[Leica] Travel hard drive?

[mark at whitedogs.co.uk (Mark Pope)]

I have a HP Mininote 2133 netbook.  It has 1GB RAM and 120GB HDD.  My 
version originally came with Suse Enterprise Linux 10 loaded.  I had 
lots of problems with this and now run Ubuntu version 8.10 (Intrepid 
Ibex), which supports the WiFi chip natively without the need to run 
NDISWRAPPER (i.e. properly!).

I like the form-factor.  It's fractionally bigger than the Asus EEE 900 
and the keyboard is about 90% the size of a 'full sized' laptop 
keyboard.  The screen is excellent but its high resolution (1280x768) is 
a double-edged sword on such a small machine.  It can be hard to read 
things.  But it is on of the nicest screens I've seen on any laptop.

The machine is quite slow.  The VIA processor doesn't have a lot of 
horsepower, but it's plenty good enough for emails, browsing and word 
processing/spreadsheet work. It's 'only' a single core too.

The battery life is quite poor - but the standard battery has just 3 
cells.  I typically get about 1.5 hours of use out of a charge.  I am 
waiting for the 6 cell battery to be available in the UK.

By far the most annoying thing about the 2133 is the mouse pad, which is 
very sensitive.  If you don't disable it when typing, the cursor has a 
habit of jumping around so you end up over-typing words.  Having said 
this, as I type this email, I have just disabled the 'click using the 
keypad' option in the mouse control panel.  It will be interesting to 
see if this helps to fix the problem.

It has a built in SD card reader, so can be used as a backup device for 
SD cards.  Picassa will read dng files and I believe there are other 
packages available for Linux that will work with them too.

Overall, I am pleased with it now it's running a decent operating system 
(a Windows XP is available), though I believe machines using the new 
Intel Atom processor are faster, have a better battery life and may be 
less power-hungry.  For the money, which was just over ?300, I think 
it's great.

Hope this helps.

If anyone's interested, I've written a piece on my blog about the trials 
and tribulations of owning this machine - 
http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=145

Regards


Mark


Mark Pope,
Swindon, Wilts
UK

Homepage               http://www.monomagic.co.uk
Blog                   http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog
Picture a week (2009)  http://www.monomagic.co.uk/index.php?gallery=paw/2009
                (2009) 
http://www.monomagic.co.uk/index.php?gallery=paw/2009


Tina Manley wrote:
> At 12:42 PM 1/8/2009, you wrote:
>> I just ordered an Aspire One "netbook" from Amazon, which I'll be
>> coupling with various portable HD's and readers.
> 
> I would love to have one of these for travel.  My only concern is that 
> the reviews go from 5 star - everything is wonderful - to 1 star - the 
> thing died two weeks after I got it.  I would hate to be on a month long 
> trip and have the netbook just die.  The reviews of the ASUS Eee PC 
> 900HA are much better with no reports of failures.  It costs about the 
> same, but I like the looks and features of the Acer Aspire better. :-(
> 
> Does anybody have either one of these or another netbook that you 
> recommend?
> 
> Tina
> 
> 
> Tina Manley
> www.tinamanley.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
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