My HP Mini 2133
As I mentioned in my holiday wrap up, Natalie had gifted me with an HP Mini 2133 netbook.
I had been thinking of getting myself either a netbook or an Internet tablet (not that either of those descriptions are really all that functional) for some time. Just something small carrying around the house, or to the coffee bar near work. I wasn't looking for anything killer. The only requirements I had was that it not break the bank (cost more than a laptop) and that it be capable of running Linux. And not be ugly.
Obviously, there were other things to consider.
While there may be better netbooks out in the marker (HP seemed to agree, having announced the 2140 at CES and I saw something about the future 2150 today), I might have decided to purchase the 2133 myself. The primary issue being the local availability and who I work for (EDS, an HP company).
When we opened gifts with Natalie's parents on 21 December, I plugged the Mini in and put it aside to give it a chance to charge. I was kind of surprised that the battery didn't take anywhere near as long as I expected to charge, or the box seemed to have already been opened. So after a while I turned it on, and immediately found myself logged into a desktop that didn't exactly look like it the default I was expecting. It seems that this was a returned unit, sold as new. Being the 2133 doesn't ship with recovery media (and that included the Linux version I was running) Natalie wanted to take it back and exchange it. We did, and this unit had all the factory seals still in place.
Repeat the setup and this time on boot, it takes me thought SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop's first boot setup. Of course something goes wrong and the install isn't 100% right. Small problems here and there. But it is working. WiFi works. Video looks nice. Not a whole lot of disk space, only a 4GB solid state drive, but for use at home, that's not a serious problem. My home network has some storage available.
And then, right before we travel up to Bristol, I let the SLED install do an update. I guess I should have read a little more on the Internet before doing that, and I should have waited till after we traveled.
First issue with doing the update was that the SLED 10 SP1 HP installed isn't exactly supported by Novel anymore. Second issue was that the 4GB ssd just didnt' have the space to download the patches that were available in one sitting. Third issue was that the updated that were done were kernel updates, and HP had provided customized modules for the WiFi card. This meant that when I get the kernel updates down, I didn't have the matching modules for the WiFi and lost the use of wireless network. And the final issue is that the unit only had 512MB, so everything was kind of slow, and a the small disk meant that I couldn't just throw more swap at it.
When we got back from Bristol, I did order an upgrade for the memory. At the same time, I ordered an 32GB solid state disk. I figured if I had to pull the keyboard off to change the memory, I might as well do the hard drive, too. (I later bought a USB enclosure for the 4GB drive off of eBay for $8.)
I had attempted to make an image of the HP install (patched and somewhat broken) prior to installing the new disk, hoping that I could salvage the install and put it back on the Mini. That didn't work. Seems there were some issues with copying a 4GB file over the network under the netboot I had setup. (I can now support booting off my home network).
That left me with a borked disk image I could not use. Off to the Internet to get an install of the new opensuse 11.1.
Currently, the Mini is running X under the vesa framebuffer, as I haven't worked on trying to get either the closed Chrome drivers, or the FOSS openchrome drivers working. I can't do 3D desktop effects. Video is a little choppy and some graphic things just don't work right. But I'm OK with that. I wasn't expecting a desktop replacement. I did get the WiFi working again using ndiswrapper and the windows XP dirvers for the Broadcom chipset. In my experience, SuSE had been pretty good in getting Dell and IBM laptops working right out of the install. So, this was the first time I had to do ndiswrappers myself.
It works well enough, though I don't know what would happen without the NetworkMananger. If I move to or just try out WindowMaker or Enlightenment on the Mini, I'm not sure how I'm going to manage the wireless.
I don't think the laptop has Bluetooth. And I haven't gotten it working yet using my phone as a modem (which I did get working under 10.3 over the summer on an older IBM laptop). But with free WiFi at Bean There, I'm not sure how much I'll actually need to use a CDMA modem.
Yes, I know, I want to make it work, too. But as it seems I'm going to be forced into working from home more often to support my current project, WiFi is more than enough. And I'll figure out some way of getting the GPS hooked in. (Another thing I had working under 10.3 this summer.)
Overall, I like the install I have on the box. The webcam works, so I've used that for the Daily Photo a couple of times. The 4GB enclosure will be nice (once I get TrueCrypt going again) to use for moving things around. The 32GB disk seems roomy.
Overall, the HP Mini 2133 does what I expect it to do. And it looks fairly nice doing it.
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Comments
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I have no idea what you just said. They told me to write click on my screen, but nobody told me how to get the ink off after I'm done.