All about laptops and netbook!
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eeePC 701 Tablet Mod
about 1 week ago - No comments
The ASUS Eee PC 701 is back yet again with yet another slate tablet mod purposely made for those occasions where the modder wanted to verify actor roles at IMBD in front of the TV. He bought a used Eee PC 701 and touchscreen kit off of Ebay and proceeded to hack the More >
The Eee PC T91MT with new pSSD drive
about 1 month ago - No comments
Asus have revealed that their new Eee PC T91MT multi-touch netbook will feature the 32GB pSSD Gen2 drive from SanDisk. Asus chose this model from SanDisk’s offerings as it suits the netbooks low power needs and small form factor requirements.
As many readers would already be aware, this means enhanced durability for the T91MT because the More >
HowTo: Measuring hard disk performance with linux and ‘hdparm’
about 4 months ago - No comments
Measuring sequential disk performance with linux is easy – most distros (like ubuntu) come with a tool called hdparm , that is mainly used for tuning and optimizing hard disk parameters, but luckily it also includes simple benchmark functionality – for example the following command sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda gives me the following output: /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.01 seconds = 58.55 MB/sec Of course you need to substitute /dev/sda with the name of your raw disk device (for example, it might be /dev/hda for non-SATA disks) . Its impossible to get higher transfer rates that that from your disk. Hdparm reads at the very start of the disk for these tests (which is the fastest area of the whole harddisk) and using optimal access pattern
Foldable USB keyboard simplifies typing with your UMPC
about 4 months ago - No comments
Most of the UMPC and MIDs available today share the same disadvantage: most of the time the keyboard just doesn’t work well at those tiny key sizes, especially if you have large hands. What to do? One possible solution could be using one of these ultra-portable external keyboards with your UMPC! The device shown on the right for example, bearing the rather technical description “Targus PA875U01X”, weighs just 180 grams at a size of 280 x 108 x 9 mm (unfolded), with 68 full-sized keys in QWERTY layout – enabling easy and smooth ten-finger typing for the mobile email enthusiast
HowTo: Add 3G/HSDPA functionality to your eeePC 1000H
about 4 months ago - No comments
During the last few months, Asus has started selling the “eeePC 1000H GO” with internal 3G/HSDPA card for easy everywhere connectivity. So far so good, but what about all those thousands of customers that already bought an eeePC 1000H before? Are they doomed to use one of those ugly external USB 3G modems – a threat to your eeePCs health if you drop it accidentally and the USB stick destroys the USB port it was sticking in (if not even more)…
Foldable keyboard for your UMPC – an update
about 4 months ago - No comments
For all those users without free USB ports on their smartphones, PDAs, MIDs and other devices, or those with an aversion against cables in general, there are also bluetooth versions of those full-sized foldable keyboards I mentioned already on this blog few days ago – namely I’d like to make mention here of the “Freedom Universal Keyboard²” (from a company called Freedom Input Ltd) with its own two AAA sized batteries and – most important – bluetooth! The manufacturer claims that due to support for both HID mode (used and recognized by all PCs, most PDAs, UMPCs and smartphones) and SPP mode, a bluetooth serial port emulation protocol utilized by the blackberry family of smartphones for example, this gadget enjoys comaptibility to > 200 different devices. Sure is that every device with bluetooth and either Blackberry OS 4.0 and upwards, symbian OS v9, or windows mobile 5 & 6 ( both PPC and smartphone edition), as well as Windows 2000 and WinXP is supported without need to install any drivers. No mention of linux though, and what about windows CE??
My ongoing eeePC "3G mod" adventure
about 4 months ago - No comments
Since last night, I had the doubtful joy of having to re-solder two pins of my extra miniPCIe socket (I accidentally dropped my eee from ~50cm heigth and afterwards the 3G card wouldn’t work anymore, which was pretty annoying since I need internet access – so I had to re-open the whole apparatus and take apart everything, leading to the lucky discovery of only said two loose pins as a cause for the malfunction), I will take this as an opportunity to give you the gentle reader some more details about the inner workings of how I did this modification (there may exist better ways I must admit, specifically for securing the modem card in place). That being said, you will surely remember that there’s an old and well known (and true!) proverb saying “A picture sometimes tells more than a thousand words” …
HowTo: formatting SD cards using linux
about 4 months ago - No comments
Its nice to see that during the past year, the number of linux distributions custom tailored to fit the needs of netbooks has increased dramatically. While this is a great advancement, it cannot be denied that this is mainly the merit of one linux distribution – ubuntu linux, on which most of nowadays “netbook linux” are based (ubuntu in turn is debian-based, btw). While these custom netbook linux flavors usually come equipped with all the device drivers you’ll need for your netbook, there’s one thing that is missing (at least in Ubuntu 8.04 or “Ubuntu eee”): an easy possibility of formatting SD memory cards with the usual FAT16 (or the faster FAT32) file system with the card reader that is built into all eeePC models – but sometimes you just need an empty and freshly formatted SD card, for example to “burn” the newest ubuntu ISO image onto and install right from the SD card (which is quite handy if you don’t have a DVD/CD drive).
Solar cells from donuts and tea – energy crisis solved?
about 4 months ago - No comments
Yes I know – this has not got anything to do with mobile computing (sorry), and No, its not an april hoax at all – but I simply had to write about it.. as you can see on the youTube video below, this guy actually makes a small (and inefficient but still amazing) solar panel at home – from donuts, “starbucks passion” red hibiscus flower tea, water, vodka and some microscopy object slides…
HowTo: "Qualcomm 3G ICON 210" and Ubuntu
about 4 months ago - No comments
Although generally speaking I’m all pro linux and use it whereever possible – and consider it the best OS for networking encountered by me so far – I was not able to make my internal 3G modem work properly with Ubuntu yet. Of course I managed to have it load the right device drivers and I’m able to establish connections and to surf the internet – but unlike windows, ubuntu refuses to crank up the speed to HSDPA, and despite my patching (and recompiling) of the “usbserial.ko” and “sierra.ko” driver modules I was only able to get a downlink speed of 800KBit/sec at most. The same modem with WindowsXP though achieved between 2.2 and 2.8 MBit/s at the same daytime, causing me quite some frustration (I had bought the modem card because it was claimed as being fully compatible with linux, even with linux drivers supplied by manufacturer, mind you) and I started using WinXP more frequently again due to this issue.