Jamie's Random Musings

I have gotten a query from another HP 2133 Mini-Note owner about my previous postings concerning it, how it is working now, and what can be done about a few key issues on it. Since there has been some other interest here to my previous postings about the 2133, and I haven't had much to say about it recently, I think it is a good idea to post my reply here.

I still have, and love, my HP 2133 Mini-Note (the one with the higher resolution display, 1280x768), and I use it pretty much every day. Our second 2133, with the lower resolution display (1024x600) which I had purchased for my partner, is about to go to Kosovo on a relief mission with a friend, so that he can stay in contact with his wife via Skype while he is there. That should yield some interesting information about durability and usability.

There is good news and bad news on the video driver front. The good news is that the latest openchrome drivers have been incorporated in pretty much all of the popular Linux distributions, so at least the installation process is a lot easier than it was back in March. The bad news is that even the latest drivers do not include GL (3D) support, so the graphic performance isn't nearly as good as it could be with the VIA Chrome9 display controller - it's nowhere near as good as with other (lesser) controllers such as the Intel 950 controller. The most obvious place where this is visible is that the 2133 just can't run the Ubuntu Netbook Remix well at all, the 3D effects on the UNR desktop are painfully slow. I suspect that will have at least some effect when using the 2133 for playing videos, although I don't do much of that myself so I can't be sure.

Although I have some nine different Linux distributions currently loaded for multi-boot on my 2133, Dreamlinux is not one of them, so I am not sure what version of the openchrome drivers they are using. As other distributions, what I generally recommend, especially for people who intend to use their computers for multimedia playing, is Linux Mint. It is derived from the latest Ubuntu distribution, so the latest Mint (7, aka Gloria) is derived from Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. It has a lot of optional packages and codecs preinstalled, so it not only saves a fair amount of time, it may also include some things that you didn't even know about - that was certainly the case with me, anyway. Out of curiosity, I just booted Mint on my 2133, and played a couple of Youtube videos. The quality seemed ok, they were not jerky or pixellating. I also played one of the videos on the ZDNet UK web site, which is of course flash-based, and it played just fine as well - if anything perhaps a bit better than the Youtube video did.

Changing the screen resolution isn't much of a problem, at least within the range of what is possible for whichever display you have. I just tried it on my 2133, with the 1280x768 display, running Mint, by going to Preferences / Display, and there is a long list of resolutions to choose from ranging down through 1024x768, 800x600 and all the way down to 640x480, with lots of other steps along the way. I set it to 1024x768, and that worked just fine. I don't have the lower resolution 2133 here on my desk right now, but I'm sure it would be the same, with the possible resolutions ranging from 1024x600 down through multiple steps to 640x480.

Doubling the battery life... hmm, that's a tough one. The easy/silly answer is, of course, get the optional double battery pack if you don't already have it - mine came with it installed. It has 6 cells rather than the standard 3, but of course it is then twice the thickness of the standard one, so it causes the 2133 to sit up in the back sort of like it is standing on a foot. That is also not all bad, as it probably helps with cooling the bottom of the case, where it can get quite warm. The problem, though, is that your first criteria, better video performance, is probably directly at odds with your desire for longer battery life. If you want the best performance, video or otherwise, the machine needs to be running at full speed; but if you want to extend battery life, you need to have aggresive power management enabled, which will be throttling down the CPU - and with the Chrome9 driver not having GL support, a good part of the display driving is going to be handled by the CPU. So you just have to fool around with it, and try to find the best compromise.

I hope this helps - feel free to ask again if you need more help.

jw 30/7/2009

Since ASUS refused to refund the cost of Windows on the N10J that I recently purchased (not surprising), I figured that I am stuck with it, I might as well at least see how both Vistaster and XP Professional work on it. I'm now into my second day of fighting with this monstrosity, and I still don't understand anything about it. Seriously.

Before I go on, let me say that this is UNIQUELY a Windows disaster. I can install any one of a variety of Linux distributions on the N10J at any time that I want, and be done in well under an hour. I've probably spent in excess of 12 hours over the last two days trying to get EITHER Vistaster OR XP Professional to reinstall, with extremely limited success.

The N10J had come with the disk set up in three partitions, the first was a 10 GB RECOVERY partition, the second was a 130 GB Vistaster partition, and the third was a 100 GB Data partition. I had deleted the data partition, created a 4 GB Primary for Linux Swap, and then an Extended partition for the rest, with Logical partitions within it for the various Linux distributions I loaded. That all worked just fine, and it was multi-booting Vistaster and the Linuxes perfectly.

Then, as a test before doing something on a friends' computer, I had used gparted to reduce the size of the Vistaster partition. That also worked just fine. But that left a large, unused hole on the disk, so I decided to just reload everything and get it the way that I wanted it. I guess that was a big mistake...

First, I wiped all of the partitions except RESTORE, then tried to boot and restore from there. It booted, but the restore failed, saying that it couldn't find some file on C:... Well, DUH, why would it be trying to look there, when that is what I was restoring? Beats me.

Then I used the XP Restore DVD to load XP, and chose the "restore to entire disk" option (the others were "restore to first parition" and "restore to two partitions"). For some reason it didn't restore the boot loader, so when it was all done it was still trying to boot with GRUB, which of course didn't work because the Linux partitions were gone. No sweat, I set up a Linux partition and loaded Ubuntu quickly, which saw the XP partition and put it in the boot menu... I told it to boot that, and it failed. Some sort of boot loader failure message. Sigh.

So I then tried to restore from the Vistaster DVD, this time to the "first partition". Once again it seemed to work, but didn't restore the boot loaded, so it tried to boot GRUB again. I did the same again, but told it to restore to the entire disk. This time it actually did work, and it booted Vistaster. But there is a long, involved process of loading the proper drivers and then configuring the "Out of Box Experience", which I absolutely can't understand the sequence or timing of. It involved something like five or six reboots, and at the end of it all the screen is still on configured properly. Further investigation showed that despite all the thrashing and rebooting, the nVidia display driver wasn't loaded, and it refused to set the display for more than 800x600 resolution.

One more run with the Vistaster DVD, this time restore to two partitions. This one seemed to work, even the screen was correct, and the nVidia driver was loaded. But the disk partitioning was odd, to say the least, with 1 GB totally unused at the beginning (perhaps this is the Vista loader?). I tried to rearrange that with gparted, and the whole thing became unbootable again. Sigh.

I went through what I thought was the exact same procedure with the Vistaster DVD... but this time the display was wrong again! Why the heck can two seemingly identical restores produce different results???

So, I am still struggling with it. The Vistaster restore is running, again, as I type this. Eventually I will give up and just load the N10J with nothing but Linux, and I'll be happy.

I recall writing a recent blog post about loading Ubuntu for a friend, and someone posted a comment saying that the problem with Linux was that you always had to have an "expert" load it. Well, to that I now say "BAH! HUMBUG!". Loading Windows on this N10J is a thousand times more difficult, complicated and unpredictable than loading Linux on it, or any of the other computers I have around here for that matter.

jw 29/7/2009

ooVoo has released a new version for Windows with a number of improvements, and a new package aimed at businesses, especially small businesses trying to improve communication and control costs. They have also changed their existing package pricing and features for consumer plans. Check their Plan Overview for a complete list of features and prices.

The business plan includes up to 6-way video conferencing (Skype is still blundering along with only one-to-one video and mumbling about multi-party video being developed), and removes all advertisements from the display of all participants in a call. It does high resolution video when the equipment and connection are capable of it (no ridiculous list of "anointed" cameras, as Skype has), it has built-in call recording (not a clumsy add-on as in Skype), desktop sharing with all call participants, and video effects. (Personally, I have trouble imagining a business call where video effects would be useful or appropriate, but maybe that's just me.) Best of all, in my opinion, it includes priority customer service, and I can tell you from personal experience, their customer service people are top-notch, they respond quickly and they are very knowledgeable. Compare that to Skype, where "support" consists of sending a plea to a web page which offers nothing better than FOUR DAYS response time, and in fact is much, much worse than that, and whatever responses one might eventually get are invariably so irrelevant and banal as to be completely useless.

To summarize the Business offering, I think ooVoo is going in the right direction because of two critical points. First, a lot of businesses need multi-party video, simple one-to-one is not good enough for work group / team meetings, discussions with customers and suppliers, and the like. Second, a business that is going to stake a good part of its activity and reputation on video calls needs to know that support is available when they need it.

For consumers, the plans have been reorganized. The basic "free" plan remains, with two-way video, text chat and file transfer. Multi-party video has been moved entirely into paid plans, broken into steps for 3-, 4- and 6-way video. The free plan only includes standard resolution video, while all of the paid plans include high resolution video when possible. If you object to the ads that run at the bottom of the video window, you can purchase the "no-ads" option to get rid of them.

Also new with this release is a wonderfully innovative "pay per use" plan for their premium calling features. This works essentially the same as the paid call-out feature has previously. You purchase credits, and then when you want to use a premium feature that is not in your plan, such as multi-party audio or video calls, you pay for it by the minute from your credits. It extends across all of their plans, including the free service; so for example if I am using their free service, and I am in a video chat with one of my brothers, and we decide to add one or both of my other brothers to the call, I pay 10 cents a minute for each one that we add. The call-out feature has finally added a few countries other than the U.S. and Canada; specifically Germany, Italy, the U.K. and Israel. Rates are very competitive with other services for landline calls, but as usual be careful about calling mobile numbers, the cost is much higher. The customer service issue is important here as well. If you have a problem or question about your account or your credits, ooVoo has competent customer support staff who will respond promptly and help you solve your problem - rather than treating you like Skype does, and either ignoring your request, replying that whatever happened was your own fault, or sending you instructions on how to configure your audio.

When you download ooVoo and open a new account, you get free use of all of their premium features for 30 days. There is no better way to decide whether it is right for you than to try it. I have been encouraging my family and friends to try ooVoo for quite a long time now, and I've never had a single one come back and say they were not satisfied with it.

jw 28/7/2009

I recently purchased an HP H470 mobile printer. I have been a long time user and fan of the Canon BJC 50/55/70/80 series, but they stopped selling those quite a few years ago, and my last one has been slowly dying recently. I've been looking for a replacement for a long time, without success. Then I came across the H470, and while it is not perfect - it is actually a bit too large and heavy, and pricey - it is by far the best option I have seen so far. In a few important ways, it is actually better than the BJC-80 it will be replacing. The pricing on these runs from about $250 to $350, or 300-400 Swiss francs, depending on configuration, but I got mine at half price.

The H470 comes in several different configurations, so you can match the price and features to your needs. The base model (just plain H470) is simply a small desktop printer, which is easy to pack up and take along; Then there is the H470b, which includes a Lithium-Ion battery, so you can use it without the AC adapter; and the H470wbt, which includes the battery and a Bluetooth interface. I believe there is also a model which includes a WiFi interface rather than the Bluetooth, but I don't have the model number handy. Note that both the Bluetooth and WiFi interfaces are actually USB dongles which plug into a special port on the H470, so you can only have one or the other, you can't have both at once.

I bought the Bluetooth model, first because that was the one which was on sale at half price, and second because I knew from using my BJC-80 that I wanted the battery. My BJC-80 has infrared instead of Bluetooth (yeah, it's old), and honestly that wasn't terribly convenient because of the line-of sight restriction between wherever the computer and printer manufacturers might come up with to stick the IR port, so I was hoping that Bluetooth would be a lot more convenient. It is. Mine also includes an "HP Mobile Printer Sleeve", which is a pretty nice protective case to keep the printer from getting banged and scratched too much when you are traveling. I'm not sure, but I don't think that the case is included with the other models.

I decided to go "straight for the throat" in setting up the H470, and try to get it working via Bluetooth right away. Assembling it was a snooze, pretty much like any other inkjet printer; the only thing that was different was the Bluetooth dongle, and there is only one place to put it and it only fits one way. Tough to screw up... I use Ubuntu most of the time, so I started there. I went to the Bluetooth icon, told it to pair with a new device, and in short order it said that it was happily connected and even seemed to know that it was a printer. Except, it didn't show up in the Printer administration dialogs or in the application Print commands. Hmmm.

A web search led me to the Ubuntu Bluetooth Printer Setup Page. It turns out to be pretty easy, if a bit tedious. You have to use the command "hcitool scan to get the MAC address of the printer, then go to System/Administration/Printing, hit New, then Other, and enter that MAC address, minus colons and with "bluetooth://" added to the beginning, for the URL of your printer.

That's all it took for me, the printer was then ready to go, and it prints beautifully. It's considerably faster than the BJC was, and the print quality looks better to me. The paper feed mechanism is much better, and much less prone to missed page pickup and crooked page feeding.

I haven't tried it with other Linux distributions yet, but I assume that it will be quite similar. I also haven't tried it with Windows yet, because I don't boot Windows that often any more, and I haven't had Windows running since I got it.

I expect this H470 to last a long time, and get a lot of use, both while traveling and here at home around my desk. The Bluetooth has already turned out to be a blessing, because I don't have to bother finding room for it directly on my desk, or running a USB cable to wherever I can find room nearby.

jw 24/7/2009

In my recent blog post about the ASUS N10J, I mentioned that with the nVidia graphics enabled, Ubuntu Netbook Remix performed very poorly on it, presumably because of the lack of 3D support in the nVidia driver. Well, DUH! Sometimes it takes me a little while to stumble over the obvious.

Ubuntu loads the open source nv drivers by default. It is true, they don't have 3D support. But if you are not troubled by proprietary, binary-only software on your computer, you can also load the drivers provided by nVidia themselves. They DO have 3D support, and thus UNR should work very nicely.

There are a variety of ways to download and install those drivers. So far, the easiest way I have found is in Ubuntu, go to the System/Administration menu, and choose "Hardware Drivers". If you have the nVidia graphic adapter on, the Hardware Drivers utility will see it and ask if you want to use the proprietary drivers for it. Simply say yes, let it download and install, and then reboot. Once you have done this, the UNR desktop performance is just fine.

Alternatively, on Ubuntu or most other Linux distributions, you can go to the Package Manager, and select the nVidia proprietary binary drivers for download. I haven't been all the way through this yet, but I did get far enough to see that there are some reasonable installation instructions included. The packages are typically called something like nvidia-glx-*.

Finally, of course, you can go directly to nVidia and download the Linux driver package. I haven't tried this yet, as I prefer to get the software from the Linux distribution, but I will probably give it a shot sometime soon.

Any one of these should take care of the graphic performance problem with the nVidia card enabled. WARNING - if you decide to do this, be aware that at least on Ubuntu, you will not be able to use the N10J with the nVidia graphics switched off! The proprietary driver replaces some standard libraries and configuration files, and the Intel 950 graphic controller will not work properly. This is likely to be the case with other LInux distributions as well, but I have not tested them yet.

The smaller DUH, also for me, is that it is not necessary to make changes in the BIOS setup in order to book USB sticks and/or USB CD/DVD drives. You can simply hit Escape while the POST screen is displayed during boot, and a dynamic boot selection menu will come up, showing the currently available bootable devices. Good.

jw 23/7/2009