Two new travel friendly notebook computers from HP

HP has long been on the forefront of the newest generation of portable machines – they were the first to offer a netbook with a near full size keyboard, and they have continued to innovate ever since.

Today, they announced two new light and highly portable machines for their end of year lineup.

On the left is the HP Mini 110 by Studio Tord Boontje. The innards of this machine may be fairly bland (1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 starter), but the outside is nothing short of stunning. HP teamed up with Dutch designer Tord Boontje and applied what they call “Imprint 3D” to the lid of the machine, decorating it in an intricate floral pattern. It will be available late October starting at $399.

Next up is the Mini 311. This machine features an 11.6″ HD display, and is powered by the Nvidia ION platform. This combines the Intel Atom processor with a low powered version of the Nvidia GeForce 9400 video chip. Sounds like gobbledygook? All you need to know is that this machine will have the power to play HD video, something most current netbook size machines can’t pull off. It’ll come with 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive. The best part of this impressive machine? It too will start at just $399 and will be available in two weeks. Initially, it will ship with Windows XP, but a Windows 7 version will be available in October.

Gadling gear review – Windows 7 on the Gateway L3103 Netbook

Yesterday, I wrote about the new Gateway L3103u Netbook. This 11.6″ machine just hit the shelves of your local Bestbuy, and offers a 1.2GHz processor, 2GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive in its $399 package.

One of the first things I did on the machine was dump Windows Vista Basic and install Windows 7 (release candidate). In my experience, Windows 7 runs smoother on most computers than Vista ever managed to.

The installation of Windows 7 went fairly smooth, and ran off a USB drive. Once fully installed, there were only 2 things that needed a manual update. For anyone considering purchasing the L3103, you’ll want to do 2 things after installing Windows 7:

  1. Use Windows Update to install the latest Radeon X1200 series video driver – no standalone driver package will install, and the only way to get a working video driver is through Windows Update (trust me, I tried everything AMD had to offer).
  2. Install the WiFi driver – the WiFi card has an Atheros AR5B95 chipset, I tried multiple driver packages, but none of them worked. I finally found a working version though this obscure site.

Once installed, the Windows 7 performance index is 2.3 (CPU:2.3, Memory:4.4, Graphics:2.5, Gaming graphics:3.0, Primary hard drive: 5.7).

Gadling gear review – Gateway LT3103u 11.6″ Netbook

Strange things happen when you walk into a Bestbuy store. More often than not, observant gadget hounds will find the newest, often unreleased products sitting on a shelf. Tonight was such a night – when looking through their assortment of overpriced laptops, I noticed the brand new Gateway LT3103u Netbook locked away in a cage.

A brief introduction about this machine – it is the first Netbook style machine sold by Gateway in the US, and is equipped with an AMD Athlon L110 64 bit, 1.2GHz processor. The version sold at Bestbuy comes with a 250GB hard drive and 2GB of ram.

As is often the case with Bestbuy, it took me longer to find a sales rep than it took for me to decide to buy this machine. I picked this machine for one simple reason – I am tired of the low resolution on most other Netbook size machines. HP was the only one offering a Netbook with a higher resolution screen, but when added to their Mini 2140, the price popped up to over $700.

The only other machine that was recently released that would fit my needs is the new 11.6″ Acer Aspire One AO751h, but its horribly slow Intel Atom processor made it unsuitable for anything more than some basic web work.

The Gateway LT3103u has the usual shiny plastic case, and even just pulling it out of the box covered the poor thing in my greasy fingerprints. The machine uses a low power AMD Athlon chip, capable of running 64 bit Windows, though as delivered, it comes with Vista Basic 32bit. What makes the LT3103u interesting is its dedicated ATI Radeon X1270 graphics chip. As sold by Bestbuy, the LT3103u comes with a 6 cell Lithium-Ion battery pack (which sticks out the back a little), 802.11b/g WiFi, a webcam and microphone in the screen bezel, 3 USB ports and an 11.6″ LED backlit display capable of 1366×768. The machine has a 3-in-1 card reader, a D-SUB VGA port, audio in/out and 10/100 Ethernet. There is no HDMI, no Bluetooth and no E-SATA as found on some high-end Netbooks.

As I mentioned earlier – it comes with Vista Basic, which also means it is ineligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7. Like with all Gateway machines, it comes with a supply of bloatware; Norton Internet Security Trial. Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office (trial), Google Desktop, Gateway Games, Windows Live, Money Essentials and a bunch of revenue generating icons on the desktop. I’ll be installing Windows 7 (64 bit) on it, so none of that bloat is going to bother me one bit.

The keyboard on the LT3103u is good – not great, but certainly a step above using the tiny keys on the first generation Asus Eee PC. There is a very small amount of flex on the keyboard. Keys are well spaced and you get a decent size space bar and dedicated arrow buttons.

The trackpad on the machine supports multi-gesture, and is wide enough for normal use. The 2 mouse buttons are under a single silver pad on the bottom, and its response is very good.

You’ll be happy to know that all parts of the machine can be easily accessed – the covers for ram, HDD and network card are all under user removable ports. The machine comes with a single 2GB Samsung module. The second MiniPCI slot does not have its port installed, but the open space means they might be planning a 3G enabled version (WWAN is specifically mentioned on the box as an option).

Performance is something I haven’t spent too much time looking at – but one of the first things I wanted to test was video playback. I’m pleased to report that this little machine had no problems at all with a 720p MKV file played back in full screen. For the fun of it, I also tried a 1080P file (also in MKV) though that really did not work well (no surprise there).

Update: after some playing around with the video playback settings, I can happily reply that the Gateway has zero issues with 1080p video! Files from the WMV HD showcase play in full screen without a single frame dropped or stutter. The MKV file I originally tried was encoded in 1980×1080, which is still a little too much for the machine, the WMV files are 1440×1080.

Booting from power-off to the Windows Vista login screen takes 53 seconds and a shutdown to power off takes 19 seconds.

There are one or two minor annoyances on the machine – there is a really annoying WiFi indicator located at the front of the machine, which flashes with all wireless activity. The hard drive is also quite noisy, and produces more clicking than I’d like to hear. Finally – there are 2 small rubber bumpers located on either side of the machine, these are quite annoying when you have your palms resting while typing.

Other than those minor issues, I’m surprisingly impressed with the Gateway LT3103u. Its performance is quite decent, the screen is crisp and bright, battery life should be good (Vista reports 6 hours on a full charge) and its specifications are not bad at all for its price.

At $399, it is a mere $20 more than the retail price of the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which comes with 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive (though its battery and CPU are better).

Time (and a plane trip) will tell whether the LT3103u is a winner, and whether it really is the Netbook I’ve been looking for, but so far I’m quite impressed with what Gateway produced.

UPDATE: Windows 7 installed nicely, I posted my experience with the 2 minor driver issues here.

Building your own travel proof laptop — a step by step guide

The x60s is my fourth generation travel laptop and at this point, I have my laptop system down. Far have I traveled around the world with my Thinkpads, starting with my 240 in Vietnam and evolving up to an x20, x30, x40 and finally an x60.

Fact of the matter is, everyone can use a cheap, lightweight throwaway laptop these days. As long as it runs an internet browser, plays MP3’s and you can upload photos to it, it’s a great alternative to taking your $1600 Macbook into the Amazon and dropping it into piranah infested waters.

Is the solution really in a new fangled netbook though? It’s true that you can get a fancy Acer, Dell or IBM netbook straight off the shelf for $250. New shiny objects can be a blessing and a curse though — many of those units are difficult to modify, some of them are complex and all of them are going to be eye catching to potential thieves.

Instead let Gadling take you through the steps of putting together a good, reliable computer for very little cost, using recycled parts and software from the web and saving you a bundle. With a few tweaks you can make it modular and interchangeble, so that if you drop it in the water or run it over with your rental car (this has happened to me) you can still probably save your data. And If you play your cards right, you can put the entire package together for $150 or so.
Hardware

The CPU: $25 – $125

First, you’re going to need to invest on a laptop on which your foundation will be built. They call these “barebones” systems in the computer world, with only the bare essentials to get your system operating.

You’ll want something small, lightweight, not too complicated and cheap. This can be any brand, but you want it to have at least Pentium III processor over 400MHz or so. Under that point it gets difficult to run an operating system, web browser and Java or Flash (ie, Youtube.) My personal choice is among the IBM X series of notebooks, with the X20 as the lowest vintage machine you want to invest in. With enough RAM you might be able to get away with a 240X as well, but it’ll be close — and there are other problems with that unit as well, so let’s skip it.

Asus and Acer both are fairly easy-to-work-with brands as well, you just need to keep your minimal requirements, sizes and weights in mind. Older Dells, on the other hand, are frequently difficult to disassemble, so you may want avoid them. Apples suffer from the same problem.

You can invest in a laptop in any state of repair that you choose. Starting on ebay, you can pick out systems with no hard drive, memory or battery and a la carte your accessories as you see fit. In a way, this is an advantage because now you have more control over your project.

Expect to spend anywhere from $25 – $150 on the CPU. As an example, two barebones X20 laptops just finished up on ebay for $25 plus $10 shipping.

Memory: $10

You’ll want at least 128MB of memory in your machine to run Firefox, and since it’s so inexpensive, get at least 256MB. Just make sure you get the right type of memory (pc100, pc133, pc2700 etc) or else it won’t fit in your laptop. Go to the product page for your laptop’s manufacturer when you start building to see what variety you want.

Hard Drive: $40$100

The hard drive is where you’ll store all of your data from the trip, so you want to make this as robust as possible. Using an off the shelf 20GB IDE is inexpensive and fast, but it’s also got the highest probability of failure because it’s got moving parts. Instead, consider two options:

Solid State Drives (SSDs) consume lower energy and are sturdier against shock and damage. The technology is still fairly new though, so to get an IDE SSD it can cost over $100. But they’re a great alternative to a moving drive, and my last two notebooks have run swimmingly with them.

Alternatively, consider using the combination of an IDE converter and a Compact Flash (CF) or Secure Digital (SD) card. You can get an IDE conveter with an 8GB SD drive combo on ebay for less than $40 shipped. Think 8GB is too small for you? Is it really? If you’re just using the computer to surf the web, write up a few documents and store some photos, you should be able to get away with 8GB or even 2GB without much strain. Heck, if necessary, you can bring another 8GB USB thumb drive with you.

The best part about using a flash card as you hard drive is that the data is portable. If you drop your laptop at the airport, kick it across the street or run over it with your scooter, chances are that the SD or CF card is in tact. Pick that card out, stick it in your change pocket and bring it to a cyber cafe and you’ve got all of your data back. Or, buy another identical laptop off of ebay for $50, put the hard drive in and forget anything happened.

Afraid you’ll drop your notebook in the water? Try getting a waterproof SD card.

WiFi capability: $20

First, check to make sure if your laptop has internal WiFi built in. If it doesn’t, see if it has the capability. Many units come with a WiFi slot and no card installed. You can get a new one on ebay for $10. If you don’t have internal wireless capabilities, you can get a PCMCIA wireless card for about $20 (search “PCMCIA wireless” on ebay.)

Battery: $20 – $40

Depending on your model, a new battery on ebay will run you around $30. Don’t get a new battery from your local Best Buy or direct from the manufacturer. They’ll just rip you off.

Software

Installing a proper operating system and software can be tricky. Effectively there are three routes you can take:

Buy it: $80 upward
At the very least, you need an operating system like Windows 2000 or Windows XP to run on your notebook. You can buy clean versions of these on ebay for around $80 or you could just

Dowload it
Which is basically stealing. So I’ll let you follow up on that if you want to.

Use Open Source Software
Operating systems like Ubuntu and Fedora have made expensive operating systems a thing of the past. You just have to come to terms with your fear and give them a try. Fact of the matter is, system slike Ubuntu are so well engineered and logical that they work just like Windows — you just click on the appropriate icons and run your programs — so the learning curve is fairly shallow. The installation process, furthermore, is just as easy. Which brings us to:

Installing your operating system
All of the above operating systems and example notebooks support a full install by just dropping a CD into the drive and booting. The problem is, none of the above notebooks have CD-ROM drives. You’ll need to find a friend with an external USB CD-ROM drive, buy one yourself or get crafty to get figure out how to install without the hardware. The latter is doable, but chances are that if you can figure out how to do that you don’t need to be reading this article.

Aside from the operating system, you’ll want to install the basics to keep your computer running, Firefox, Macromedia Flash and Open Office (a free alternative to MS Office) as well as some basic drivers depending on your CPU.

Summary

So what have we got?

$50 — CPU
$10 — Memory
$50 — Hard Drive
$20 — Wireless
$30 — Battery
$0 — Software

$160 — Total. That’s still $90 less than most netbooks on the market. Along the way? You’ve put together your own computer, ensured that you’ve got the best value for your dollar and finished an amazing project. Pat yourself on the back, you just created your own modular travel notebook.

Daily gear deals – $260 Netbook, $10 power adapter and two freebies

Here are the hottest gadget deals for today, Sunday June 7th 2009. Remember, these deals are often only valid for one day, so act fast before they are gone!

Archos is better known for their portable media players, but they recently announced their own Netbook – the originally named Archos 10 Netbook. This 10″ machine comes with a 10″ screen, 160GB hard drive and 1GB of memory, and is selling for just $260. This makes it one of (if not the) cheapest 10″ Netbook on the market at the moment. Click here to read more about this machine, or to order one.

Heading abroad this summer? You may need a plug adapter if you are hoping to use any of your gadgets. This refurbished Targus world power travel adapter covers most of the popular plug formats found overseas, and costs just $10, with free shipping. Click here for this deal.

Looking for a really stupid accessory for your iPod? How about a product that is also capable of bringing some entertainment on the road? This Griffin iKaraoke microphone turns your iPod into a Karaoke machine. Seriously. Best of all, this product is apparently so bad, that it is being given away for FREE. You will need to pay $5.99 shipping, but that is still a small price to pay for seeing your friends sing into your iPod. On sale at Dailysteals.com, today only.

The final deal in this lineup is for a 4 piece audio adapter kit. This is another of those low quality items that you can get for “free” when you pay $4.99 shipping. The kit comes with a DC charger, cassette adapter, audio splitter and an extension cable. On sale at 1saleaday.com.