Tag Archives: laptop

More laptop confusion

Personal,

With the old IBM i200 now running Debian and a backup copy of my /home I’ve gone back to trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the V2000. I did some testing all day yesterday, bascially just to see if it would run without any load. I let it sit plugged in, no screen saver no sleep, and did the same thing with battery power. Amazingly it ran without a problem both ways. I’m even typing this entry on it, been running all day no hiccups.

The one caviot was when trying to boot the Windows drive, nothing. I guess I could say switching drives in and out between the two OS’s freeked the BIOS out, but I don’t see how that’s possible. If I lived in the hardware world maybe I could come up with something that made more sense. So between the two I should be able to get a few more years of use, or at least I hope so. If the V2000 fails me I’ve got a backup with a keyboard that rocks. And to think I was checking out a Lenovo T60, at todays rate it’s about $1,600.00 ouch!!!

The V2000 has died (updated)

Personal, ,

Yesterday as I typed at the start of the day the laptop went dark. That was rather unusual as I didn’t notice the battery running low and I was on AC. I switched outlets, nothing. Flipped it over to take out the bottom and nothing obvious as to a problem. So at this point I’m thinking power supply or mother board. No lights when I plug it in, no ticks or sound period. After a buddy came by with a volt meter the cord is good but nothing coming from the A/C outlet on the mother board. That sucks.

A new board is $460 and I’ve only had it since Jan. of 05. I was hoping it would last me five years… barley made it two. So now the decision spend 60 to 80 percent of what it would cost for a new toy to get me back to 05 technology or get another one. That just burns me I paid extra for a gig of memory and a 12 cell battery just so I wouldn’t have to do this in a few years. I even busted out the old i200 to see if I can get Xubuntu running on it. Given enough hammering I think I could but man is it slow. I guess it could be worse, could have been the tower that I use for work and what Kay uses. Maybe I should be thankful that one didn’t bite the dust. I’d hate to think what hoops I’d have to jump through to get the drive to boot with a new motherboard.

Update 3/15/2007: I must be a complete idiot. After much googling and almost deciding on getting an external battery charger, 70 dollars vs the price of a new mother board, I put everything back together and turned it on. Booted with no problems and battery is at full charge. Disconnect the power for a while and plug it back in, battery is charging. If I was smarter I would have thought maybe the drive went bad or faulted which caused the problem in the first place. I never swapped out the drives. This is great cause I didn’t want to replace it… but call me stupid cause I didn’t figure it out sooner.

Update 3/17/2007: Maybe I wasn’t as dumb as I thought. The system has not run for more than 4 hours at a time now. In the last 12 hours won’t stay up more than 5 minutes regardless which drive I put in. Very disappointed at the moment. So I’m working on the old i200 loading Debian.

Carrying your laptop

Personal

Now that I’ve had the new laptop for a while I’ve found myself doing a little traveling and in need of some type of carrying case. I have a Targus Notebook Backpack but that has so many pockets I find myself throughing everything in except the kitchen sink. Of course since the new laptop has a 12 cell batter and I’ve been getting 4 – 6 hours out of it I figured it was time I went with something a little lighter. So after hearing about a sleeve on a forum or two I went searching and I must say I found a great company with a great product.

My requirements were the laptop needed to fit snug and provide protection, but that’s it. No need to worry about pockets to carry cables or cords, just make it simple. After a bit of searching I ran across a place in San Francisco called Waterfield Designs. This company makes a variety of protective cases for laptops, ipods, ipod gear, keyboards, cables and wallets. I’ve had it now for about a month and it is great. What I got was a Sleeve Case exactly like the one pictured. Made from high grade neoprene with ballistic nylon shell it is rugged and looks great at the same time. You can select from 14 different laptop manufactures with all there current models and customize features such as orientation, closing flap, sholder strap, or a piggy back.

If you have a similar need and are looking for something unique, this is it. Not to mention they are made in the USA, at $45.00 with no extras it was well worth it.

New laptop for the new year

Personal

With the new year hear decided it was time to lay the IBM (i1200) to rest and replace it with something current. It has been a great workhorse for the last three years and took it’s share of abuse. What finally did it in was my attempt to inspect and fix a broken LCD hinge, needless to say it is broke and I don’t want to fix it that bad. It went through a number of configurations and has had a number of OS’s.

WinME
XP Pro
SUSE 9.0, 9.1
Fedora Core 2, 3

.. and it didn’t miss a beat with any.

I had two drives for it, a 20gb and a 10gb, but only 192mb of ram (64 + 128) and a Celeron 700. It had no on board NICs and only a CD ROM.

Well for the replacement I wanted to at least try and find something that had a little more punch from the get go. I’d have to put up some more cash but if it lasted longer, in the end it would be worth it. Yes I know it’s technology, you should never think that way… ;)

I did as much research as I could on brands, styles, and guts but each time I thought I’d found it I’d have to come back to my first choice Compaq’s v2000. I had seen the r3000’s and even purchased on for my mom but the v2000 is a little different. For me I had only a handful of requirements.

1. Had to run Linux.
2. Decent battery life.
3. Good keyboard.
4. Stylish.

5. Good resolution.

Three through five I did not have much trouble with but one and two, well those were going to be the tough ones. I will say my i1200 did just fine with all of these except #2 but as it goes Linux tends to do a little better with hardware that’s been out for a while. That is unless you compile kernels and modify code, but that I do not do.

I spec’d the v2000 out from http://www.hpshopping.com with the standard config with two exceptions, 1gb of RAM and a 12 cell battery. A note about the 12 cell it does not form fit to the bottom of the laptop like the 6 cell. It raises the base up about a inch and a half. At first this disapointed me but after a few hours of use I was over it. The angle the battery puts the laptop at makes it better for typing, IMHO.

Here is a sample image that was found on hpshopping.com.

So after two weeks I can say it was an excellent choice. As you can see below sound is currently not working, it did under FC2 but not on any of the current FC3 kernels. At the moment it is not a priority so for me it’s not a concern.

Spec's
Feature        Installed                   Working
-----------    ------------------------    ------------
OS             Fedora Core 3 (2.6.9-1)
Hard Drive     60GB
Processor      Intel Pentium M 1.4ghz
RAM            1GB
CD/DVD         Sony CD/DVD CRX830E         Yes

Firewire       Texas Instruments           No (Unknown device not tested)
Ethernet       Realtek 8139/8139C/8139C+   Yes
Wireless       Intel Pro 2200BG            Yes.. see http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net
Mouse          Synaptics TouchPad          Yes.. with add fuctions (hoz & vert scroll)
Sound          Intel 82801DB               No
Video          Intel 82852/855GM           Yes.. current res 1024 X 768

To get a better idea of the size here is another pick I took from http://www.notebookreview.com/.