| Author | Message | ||
     Mikej |
This has been discussed in the past, but technology changes, and it's close to Christmas and the Holiday season, so.... Assume someone wanted a functional, sturdy, very portable computing device. The parameters would be it has to have cell-phone linkage as a primary internet connection, should be usable for reasonable web viewing for sites such as BadweB, have a color display, have a functional keyboard (size relative), be small enough to carry onto a bus or airplane and use without bumping elbows with the person in the next seat, and be usable at a work site next to other computing devices with little interference or annoyance. And if it also happened to have a headphone jack for a built-in cell phone on a second line or a built-in CD player/writer that would be a bonus. And a decent battery life under full-load usage is needed as well. Oh, and it can't be too expensive either. I'm low profile today but will check in later. Thanks. And links to product data are welcomed as well. I might have to run down to a mall or center this weekend to see what I can see. | ||
| Phillyblast |
Mike, Check out the Sharp Zaurus. The biggest annoyance for me with the Palm Pilot is no keyboard. http://www.sharp-usa.com/products/TypeLanding/0,1056,112,00.html | ||
| Mikej |
Thanks. I saw a blurb about some Wi-Fi wireless fidelity stuff, then they started polishing up the hammer here again, so I'm looking at options again. Off to look at the Sharp stuff. Also, I'm wondering if this Wi-Fi is technically legal, especially with the Patriot Act regs coupled with airport usage. http://www.bcentral.com/articles/komando/128.asp | ||
| Reepicheep |
Mike... I have the hot setup for you. Watch Ebay for a Thinkpad 570, either 333 or 366 Mhz. Both run about the same, the 333 is dead silent, the 366 you have to hear a fan sometimes. It is a Pentium II 333 or 366 CPU, probably a 6 gig hard drive, and 64 megs on the motherboard. Add a 128 meg sim ($50 or less easy) to bring it up to 196 megs and it runs Windows XP or Linux wonderfully. Built in modem, serial port, sound, 1024x768 display. Add an 802.11 PCMCIA network card. IBM claims it only goes up to 196 megs of ram, but thats not true, I can point you to some "magic" ram that takes it up to 340 megs ($100 upgrade). It is a docking design, so with the "ultrabase" you have a normal sized laptop with CDRom and floppy. But once you set up the system, you rarely use the CD and floppy, so for carrying it around you leave those parts at home. In this setup, you are looking at a totally usable laptop with a jaw dropping display that is less then an inch thick closed! It is the weakest computer in my house, and the one that *still* gets used the most. It rocks. I have bought maybe 5 of these things for friends and family, and everyone that has one could not be happier. The thing that makes it so compelling is that you can generally score one for $300 or less on ebay. I will be happy to help you bid, there are some simple approaches that are likely to make sure you get a good experience. These things are coming off corporate lease by the bucketload. There are usually half a dozen or so at any given time. Make sure you get one that includes the ultrabase and CD and Floppy if you are not the adventurous type. If you are the adventurous types, there are stratightforward ways to work around not having these things if you can get a screaming good deal on a bare one. It is also very easy to score the other parts independently, but shipping costs can screw up the whole deal for individual parts acquisition. If you have to buy a copy of windows XP, that messes up the economics as well ($100 os for a $250 computer). But there are other solutions to that. The things are a screaming good deal, as you are getting a whole computer with a very nice flatscreen for about what you would pay for just the flatscreen monitor. It is a VERY usable machine. Here is one of many out there now. Not recommending this seller, and have not read the fine print, but it shows you the machine I am talking about... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3436895614&category=3715 Another one to look at for ultimate portability is the sharp Actius, but you will pay too much for them, and they are hard to upgrade. Thinkpad parts are a dime a dozen. I did the "use a pda as a laptop thing", and it can be made to work. Sort of. A little. Except for all the times it does not. I would not go that route if I were you. Buy a thinkpad 570 for less then $300. Use it hard, grind it to dust, carry it everywhere without sweating bullets that somebody might steal it. Break it, throw it away, and buy another one. Add a $50 serial port GPS to it, and a copy of Delorme StreetAtlas, and you have a killer auto navigation system as well... | ||
| Jim_witt |
Bill, I got a question for ya. I have an old ChemBook laptop (model MP-975A). I was told its' not upgradable processor wise (it's an MNX), memory, hard-disk ...... you name it, no go. Damn I paid a butt-load for this puppy when it was new, now it's a door stop. -JW:>  | ||
| Reepicheep |
Jim... I am not finding much about that model. Laptops, especially older laptops, are often totally un-upgradable. The newer better ones (like the thinkpad) will take ram upgrades (SODIMMS), but usually only one or two. Processors are usually locked in as well, though you might be able to sneak in a little faster one (Pentium 166 into a Pentium 100, Pentium 233mmx into a Pentium 166mmx), but it probably won't work, and if it does work it will probably burn up something. Hard drives however, usually *can* be upgraded if you can stand to reinstall the operating system. So whats the cpu in there? How much ram and hard drive space? I turned an old 3com audrey (cool little appliance) into a digital picture frame. I have one, my parents have one, and my sister has one, all of us hundreds of miles apart. We all post our pictures to a central server, and all the frames randomly display pictures 24x7x365. It is a really cool setup, kind of a digital distributed family photo album. Thats a great use for an old laptop. Also, running Linux will add quite a bit to a laptops life span. Once it becomes a windows doorstop, it is generally still a usable Linux box for a while. | ||
| Bomber |
Reep You got an Audrey? I worked for 3Com (started at USR) when that product limped into the market and slithered back out . . . ..they were refered to as $500 refridgerator magnets by the marketing folks . . . the whole product development/launch/withdrawl, believe me, should be a case study at Wharton or some other business college (as should the USR/3Com merge, for that matter) .. . . I'll stop now, as I realized upon reading this that I was starting to sound like Court . . . nothing wrong with that, of course, but we've already got one of him, and a pale reflection would be of little use . .. . anywho, glad ya got some use outa the poor little dears . . . .. . | ||
| Court |
>>>I'll stop now, as I realized upon reading this that I was starting to sound like Court . . . nothing wrong with that, of course Dateline: Illinois - Aging local man attempts to do to the Team Elves Patch supply what the Hunt's did to Silver!  Bill: What's your take on an IBM 760L, first of the Pentium 90 units? | ||
| Bomber |
Awrightly Portley, or what ever your name is . . .aging illinois man will beat you like the family mule, trackday, b'trax, field-expediant motorsickle repairs, name yer poison, kid . . . . (except sidewalk driving -- rumar has it that yer aces at that . . .. have you ever crab-driven a car/truck {one front wheel on the sidewalk, the rest in the street? a sport discovered while illegally smiling one evening in a town to be revealed 20 years after my demise) sheeesh . . .youngns got no regard fer their elders . . . . . . | ||
| Reepicheep |
Bomber... One of them? Heck, I have three of them! For $120 (with USB ethernet dongle) from tiger direct... they kick ass as a digital camera picture frame. I have a custom QNX os image I can throw on a compact flash for anyone as well, and a php based web server architecture ( http://www.kilgallonfamily.com/slideshowdemo ) . It was a cool piece of hardware, though the reasons it failed were obvious enough in hindsight. It was very cool hardware though, killer for hacking (in the old noble sense of the word). | ||
| Jim_witt |
Bill asked: So whats the cpu in there? How much ram and hard drive space? Bill, Just thought you might know something specific about the older ChemBooks ... no big deal. The CPU is one of the first Pentium type chips (Pentium, (Pentium MMX 166MHz - that's mine), Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4, Celeron, Xeon, Itanium etc.). I'm not able to upgrade the CPU, the memory (which is 32 megs) or the hard-drive. And to think I paid nearly $4,500 for that puppy. Course I could of said that for my first 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386DX, 80386SX, 80486DX, 80486DX2, 80486DX4, the Pentium's and AMD's I've purchased. It's totally amazing how the prices have come down and the technology/speed has skyrocketed. Sure wish I had all the money in my hands that I've pissed off on computers. Thought I'd make it into a Linux machine and brush up on my Linux skills but I wasn't able to install it either. Needed access to the CD and a 3.5 at the same time. No way to link anything up! No USB, Firewire etc., so I gave up. Looks like I'll have to install OS/2, DESQview or DESQview/X on the puppy. Hell they probably won't work either. <<grin>> Thanks anywho, -JW:> | ||
| Phillyblast |
Jim, floppy and cd at same time? I'm assuming the laptop doesn't have the capability to boot from the cd? piece of cake to solve if you have broadband. do an ftp install of say, Mandrake 9.2. boot from floppy, point to ftp server, choose packages to install and go get a couple of beers. let me know if you need a PCMCIA network card for it. I might have an extra laying around in a box. | ||
| Phillyblast |
OR you could just get one of these: http://qrxx.4t.com/barbieOS.htm | ||
| Reepicheep |
Jim.. just didn't recognize that particular critter. That era machine probably will not boot from CD, but there are plenty of workarounds. What Philly said is a good approach if you can get a network card that is in there that is recognized by the boot disk, but that is not always as easy as it sounds, especially on a laptop. I have had more luck with pulling the hard drive. You can get a cable adapter ($5 or so) from the better electronics / computer shops (Frys, etc) that will let you hook the laptop drive to a normal desktop computer. Can't count the number of times this little guy has saved my bacon. Pull the drive from the laptop, do your install on a desktop with cd and floppy, pull the drive and put it back in the laptop, and tweak the configuration. This approach will work with windows as well (if you pull the drive during the right magic moment during the install process). I can send you a cable if you can't find one... www.dalco.com has them, and is a decent mail order place, and they are right down the street from me. CPU? You are stuck. Ram? Probably not stuck, but cheaper to replace the whole laptop then find matching ram. Hard Drive? Should be easy to upgrade, but your bios will probably have an upper bound of what it will recognize, so it will be hit and miss. It'll boot linux, and should even run X windows decently, or windows 98. But not much more then that. It *might* limp along as a navagation system for the car, but disk space, screen resolution, ram and CPU power are all gonna be painfull. Whats the display? The things it could do really well is become either a thin client (put a VNC client on it with either windows or linux) or a digital picture frame. It should perform either of these tasks well. VNC is a very cool setup, and is easy to install. Sorry for hijacking your thread MikeJ... Go buy a thinkpad 570 | ||
| Bomber |
Reep Glad you've found a use for three of the poor dears . . .. they always looked so sad and lonely, even before they became orphans (grin) I, too, remember the day when the term hacker was one, if not quite respect, at least recognizing of good skills and curiosity | ||
| Sarodude |
WRT BIOS hard disk size limitations... I was helping out a friend a couple years back. Her WAY old PC (P133) didn't like big disks - but some retail packaged drive that I wound up buying for her came with a neato little utility that (I think) replaced the MBR with a tiny little piece of code that allowed this box to make full use of this 30 GB drive. I probably still have that floppy... -Saro | ||
| Fuscat |
I have 2 or 3 extra of the drive adapters laying around if needed I could hook you up. I agree removing the drive and loading it from a desktop machine is by far the best way to go! I am curious as to what exactly you meen Reep about a digital picture frame. Is this using the whole machine or are you scraping the monitor etc? Wouldn't be very attractive I wouldn't think with the whole machine still attatched. I have a couple of old laptops that I have in parts in the scrap yard in my basement. I been wondering what I can do with the displays. I was wondering if there was a way to make it into a portable tv type screen. Something I can hook my gamesystems up to to play on..? Any thougts? | ||
| Fuscat |
By the way something to contribute to the thread. I have one of these and it is what I do most of my computing on. For a completely functioning portable check out the Sony VAIO Picturebook. It is a half laptop and a full 600mhz. runs any windows. You can get them fairly reasonable on ebay. Check out the size compared to the notebook network card, Take a look: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3437289600&category=31557 | ||
| Reepicheep |
Here is a better writeup of what I did with the Audreys for a digital picture frame... including a picture of how it was deployed. http://visuallee.com/weblog/2003_02_01_archive.html This is my brother in laws web log... home of one of the three deployed devices. Were I to update an old laptop, I would just cut the hinges and try and flip the screen 180 degrees with all the wiring attached, and stick it right back on the laptop (either on the front stuck to the keyboard, or on the back). Minor hardware surgery and it oughta be possible, once you pop the bezel on the screen assemblies there is usually a decent amount of slack you can achieve in there. Then make the whole "sandwich" maybe 1 to 3.5 inches thick, build a nice wooden frame for it, and hang it on the wall. Run power to it, ethernet cable or 802.11 wireless, and set it up with whatever OS is convenient. I built my whole setup around a web architecture. The audrey just replaced the screensaver program with an invocation of the web browser to go to a fixed web address. The page at this address will display a random picture, wait 30 seconds (javascript) and then refresh (which gets a new picture). So the picture frame laptop just has to have enough power to boot up and automatically launch a web browser (just about any graphical one will do). The Audreys still tend to lock up a couple times a week (sorry Bomber ), so I throw a plant timer on them to reboot them every night at about 2 am. | ||
| Bomber |
no apologies necessary, Reep . . . . the Audreys were going on parallel to the biz I was involved in (router/hubs/remote access concentrators) |
