[Cialug] HP mini 1030NR review

[David Champion]

I've seen the HP's, they do look nice.

Personally I think I'd like something like the OQO. Rumors are that 
Nokia is coming out with a refreshed version of their MID, the N810 
line... which is nice and small.

If they ever get to retail, I'd still like to get one of the Pandora 
handhelds - it's primarily a portable gaming emulator (which isn't a bad 
thing) but runs Linux, has WiFi and Bluetooth... if it pans out it would 
be a great portable device for us nerds - smaller than a netbook 
(roughly the size of a Nintendo DS), so you could put it in a pocket.

http://openpandora.org

-dc

Matt Stanton wrote:
> Until recently I didn't have a clue what a netbook was.  I've been 
> pretty behind the times in keeping up with computer hardware information 
> other than the nicer nVidia GPUs.  So, when I saw the other members of 
> the LUG at the meetings with those tiny little 'laptops', I just figured 
> they paid a lot of money for them.  I have always preferred to put my 
> money in my desktop machine, because I can always throw a couple of 
> computer parts at a desktop machine when it starts giving up on 
> performance... I can't afford to buy the fastest computer on the market 
> every year or two.  Anyway, I ended up finding out that these netbooks 
> are actually relatively cheap (by cheap, I mean I could buy one for just 
> a little bit over what I would spend on a new graphics card).
>
> Well, I ended up getting the HP mini 1030NR from bestbuy.  It came with 
> a 16GB SSD, 10.2" widescreen display at 1024x600, wireless b/g wlan 
> card, the standard 1.6GHz atom processor, 3cell battery, and an addon 
> 2GB flash drive that fits neatly into a little slot on the side.  Plus, 
> the HP minis are pleasing to look at.  It had XP home installed by 
> default, which I wasn't going to let stand.  I charged the battery while 
> I downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook Remix and loaded it onto a flash drive 
> with flashnul to make it bootable.
>
> The UNR live 'cd' (or live flashdrive?) booted up nicely, and I liked 
> the way it utilized the small screen of the HP mini, so I wiped XP off 
> the SSD and installed it.  Everything works quite nicely.  UNR detected 
> and set up the wireless lan easily (using a broadcom restricted driver), 
> and everything but sound is working perfectly.
>
> Now, the sound card works just fine.  I can plug my headphones into the 
> jack and hear everything.  The only real problem with the soundcard is 
> that I can't get the built-in speakers to play anything.  I suspect that 
> they would sound like crap, and the headphones I have are some nice Bose 
> deals, so there's no reason to complain unless there was a youtube video 
> or something that I wanted to show someone on the netbook.
>
> I'd imagine that a much more versed linux geek would be able to get this 
> working with a little hacking around.  It seems from what I've found by 
> googling that the netbook speakers problem is fixed in 2.6.29, but 
> jaunty is rolling with 2.6.28.  Every time I've ever compiled a linux 
> kernel for a modern version of linux, I've managed to break a large 
> number of things, so I guess I'm waiting another 6 months.
>
> Anyway, I give it 4.5 out of 5 thumbs up or stars or something.
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