Archive for the 'Software' Category

Chrome on a stick? Carry your Google Browser everywhere you go

Published
by
chris
on September 4, 2008
in Software
. 0 Comments

Strapped for space on your Netbook? Want to carry your essential apps in your pocket, with your car keys?  Well, Google’s new browser, Chrome has already been modified to run on a USB Stick.  You can find the browser for downloading at Carsten’s site (English translation).

Remember that Chrome only works on Microsoft Windows Netbooks (no Linux version). I haven’t tried it yet, but from the comments on the blog it appears to work as expected for many of the users who have.

Thanks to Amit at Digital Inspiration for publishing the link.

Why you should download Google’s new browser, Chrome

Published
by
chris
on September 2, 2008
in Announcements and Software
. 2 Comments

Google launched a new platform browser today, Chrome. Chrome is fast and simple. Google have carefully stripped out any browser bloat, built a new Javascript engine (V8) optimized for today’s web browsing experience and open sourced the code. I downloaded and ran it on my hp mini-note and was very impressed with the performance and the simplicity of the interface. On Google Chrome, I was happily browsing with 10 open tabs and no performance degradation. I suggest you give it a try, I think you’ll be impressed.

Alternatively, you could try Internet Explorer 8 Beta, which was made available for download from Microsoft today. I didn’t.

Here’s a few screenshots from the mini-note running Google Chrome.

Google Chrome Thumbnails of your top sites

Google Chrome showing the bbc.co.uk web site

Interestingly, Microsoft Live Mail didn’t like Chrome and suggested I use another browser.

Microsoft Windows Live email doesnt like Chrome yet


Virtual Desktops for your HP mini-note running Windows XP

Published
by
chris
on June 24, 2008
in Software
. 0 Comments

Over the next few weeks, I’ll highlight some of the best free software that is available for the HP mini-note, running Windows XP. Today, I’m recommending you take a look at a cool Open Source virtual windows manager.

We all know that the HP2133 mini-note has a great display. The 8.9 inch high resolution (1280 x 768) screen is perfect for viewing a single document, watching a movie or browsing the web, but since moving to Windows XP I miss the advanced virtual desktop software that comes with many of the Linux distributions, like Ubuntu. Recently to plug this functional gap, I installed an Open Source Virtual Windows Manager, called VirtuaWin. I’ve been running it on my mini-note now for a few weeks without problems. Now I can easily switch between web browsing, itunes, document editing and editing my blog with a single keypress. No more fussing around with minimizing & maximizing different windows etc. The software is initially configured for 4 virtual desktops, with simple navigation keys (which can be easily redefined) and has additional modules that you can use to add functionality. I kept the default number of desktops and modified some of the navigation keys. I’ve been using v4.0.1 which seems very stable.

You can download the software or read more about it at SourceForge.net (the home of all things Open Source).

Configuring virtuawin virtual desktop

Configuring VirtuaWin on the HP mini-note

A new, improved HP2133 Mini-note

Published
by
chris
on June 23, 2008
in Hardware and Software
. 1 Comment

After successfully upgrading my first HP Mini-note to 2GB of memory with a 120GB hard drive, I decided that when I upgraded my second machine I would use the largest (reasonably priced) capacity hard drive available.

So, for my second system upgrade I selected a WD Scorpio 320GB SATA drive ($129.99) and a 2GB memory stick (KVR667D2S0/2GR) from Kingston ($40.99). To reduce the setup time of the new machine, I also created an image of the hard drive from my first mini-note installation using Acronis True Image and restored the image to the new hard drive.

Unfortunately the process of creating and restoring the hard drive image was not as straight forward as I expected, and I was unable to restore the drive image back to the new hard drive directly in the second mini-note, due to the Acronis boot loader causing the mini-note to hang. It’s certainly possible that Acronis has resolved this issue with later versions of their software (I was running v8, and their latest version is v11).

Instead, I restored the image to the second drive by using a hardware device that enables you to plug any hard drive in to your USB port (these devices are called SATA to USB hard drive adapters). The mini-note recognized the hard drive without a problem through the USB hardware device and I simply restored the image from my 120GB drive to the 320GB drive and dropped the drive in to my second mini-note. To complete the process, I formatted the unused space on the 320GB drive.

Presto, my second mini-note was upgraded to a 320GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP SP2 (Home Edition) with all my applications already loaded and installed. Total installation time for upgrading the RAM, replacing the SSD drive, system image creation and restoration was about 90 minutes.

In building out this second mini-note, it appears that the wireless card in my first machine is actually faulty. I now need to figure out how I can get it exchanged after making so many system modifications.

Here’s links to the parts and products I used from the modder’s good friend, NewEgg.com:

Hard Drive

Memory

SATA to USB hard drive adapter

Acronis True Image

HP adds SuSE Linux Source ISO to HP2133 support page

Published
by
chris
on May 13, 2008
in Drivers and Software
. 0 Comments

It looks like HP have got around to publishing the ISO of the default HP2133 SuSE 10.1 installation on their driver/download page.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription….

Mininoteuser.com have already got a discussion thread started on the subject, if you prefer to not be the first to experiment with it.

http://forums.mininoteuser.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=233

Retro gaming on the HP2133 mini-note

Published
by
chris
on May 12, 2008
in Software
. 1 Comment

Now I’ve got Windows XP running on my mini-note, it’s time to have some fun with it. Tonight, I tried the latest release of a very popular arcade emulator for Microsoft Windows. I’m happy to report that many of the games I tested worked very well, with a 100% frame rate or at least a frame rate that was decent enough to play the game with various optimization settings (un-throttling, auto frame skip, no sound). The games I tried were mostly from the early 1980’s video-gaming arcades and if your old enough to be in the arcades in the 1980’s you’ll know very well what games I’m talking about.

To learn more about retro arcade gaming visit one of the popular web sites including:

http://www.mameworld.net/

http://mamedev.org/

http://www.awecades.com/

Happy Gaming,  Chris.

Preparing for Windows XP installation

Published
by
chris
on May 6, 2008
in Software
. 0 Comments

Frankly, I’ve been very disappointed with the default SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Edition 10 running on the mini-note. I still have not got wireless networking to work and even with upgrading the mini-note to 2 gigabytes of RAM, performance is still very sluggish. In preparation for installing Windows XP, I removed the internal 4 gigabyte SSD drive and inserted a Western Digital Scorpio 120 gigabyte drive tonight. I plan to install Windows XP home on the drive and configure it with 2 additional partitions, one for the installation of a working copy of SUSE Enterprise Desktop (assuming HP releases one that works at some point) and the other for a version of Ubuntu.

Windows XP Drivers now available on HP Support Site

Published
by
chris
on May 5, 2008
in Drivers, Hardware and Software
. 0 Comments

It looks like HP is starting to get their act together to support the Mini-note. They have just posted Microsoft Windows XP drivers for most of the hardware in the Mini-note. The drivers can be found at:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/…

XP on a USB Stick

Published
by
chris
on April 30, 2008
in Hardware and Software
. 1 Comment

Brad Linder at Liliputing.com has gone to considerable trouble to explain in detail how to get Windows XP on to a USB stick so you can install it on your HP2133 mini note. He also explains in the article how to then partition the drive after installation for use with Linux or other operating systems using Parted Magic (an Open Source hard disk partitioner).Parted Magic Screenshot

http://www.liliputing.com/2008/04/install-windows-xp…

Do HP “really” want my opinion?

Published
by
chris
on April 29, 2008
in Hardware and Software
. 4 Comments

I’ve been struggling with the HP2133 mini note since I picked it up and opened the box on Saturday morning. Three days of tweaking, and I’m no closer to getting the wireless networking to work correctly. Looking at the community forums, I am not alone in my frustration.

On HP’s official support Forum, John O’Hara has had no response to his question. http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do…

On Notebook Forums, the wireless issue has been discovered several times:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=241040

On netbookuser.com, some help was offered, but I’ve been unable to resolve the issue following Mike’s advice:

http://forum.netbookuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=512

and finally, mininoteuser.com has several posting about the issue with wi-fi including: http://forums.mininoteuser.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=97

A couple of things I have learned from following these various discussion threads:

- The wi-fi switch on the front of the computer does work, it always stays orange but when wireless is enabled if you stare at the light very hard, you can see a hint of blue (just try it out and let me know if you can see the difference).

- Almost all the issues that Linux users are experiencing are resolved when they “upgrade” their system to Windows XP. There’s a step-by-step guide to the upgrade process available on the mininoteuser.com web site.I think I can “trick-out” my mini note to run XP for a couple of hundred dollars (more memory, different hard drive and a copy of Windows XP Home Edition) or I suppose I could have just bought the Windows configuration if I really wanted to run Windows….

Today, HP requested my opinion on my mini note buying experience by asking me to complete a survey. If you bought an HP2133 mini note with SuSe Enterprise Desktop 10 (i.e. Linux) and your having the same issues as most of the community I strongly suggest you complete this survey and give HP your personal information so they can contact you.I’ll let you know what happens when I get the “call”.