters flipping a 20c coin
• 1Gb DDR2 RAM – which I updated to 2Gb after two days of testing
• 120Gb HDD
• 8.9″ screen running 1280×768 @ 60Hz – this rather then the HDD was the Eee killer I have tried to run various linux GUIs on 800×600 in the past and it was not fun. 1024×640 isn’t quite good enough any more!
• 802.11 b/g wireless
• 1000/100/10 ethernet
• bluetooth
• SDHC card reader, 2 USB ports, horrible 3 cell battery, VGA out, unpleasant sound card, massive speakers, miscellaneous stuff

It shipped with Vista home Basic and the usual pile of crap-ware. I used Vista for a couple of days whilst testing how it worked with my P1i (it didn’t), how it responded under normal office use (a bit of Excel goes a long way, and takes a long time) and what a fully conditioned battery would do (less than 2 hours because all Australian 2133s ship with the useless 3 cell battery).

Out came the XP and instructions on how to install from USB thanks to Eeeguides.com, followed by the drivers from HP and a few odds and sods from hp2133.com. This was really just a fall back in case something went horribly wrong with the next bit.

Ubuntu on a mini-note

I can state categorically that it works.

I installed Ubuntu 8.04 and followed the rather copious instructions on the Ubuntu wiki some of which has now become defunct due to 8.04.1 being out (oh if only I had waited another few weeks). I had no real trouble getting wireless to work with ndiswrapper but waiting for the WPA Supplicant to work can be painful. Video works fine but won’t play with anything except a basic desktop – no flashy compiz for me. Sound, ethernet, touchpad, bluetooth (such as it is), power management and the built in camera all work out of the box.

There have been remarks about the problems getting 3d effects working. Really, this is not a machine for graphics processing at the best of times, it is just too puny. Sub pixel font smoothing works a treat and that is as hard core as my mobile graphics requirements get!

Working with the little machine

Physically moving from a MacBook Pro to a Mini-Note has been a challenge. I like the keyboard. I am still not used to the positioning of the mouse buttons or the size of the touchpad scroll area. The screen is tiny and is not good for hours of uninterrupted use. Attached to a 66cm LCD HD TV it works real nice. It is an effective personal heater in this Sydney winter.

As for its performance, Open Office apps work fine if a little slow to start up. Firefox 3 works flawlessly with adblock plus, flashblock and web editor installed. Evolution is getting better with the recent updates and may replace Thunderbird because I cannot seem to get GCALDaemon to sync Lightning with Google Calendar (I also need to sync to a P1i – see below). GTKpod and Rhythmbox take care of the music, though I had to enable crossfade to make Rhythmbox play anything at all; totem works ; I haven’t been brave enough to try GIMP yet.

Bluetooth works. What can I say? I can connect to my P1i. I can copy files and use it as a 3G/GPRS modem. I cannot get a sync tool to work over bluetooth though. This seems be be a common problem. To overcome this I set up funambol and syncevolution and now I can sync the phone with the mini-note via wlan. Yay me!

Surprises

I have an Elgato EyeTV-DTT Stick. Yes, I am a sad Mac user (well, I was briefly a sad Mac user, now I am a sad mini-note user which is probably worse). The stick is a Hauppauge in disguise and works fine. I have given it a quick test with Me-TV and it plays and records just as it is meant to. Me-TV is extraordinarily primitive compared with my MBP experience, but then again Elgato charge a lot of money for their pretty interface.

Problems

I have an irritating issue with the wireless. There is an intermittent failure when coming out of hibernation. Usually everything comes back fine. Sometimes the wireless network won’t find my home network (mixed mode with WPA due to the aforementioned P1i) until I unload and reload ndiswrapper. Annoying. I also have a weird screensaver freeze going on. If xscreensaver decides to load the ‘matrix’ screensaver it won’t turn off. Nothing will make it go away! I have had to kill the X server. Very annoying!

Ready for prime time?

Not likely! I have a history of squeezing inappropriate linuxes onto laptops. I lived with a Thinkpad 240 running Debian for a few years and most of that spent in a command line (I toyed with killing X on the mini-note but that would just be perverse) and I have not owned a PC laptop which hasn’t run some flavour of Linux (usually dual boot I must admit) since 1997. However getting it working, whilst not difficult, is a chore and would not be countenanced by many. Once it is working it is far from flawless.

I am happy using the mini-note as my main machine because I use a text editor, a web browser and Planner/Omniplan/Project as my weapons of choice. The intermittent WiFi issue is annoying but is down to ndiswrapper and a bit of laziness on my part. The appalling battery life is a real pain. Would I give it to my mother? No, absolutely not. Ubuntu works on it, but there are still too many quirks.