HP 2133 Mini-Note

Mini-Note XP Battery Life Test

On the previous battery life test the Mini-Note running Vista Business got to two hours and twenty minutes before the 10% battery life warning came up. At that point it said the battery still had 19 minutes left, so there was about two hours and forty minutes of battery time there.

This time on the XP test the Mini-Note got 2 hours and 42 minutes before the 10% warning came up. The warning said the battery had about 19 minutes of charge on it. The gives us around 3 hours of battery life.

Both tests were done on the 1.6Ghz Mini-Note with the six-cell battery by playing a Superbad DVD rip at full screen of the HD, with the volume at a reasonable level, wireless on, power mode set to Max Performance/Minimal Power management (Vista/XP), and the screen brightness set two notches down from full brightness.

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Some New VIA Isaiah Info

News.com has  has an interesting article on VIA’s new Isaiah chip. Not a lot of new info, or a release date, but a couple good nuggets of info are in there:

Isaiah will consumer more power than Intel’s Atom processor

Unfortunately we don’t know how much more still. They have not released official numbers on this. At any rate, when choosing your next PC you’ll be stuck between performance and battery life again when choosing between Isaiah and Atom.

“It’s (Isaiah) between two and four times the performance of C7. So, it’ very, very close to (Intel’s) Core 2. Core 2 solo (single core)”

So the Isaiah should be about as fast as a Core 2 Solo chip and, and way faster than the C7. This confirms the benchmarks from the German site eeePCnews.de. Still helpful to know at this point is what the power consumption will be for comparison.

The article infers that VIA may be trying to break into the Desktop market with this chip and it’s partnership with Nvidia. Could we see more “gPC” type machines coming from this?

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Ubuntu Distro for the Mini-Note: MinBuntu

Lee over at mininoteuser.com has modified the normal Ubuntu distro to work better with the Mini-Note out of the box and called it MinBuntu. Getting the wireless working is a pain in Ubuntu, and you also need to get the VIA Chrome driver installed if you want to enable 3D Acceleration. MinBuntu has both those installed along with the standard updates. Lee did decide to leave out OpenOffice though, but that is easy enough to install on your own if you need it.

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More Gaming on the Mini-Note

In the forums, Ruckusnuts shared his experience with various older games on the Mini-Note. He is very pleased to find that the 2133 met all his expectations and is probably playing Never Winter Nights while getting drunk as we speak

Thanks for sharing Ruckusnuts!

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My First UMPC

A little off topic…

In 1999, before the term “ultra mobile personal computer” even existed, I bought my first UMPC used from a friend. The Compaq C140 served me well for a year and a half before being forgotten to a random box. The C140 was a heck of a machine:

• Processor: 133 MHz SH-3 RISC
• Memory: 6MB (Used as system and file storage memory, originally 4MB)
• Screen: 5.25″ Monochrome LCD Screen @ 480×240, 2 Bit color depth (4 grey levels)
• Ports: Infrared, PCMCIA, Serial
• Windows CE

OK, it was no speed demon but for typing and solitaire it was great. I could play a mean game of solitaire on the C140 - single card draw completed in 90 seconds or less. You can see the wear marks up in the top left hand corner of the screen:

When I wasn’t playing solitaire the other main use was typing notes for my business law class. I got really good at touch typing with only three fingers on that tiny keyboard. (Yeah, keep crying eeePC users )

I remember how exciting it was to have this little computer in my hand and thinking about what sort of cool stuff would be coming in the future. The Mini-Note is the only thing that has even started to give me that same sense of wonderment since the C140. With this current wave of sub-notebooks I think we’re finally getting on the right track for the “perfect” portable computer. In another 5 years we’ll have nailed it.

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Six-cell Batteries Available for the Mini-Note in June

Just chatted with two different reps and spoke with another and the 6-cell battery will be available for purchase in June. The part number for the battery is KU528AA, and unfortunately no details on price at this point. All three originally thought it was available, but when I asked for the price they said it wasn’t actually available until June.

I know a lot us are wanting a 3-cell for normal every day use, but none of them knew when the 3-cell would be available for the Mini-Note.

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Mini-Note SuSE Linux Restore Disc Images Now Available

HP has released the SuSE Linux disc images for the Mini-Note online that you can use to install or restore SuSE from. Until now there was no way to reinstall SuSE on to the Mini-Note if you messed something up on the factory install. The discs are driver complete as well, so wireless and bluetooth should work right away. Anyone know if the restore images of SuSE have the necessary drivers for hardware 3d acceleration?

I’ll try installing it this weekend and post a video or two on it.

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New Mini-Note Models are up with Custom Config as Well!

HP has new Mini-Note models up as well as a custom config option! Check them out.

In the comments Heather posted a chat she had with an HP rep which states that XP will come pre-loaded with XP and a Vista Business install CD so you can upgrade in the future.

Update:

Alrighty, looks like the pricing and spec details we got on the new Mini-Note models were correct. We did get wrong (half) the release dates, the no custom-configuration and XP as a preload option. The initial tip did say two models on Monday and two on Thursday so maybe something else is still coming.

I’m not sure if their pre-config is broke, but right now it’s only letting me have the 1.6Ghz processor, 2GB and 120GB HD with Vista Business, the 1.2Ghz with Vista Home and the either the 1.2/1.0Ghz CPU and either the 4GB SSD/120GB 5400RPM with SLED. It’s basically locking you into what is available on the pre-config’ed Mini-Notes. Since the pages are pretty new it’s probably just temporary error on their part…if not it defeats the purpose.

I find it pretty shady what HP is doing by pushing the XP downgrade. Remember if you get Vista Business you can downgrade to XP for free anyways. HP isn’t doing you some favor with these new offerrings. Unless you really, really need another 40GB, the KX870AT ($749, Vista Business, 1.6Ghz, 2GB, 120GB 7200 RPM HD) is the best purchase of all the Windows based models.

Update #2 (8:24am CST)

The custom-config option seems to be working properly and isn’t locking us into the general model configs. Curiously SLED and Vista Business are missing from the OS options. Only Vista Home and “Vista Downgrade to XP Professional” are available. Going for the XP downgrade will run you an extra $50. For CPU options the 1.2Ghz and 1.6Ghz processors are available, and you can get either 1 or 2GB of memory. On the hard drives, you can get any of the drives available on the pre-configs: 4GB SSD, 120GB at 5400 or 7200RPM, and the 160GB at 5400RPM. You’re locked into the 6-cell battery and the wireless a/b/g with bluetooth chipset.

For now it seems the pre-configs are your best bet because the custom-configs are ridiculously over priced. For $839 I could get a Mini-Note with Vista Home, 1.2GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 120GB 5400RPM hard drive, with the 6 cell battery and the a/b/g wireless with bluetooth. For $240 less you can get the preconfig w/o bluetooth and the 3 cell battery instead…No thanks HP.

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XP Drivers for the Mini-Note Up on HP’s Site

Serving as more confirmation that XP is coming to the Mini-Note one way or another this coming week, HP has what looks to be all the XP driver’s on their site. For us early adopters it makes getting everything installed and working with XP that much easier at any rate.

Now the question is, how soon until Isaiah?

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New Mini-Note Models coming on Monday and Thursday?

A very nice young lady from the middle east got to chatting with an HP rep today and sent her the following:

The rep also said he had not heard about any user configurable options, so I’m not sure what’s up with that. They are however offering XP as an install option.

The pricing structure seems to off on this, but when the Mini-Note was released they did have one for $849 that had the 1.2GHz CPU, 1GB RAM and Vista Home… so it could be these are not the finalized prices.

I just called HP and they confirmed that XP will be available on the 15th, but she couldn’t say if it was pre-installed or CD only. I’ll call again shortly.

Thanks again “that chick from Israel”!

Update: I called twice more and the rep said that XP is coming out for sure on the 15th…but the second rep didn’t have a clue when it was coming out. He could only “assume” it would be “soon”.

Update 2: I just did a chat and got this:

Jay: Good afternoon! My name is Jay, chatting from beautiful Colorado, and please give me a moment to review the chat so far.

Jay: Hello, and thanks for looking to HP’s award winning line of business notebooks. I see you have a question on the newly released 2133, and when an xp loaded mini is available. Next week we will be offering 4 new mini models preloaded with xp.

Guest: awesome

Jay: Does that work, and did you have another question for me on the popular 2133 mini?

So here they come!

Update 3: I was digging and some more and found this ultralight notebook comparison page which lists XP as an option for the Mini-Note

Digg this: http://digg.com/hardware/New_HP_2133_Mini_Note_Model_Info_Leaked

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