Replacement mini-note 2133 is here

I chose not to return the mini to thinkgeek.com for a full refund with the promise from HP technical support that they would send a replacement upgrade for my defective machine. Well, after almost a month it's finally here and I love it!! The old mini definitely had defective hardware as the new laptop's wifi hooked right up to the network.

The 24-48 hours shipping turned into almost a month but it was worth the wait. I called and raised a little stink about not seeing the replacement for almost a month and got a call back from a different tech. He said they weren't getting the 1.6Ghz machines with Suse for another week. Being way behind and in a hurry to g3et caught up on side work, I asked if he could just ship me one with Windows Vista and I would install Suse from the CD. He agreed and said it would ship the next day and he'd send a restore CD for Vista just because.

It arrived!!! I opened the box to find a shiny new laptop with Windows Vista, power cord and 6-cell battery! No CDs or manuals though so I called the original tech and got the Vista restore CD sent. I boxed up the old laptop and shipped it back. Working laptop in hand... Awesome!

HP mini-note 2133 update

Got the mini a day before the projected delivery date!
Go UPS!! :>

First boot was setup, reboot took a couple minutes as it was configuring things and third boot was nice and fast at about 1 minute or so. Suse Gnome interface is OK but I still like my Kubuntu KDE look-and-feel more.

First and last thing I tried to do was configure wireless. System saw the card and drivers are there but it wouldn't connect to wifi. I turned off all encryption on the router but it still wouldn't connect to open wifi either. :< Took it to work and had a linux guru mess with iwconfig and stuff trying to get it to connect to a WPA encrypted network with no luck.

Long story short, logged 6 tech support calls with HP and a new mini is on the way.

Long story long, First call: I asked about the wifi and tech said it is supported and should work under linux. Unfortunately HP decided to put in a Broadcom card which has NEVER played nice with linux. Then I asked about a recovery disk and they said they'd send it if I had any problems in the the first 90 days. I think not... made them send me the restore DVD and it got here in about 2 days. I left the call at that and took a couple days to play with the wireless settings.

Second call: a different tech just went through the wireless configuration over and over... :/ Finally said he'd find an actual mini to test. Apparently he was just walking through Suse wireless setup on a desktop. No call back so I called a Third time and was told they were working on it and would call back after the weekend.

Fourth call: was a bunch of the same unsuccessful wireless configuration over and over. He apparently had a mini connect to their open network with no problems. Gave me his direct number, which I thought was really nice, and asked me to call back the next day.

Fifth call: Only thing different to try was setup without actually entering the WEP key so it would prompt for one but no luck. Next he was gonna send me the DVD to re-install but I told him I already had it from my first call. The next day at work I got hold of an external DVD drive and re-installed twice but still no connection at work or home. Smart linux guru at work tried a Madriva live CD and finally gave up. We pretty much narrowed this down to a hardware problem at this point...

Sixth and final call: The tech finally gave up and looked up warranty return options. He offered a deal I couldn't refuse. Apparently they have a program called "capture58" where new hardware releases with problems are taken back to see what is wrong so product improvements can be made. They exchanged my 1.2Ghz, 1GB RAM, 120GB HD Suse OS configuration for a 1.6Ghz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD and supposedly Suse although this is the Windows Vista hardware configuration...

So I am anxiously awaiting the replacement and am curious if it will come with linux or Vista. I have the Suse recovery DVD and am seriously considering the Ubuntu install so Windows won't last long if it's actually on there...

HP 2133 mini on the way!!

Ordered a new HP 2133 mini from thinkgeek.com! Right size, right configuration, right price!!!

I have wanted a UMPC forever now but the price point has been high compared to just getting an inexpensive laptop. I've been waiting for a small portable device with a full OS, not just an icon interface and it is finally out... Been watching the hp mini-note 2133 for a while now and love the small form factor and (almost) full keyboard. My bro may get the EEE 900 so maybe we'll have a head-to-head comparo soon. :>

Spent a couple hours reading the reviews so I won't repeat it all here. I'll link a couple of the big ones below. Only thing missing is a CD/DVD drive but I can't remember the last time I put a disk in my current laptop so that wasn't a big deal breaker. Plus I'm running on a 30GB HD right now and the 2133 is coming with a 120GB!! I can finally have one main HD and just set some scripts up to run rsync to the external USB drive for backup. Immediate add-ons will be external USB CD/DVD drive and 6-cell battery.

Follow the link to see full config. High points are:

1. SLED 10 OS
2. 120GB HD, 1GB RAM
3. 1280X768 on 8.9in screen
   
4. 92% full size keyboard
5. integrated web cam and speakers
   
6. Did I mention Linux OS!?!?!? ;>

Review Links I used, as promised:

• Found first real comparisons in gizmodo feed
• First review I read was at cnet.com
  
• Good bunch of info on notebookreview.com
• Another review I stumbled on at laptopmag.com
• And of course, I coulda got free shipping from hp.com but keepin up my geek cred buying it at thinkgeek
  

Unboxing to follow...

Mount network share from linux

Was able to mount a NAS drive share very easily.

1. Open the Adept Manager
2. Install smbfs (which installed samba-common)
3. At the command line use 'mount -t smbfs //[Share IP]/[path] /mnt/nas
4. Add alias in .bashrc file for quickly mounting share
alias mountnas='mount -t smbfs //[Share IP]/[path] /mnt/nas'

I'll add more on samba as I do more with it...

Installing Truecrypt in Kubuntu 7.04

Truecrypt is a free, open-source, multi-platform encryption program. It has worked perfectly for me in Windows XP on multiple computers. The basic concept is you create an password protected encrypted file (volume) of a specified size that holds your private data. It is mounted and treated like another drive on your computer.
Installing truecrypt on Kubuntu was really simple:

1. Download the tarball from http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php to your home directory. I used truecrypt-4.3a-ubuntu-7.04-x86.tar.gz.


2. Move the file to /usr/src/ by typing "sudo mv ~/truecrypt-4.3a-ubuntu-7.04-x86.tar.gz /usr/src"
   


3. unzip and untar the file by typing "sudo tar -xvfz truecrypt-4.3a-ubuntu-7.04-x86.tar.gz"


4. cd into the new directory and check out the Readme.txt


5. I used the 'dpkg -i' command with no problems typing "sudo dpkg -i truecrypt_4.3a-0_i386.deb"
   

Pretty simple and I encountered no errors. I also added some aliases to .bashrc to quickly mount the volumes I use.

1. Make the directory where your mounted volume will be: 'mkdir /mnt/[mount name]'


2. Add an alias in .bashrc to mount the volume: alias mountvolA='truecrypt /media/ExternalDrive/PathToVolume/VolumeName /mnt/volA'

Next step is to figure out how to put shortcuts on the desktop to be able to easily open those mounted volumes.

A little sidetracked...but I'm back now!

OK, so I installed Kubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon the other day. First thing I tried was wifi. The GUI admin seems to see the card but still won't hook in to the network. Then tried ndiswrapper but still no go on the wifi despite the increased support in this release. Next I tried to install truecrypt so I could get to my external data drive but just couldn't get the app working. For fun, I also tried compis but the bottom and right side of my screen freaked out! Have to look deeper into my video card and compatibility. So 7.10 is a bust for my Inspiron but will definitely try again if/when I get a different laptop...

With nothing to lose, I thought I'd try some other distros for a change of pace. I installed Fedora 8 then Mandriva 2008. I tried to get used to them but was highly disappointed in the lack of features in both that I'm looking for.

The prodigal son has come home to Kubuntu 7.04 - Feisty Fawn and the feast has begun!! Next posts will be specific app installs and configuration procedures...

Kubuntu 7.04 - Feisty Fawn

I installed Kubuntu 7.04 - Feisty Fawn on the linux partition and have been messing around with different things. Adept has tons of packages available for easy installation. I installed TrueCrypt and was able to mount a volume easily. Did some other things but that is what I can think of right now.

Linux kernel does not have native support for my Broadcom 43xx wifi card. I tried ndiswrapper with windows .inf file and the Broadcom drivers but nothing worked. Wired NIC works fine so at least I can get online.