Tag: Netbook
SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: Dell Inspiron Mini 10
Here Zara takes a look at the latest netbook offering from Dell, the Inspiron Mini 10:
Here’s a quick spec check for anything you may have missed:
- Intel Atom Processor Z520 (1.33GHz, 533MHz) 1GB RAM
- 10.1-inch WSVGA Truelife LCD display
- 1024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM
- 160GB (5,400rpm) SATA hard drive
You can pick one of these up direct from Dell for £299. They also do a version with a slightly faster processor (1.60GHz, 533MHz) which is usually £329, but is available for £309 until 24th June.
UPDATED: HANNspree gets involved in the netbook market
The maker of weird and wonderful monitors, TVs and assorted tech, HANNspree, has announced its plans to get involved in the old netbook game. ‘Ardest game in the world, that is.
The Taiwan based company is promising to use their “expertise in unique design and quality display manufacturing to create, what we believe, will be the new fashion accessory for the modern gadget lover that demands style”. Not sure if that means making a computer that looks like a hamburger or not. That’s as specific as they’ve got on looks.
What they have told us is that it’ll have a 10″ LCD display, a full size keyboard, a 1.3MP Webcam, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It’ll also come with a 6-cell battery, weigh 1.2kg and cost just £289, and that sounds like a bit of a bargain to me, provided as it doesn’t look too silly. I’m intrigued, and so should you be.
Updated: I stand utterly corrected. It appears to be called the HANNSnote and it’ll be available in a comparatively conservative look in both black and white rather like these ones:
HANNspree
Asus Eee PC 1000HE Review:
How to: Install Ubuntu 9.04 on an Acer Aspire One
Last week, the team behind Ubuntu released version 9.04, which has been named Jaunty Jackalope. It’s a great upgrade on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, and it’s also the first Ubuntu release to come with a netbook remix.
As I’m the proud owner of the Acer Aspire One netbook, I thought I’d whack Jaunty on and see how it behaves. I’m impressed. The UI is clear and clean (although the default Ubuntu brown clashes rather with my machine’s blue chassis) and everything runs zippily. It’s most definitely an upgrade over the modified Linux distro that the netbook came with, with the only issue that I’ve run into being that you can’t hot-plug media cards into the reader, they need a reboot to work.
Just as a quick caveat, I did all the testing on an 8GB SSD Linux version of an Aspire One, with the prep work on a machine running Windows Vista. I’ve mentioned below some options for those with a mechanical hard drive, but the only thing I can guarantee is that everything below works for me. If you use a different netbook, you should be fine, but this guide is for the Aspire One.
Back up any files you want to keep before you start because this process will wipe your drive, and make sure you’ve got a restore disk for if you run into trouble. For info on how to create one, see the documentation that came with your Aspire One. We take no responsibility for any software or hardware problems you run into as a result of following this, or any other, guide.
What you’ll need
- Right, now that’s over with, let’s get started. Here’s what you’ll need to hand before you start, both software and hardware:
- An Aspire One, or another compatible netbook
- An empty flash drive with a 1GB or greater capacity. I used this 2GB Toshiba drive.
- The Ubuntu 9.04 netbook remix .IMG file (970MB)
- A disk imager tool, I used Win32 Image Writer.
- Once you’ve got all that together, about 45 minutes to an hour of your time
Preparing the USB disk
First of all, plug your USB drive into whatever computer you’re going to use to copy the install files across with. Probably the one that you’re reading these instructions on. Go into ‘My Computer’ and note what drive letter has been allocated to the USB disk.
Then start up Win32 Disk Imager, and click the “…” button, and navigate to wherever you saved the Ubuntu .IMG file. When you find it, select it and hit okay. Then, under ‘device’, select the drive letter for the USB, and hit ‘write’. Let it do its thing, it should take less than 5 minutes.
Preparing your Aspire One
On your Aspire One, make sure everything that you want to keep is backed up, because part of the process below involves wiping the drive of your netbook. Take off any data you want to keep and store it safely elsewhere.
Then power down the Aspire One and remove anything that’s plugged into it, like SD cards or USB peripherals. Keep the power cable in, though. Plug in the USB drive you’re using for the install, and power on.
Almost immediately, hit F12 when it prompts you to “Select boot order”. From the menu that appears, select the USB drive. It’ll prompt you to pick a language, so select your favourite. Then the USB drive will give you the option to try out Ubuntu without installing. Do that if you like, and when you’re ready to install properly, then reboot and get back to this menu.
The installation process
When you’re ready to take the plunge, hit “Install Ubuntu” on this menu. Give it a minute to load everything into the device’s memory. To start with, the progress bar will move between the left and right sides, but shortly after it’ll start filling up.
Pick a language again. Probably the same one as before, unless you’re feeling a little devil-may-care and you’re in the mood for an install in Suomi. Seriously though, pick English. Then hit ‘forward’ and select a timezone and city. Hit ‘forward’ again.
Pick the right keyboard layout for your machine. Test using the little box at the bottom, and check the ” and @ keys, which are swapped around on American keyboards. If all seems like it’s in order, then hit ‘forward’ again.
Disks and file systems
This is where things get a little tricky. If you finish and it won’t boot, then go back and double-check this section carefully. Now – you have options that depend on what kind of disk you’ve got.
If you have a traditional mechanical hard drive then you can pick between installing Ubuntu alongside your existing operating system or replacing it. If you’d like to do the former, then pick the first option in the list – install alongside an existing operating system, then click forward and skip straight to the next section, ignoring all the stuff about filesystems below.
If you’re using a mechanical drive and you’d like to replace your existing OS entirely, then click the second option – “Use the entire disk”. Make sure that the right disk is selected – not a USB drive or an SD card or anything. Be aware that this option will delete all data on that disk, then hit ‘forward’ and skip straight to the next section.
Lastly, if you have an SSD then you get an even more complex choice. You won’t have room to do anything except installing over the current operating system, so option one is out. However, you have a choice between installing the ext4, ext3 and ext2 filesystems.
Ext4 is known as a ‘journaling’ filesystem. It writes into a ‘journal’ whenever it modifies anything, so it’s much safer if you lose power suddenly and you want your files to be okay. Ext3 is also a ‘journaling’ filesystem but it’s older, so I don’t recommend its use over Ext4.
Ext2 doesn’t do any ‘journaling’ – so it uses far fewer read/writes. As an SSD wears out quicker than a regular hard drive, selecting Ext2 will make things run a smidge faster and increase your drive’s lifetime. As a result, though, files can corrupt if you suddenly lose power on your machine. Even if nothing corrupts, you’ll have to sit through an irritating file check every time you startup if you don’t power down properly.
It’s up to you – select Ext4 for a safer drive that wears out quicker, or Ext2 for a slightly faster drive that’ll last longer, but is more prone to errors if you lose power. If you’d like to read up more on the subject, then head to this forum post, or this wiki entry.
Once you’ve decided, click option three – “specify partitions manually”. Don’t be scared by the word ‘advanced’, if you understood what I just said, then you’ll be fine. You should have two drives in front of you, one big one marked “ext2”, and one smaller one marked “swap”.
Double-click the big “ext2” drive, and an ‘edit partition’ box should pop up. Select from the “Use as:” drop-down either “Ext2 file system” or “Ext4 file system”, depending on which you want (see above). Then tick the box marked ‘Format the partition’ and then select “/” as the mount point. Hit okay, then forward. That wasn’t too bad now, was it?
If you’ve got no idea what drive you’ve got, then just click the middle option – “Use the entire disk”.
Progress bars
Tough bit over. Type in your name, a username (all lowercase, please), a password and name of the computer. Choose whether you want it to prompt you for your password every time you start up or not. Then hit ‘forward’.
It’ll show you a summary screen for what it’s about to do. Scan it quickly and make sure it’s about to do what you’re expecting it to, then take a deep breath and hit ‘forward’.
Progress bars should appear. Go make a cup of tea. It took me about 20 minutes to install to an SSD, or it’ll be slightly longer for a mechanical drive. When it’s complete, choose the restart option, and remove the USB disk when it tells you to. The system will then reset.
Complete!
Voila! Your installation is complete. You’ll find that Ubuntu boots a tiny bit slower than the default Linux OS, but it’ll be a bit faster than Windows. It’s slower than the default OS because it’s so full of good stuff.
Click around a bit – the left column shows categories of programs. The middle pane shows the programs that are in each category – click one to start it. Lastly, the right-hand pane will show you storage locations. Click one to load it.
Have a little fiddle around in the settings, too. There’s plenty of customisable stuff. Change the colour scheme away from the brown if you like, or turn off ‘tap-to-click’ on the trackpad. If you’d like to edit the menus, you can do that by clicking “Main Menu” in “Preferences”.
Congratulations on your Linux install! No command line shenanigans at all. Wasn’t it easy? Tell us how happy you are on Twitter by messaging @techdigest.
Toshiba issues its second netbook – the Mini NB200
Not very hot on the heels of the Toshiba NB100 comes the second netbook in the range, the NB200. It’s not blowing any other netbooks out of the water, but it’s a solid improvement on the original.
A 10.1″ display at 1024 x 600 will be displaying Windows XP. Sadly there’s no Linux option, though you might want to try Windows 7 on it. There’s a 160GB hard drive, with ‘shock protection’, and a 1.66GHz Atom processor. A ‘premium edition’ comes with an isolation keyboard and 9-cell battery.
The NB200 will be out in May, and cost from £319 to £359. There’s a few different configurations available, so that price might wobble a bit, but it’s basically about £350. Worth it? We’ll get one in for review and let you know, but it looks good on paper.
(via Trusted Reviews)
Eee PC hailed as top computer for developing countries
Three African Universities have lauded the Asus Eee PC as the best low-power computer option for developing countries. The study, conducted by charity Computer Aid, put three laptops and two ‘thin client’ solutions through their paces. The Eee was ranked top by teams in Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
The Eee didn’t rank top in every category – the OLPC XO won out on power consumption but ranked poorly for performance. The Intel Classmate was the opposite – doing well in performance tests but with its battery not holding out for long enough.
The ‘thin client’ solutions – the Inveneo Computing Station and Ncomputing X300 – were criticised as too expensive. The research team at Kenyatta University said:
“Asus had the best solution for an average individual owner and user in rural Africa who needs a low power PC, while Ncomputing proved to be the more viable choice for many learning institutions.”
It’s interesting that Asus’ netbook still wins out in the developing world, especially as the netbook revolution was founded on attempts to make low-cost PCs for developing countries. The results proved just as appealing to western markets.
(via @wildfirepr)
Stone Neo 101 netbook skims into view
Adding to the plethora of netbooks on the market comes the Stone Neo 101, a compact machine sporting an Intel Atom processor.
It features a 10.1-inch widescreen display capable of 1,024 x 600 resolution and a keyboard that’s 90% the size of a standard one, meaning typing should still remain fairly accurate. Connectivity includes Wi-Fi card and optional internal 3G module, and there are two USB ports and a 34mm PCI-Express Card expansion slot…
Acer Aspire One – now in size you can actually type on
With the novelty of finger-cramping netbooks wearing off rapidly, Acer has updated their beautiful Aspire One with 11.6″ version complete with high-definition WXGA LED screen and 160GB HDD.
It’s powered by an Atom CPU and Mobile Intel US15W Express chipset but, despite the increase in screen size, is now just 1″ thick and will only weigh a little over 1kg leaving it nice and portable. The LED screen means there’ll be less of a power drain and now that Acer is offering a 6-cell as standard, they’re claiming up to 8 hours battery life. Nice work if you can get it.
No word on number of USBs etc but it does include LAN, VGA, an all-in-one card reader, multi-gesture touch pad and all your connections in the shape of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G. Dolby Pro Logic sound plus microphone and webcam rounds off what looks like an excellent contender for the next portable computer to own. The only choice remaining is whether you want it in white, dark blue, red or black.
Acer
HP considering Android for forthcoming netbooks
Top laptop manufacturer Hewlett-Packard, or HP, has confirmed that it’s testing out Android as a operating system for forthcoming netbooks. Normally the platform is only used in phones, and at the time of writing there’s only one phone on the market that uses it.
Android can work on netbooks, as Venturebeat proved back in January. They had a little difficulty with graphics drivers, but if a user wasn’t rendering much more than websites then it could be very effective and very cheap – a great solution for the netbook industry.
HP has said that it hasn’t made any decisions yet on whether to offer it or not, but it’ll be interesting to see how they fare with it. Other netbook manufacturers will almost certainly be watching, too.
(via PC World)
Contract laptops to come with kill-switch
A growing trend among phone networks is to start offering netbooks and other low-cost laptops free to customers of their mobile broadband services. What happens, though, if the contract owner stops paying up? They lose kit worth hundreds of pounds that’s still in fully working order.
As a result, LM Ericsson AB, a Swedish company that produces laptop modems, has added a feature to its hardware that can remotely ‘kill’ a laptop, rending it useless. If carriers desire, then they can stop a customer who hasn’t paid up from using his or her machine.
It could also be used to secure lost or stolen machines – locking them down remotely. It’s a nice idea, but I’d be concerned about the risk of these devices malfunctioning, stopping legitimate customers from accessing services that they’ve paid for.
(via Yahoo!)
10" Netbooks go HD with the 720p-capable Dell Mini 10
The world of netbooks has finally made it to high-definition with the announcement from Dell that its Mini 10 netbook is being souped up. Within a week or so, the option to go to a 1366×768 display resolution, which is ample for displaying 720p movies, will be offered.
Best of all, that spec jump will cost just $35 more (£24 or so). Wireless 802.11n will also be offered, alongside Bluetooth 2.1, a speedier processor and more capacious hard drive. You’ll still be stuck with Windows XP and a measly non-upgradable 1GB of RAM, though.
The new specs are available right now in the USA, so a UK launch can’t be far off.
Customisation page (via TrustedReviews)
