I just had the opportunity to use an HP 2133 Mini-Note PC for a few weeks. Here are some high-level notes on it.
- Overall this is a very nice computer.
- Performance wasn’t all that great. It feels a little sluggish. I’ve gotta think that the VIA processor was not the best choice here vs. Intel’s Atom stuff.
- I like the keyboard layout better than other “netbooks” I’ve looked at. I think the wider form factor is a better choice in this space than a lot of the narrower designs out there.
- The 92% keyboard wasn’t really an issue at all on this model since the layout is so good.
- I had a lot of trouble getting used to the mouse buttons on the side of the touchpad.
- I think that SSD’s are now a requirement in this space. I don’t think they’re offered on this model.
- I don’t like how the 3-cell battery is only an option on the Linux-based SKUs. This thing is definitely too heavy for this category — mostly because of the 6-cell battery that’s required when licensing Windows with it.
- There are some folks who will _never_ accept a unit that doesn’t have a trackpoint device. The netbook category needs to address this somehow.
HP has the even more “netbook”-like Mini 1000 series. It would be nice to look at those, but it seems like at the moment, they’re positioning those as “home” computers only. I wonder whether they will offer a “business” model in that line. It appears that all these PC vendors are afraid of cannibalizing their corporate sales if they offer this kind of thing. Possibly true, but someone’s going to do it and business will definitely flow in their direction.
It’s a holiday from work today, but unfortunately I’m spending the day working on my wife’s iBook. It has suddenly developed a serious problem. The symptom is apparently a very common one: When the power is turned on the screen stays black and the fan spins at full speed.
We do have all the files on the computer completely backed up and it is an older computer, but with all the economic uncertainty out there it would still be nice to keep this laptop running for a while longer. So I’m seeing if I can fix it.
Corey Arnold has the best description of this issue. A chip that controls power management gets worked away from the motherboard. Re-soldering or even just pushing the chip back down usually does the trick.
The best iBook teardown instructions are (as always) at iFixit. So I used those to disassemble the iBook.
But even with all the good info I’m not having much success. Apparently the motherboard on the 1.33 GHz iBooks is somewhat different from the ones that Corey has. The main chip that typically has problems is in a different location. And on my wife’s iBook this chip doesn’t seem to be the culprit. There are no obvious solder issues and no amount of pushing or prodding makes things work better.
I guess I’ll just have to keep disassembling the poor little thing. There are rumors that the wi-fi card can cause issues as well…