I was heading out on a trip to SQLSaturday #17 recently and decided that I wanted to try and travel with only the netbook. My laptop gets heavy, this was a short trip without the need for any audio or video, so it seemed like the perfect chance to try and survive with a small machine.
However in preparation, there were a few things I wanted to bring with me.
I used SQL Server to check things and answer questions, so it’s nice to have a copy of the developer edition with me. I also use One Note extensively for my writings and with the Live Mesh synchronization I have, this works well. So I downloaded the software from MSDN and got ready to install it. Since I need SQL Server for my laptop (it has 2005 only), I decided to burn a DVD of the .iso. I’m sure there are other ways to do this, but this was the simplest for me.
I put the SQL Server 2008 DVD in my laptop, shared the drive from the networking and sharing center, and then connected from the netbook. It was very simple, with me typing “\\Qosmio\DVD” in the RUN box of the start menu. That brought up a credentials box and when I entered my account and password for the laptop, I was connected to the DVD drive. Qosmio is the name of my laptop and I had shared the DVD drive as “DVD.”
I started setup and immediately it asked to download an updated .NET framework. I ran that and then rebooted, reconnecting to the DVD when I was done. The SQL Server installation didn’t detect any warnings or issues, and I selected the database engine, tools, SSRS, SSIS, and BIDS. I started the installation and lay in bed, netbook on my chest, laptop next to me, watching TV and the installation alternately.
Let me say this was incredibly slow, and after 30 minutes, even though I was seeing slow progress, I decided not to wait any longer. I put both machines on the dresser and ignored them until the next morning. When I woke up the installation was finished and I had SQL Server running on the netbook.
After the first SSMS startup, subsequent startups took about 7 seconds, slightly slower than the desktop, but not by much. The intellisense seems to work quickly enough for me, and while my standard ALT-X for executing a query is awkward, the machine works fine. I think it would work well for demos that don’t need a lot of processing power or have a lot of rows to return.
I also decided to install OneNote, which is part of Office 2007. I was concerned about disk space, and was thinking to just install this one item, Following the same procedure as above with the Office DVD, I connected and ran setup. When it asked for the DVD key, I add to eject the DVD to read the key, and once it was entered, Office gave an error that it couldn’t read setup. Apparently as soon as you get the last digit in the key entered, it looks to move forward. I closed the drawer and hit “retry” and things proceeded. I checked the installation without any other products, and then with Excel and Word added back in. The disk space was negligible, maybe 200MB, so I decided to include those two products as well.
I left it running, expecting a slow install after SQL, but when I came back about 30 minutes, it was done. I fired up OneNote, pointed it to my Live Mesh One Note folder and it loaded up all my current editorials. I haven’t used Word or Excel much, but they’re there if required.
Right now I have 4.7GB free out of 15.2GB on my SSD., I was concerned about space, but most of the things I deal with are small documents, and except for databases that are < 1GB, I should be fine. I have installed on this machine:
This is about everything I need. I also have drivers for an external USB device. Things are working well, so I’m going to mess with the device and try to get Windows 7 on it next week after the RTM is available.
The trip down to Baton Rouge had me presenting a non-technical presentation. I used the external USB device from Tritton Technologies and it worked great. I connected right in and I had an image on the screen. I even edited the presentation a little the night before in my hotel, moving a couple slides around, and it worked great.
During the trip I answered email on Webmail, wrote some blog posts with Live Writer, and even edited a few things in One Note. The space savings was great, and it was fantastic to have a greater battery life. I took notes in notepad and Live Writer during sessions, and the small device worked out well on a desk and on my lap.
A successful trip, and I’m looking forward to more of them with just this small device.
I’ve had an HP Mini netbook for about a month now and have been using it on and off. Actually for the most part my wife has taken control of it, using it for blogging most nights after our kids are in bed. It’s handy, small, and works well for a basic machine. So far I have left XP on it, but with the announcement of Windows 7 RTM, I’ll be giving that a try in a week or so when it’s available for MSDN subscribers.
To date I haven’t installed much on it. I have data for blog posts and editorials sync’ed on this machine through Live Mesh, as well as my presentations, but other data that I have to copy on or off it. I haven’t gotten SQL Server on it yet, but I plan on putting developer edition on as a test in the next few days.
However the small size has come in handy and I have taken it a few places. Like today, where I dropped my son off at his volunteer job for the local food bank. We were in a hurry to get out the door, so I grabbed the netbook because it’s smaller and it holds a nice charge. It seems as thought I can easily get 4 hours out of the battery, and more with wireless turned off. There’s a handy switch on the front for doing that.
So while he’s working, rather than spend 40 minutes commuting back and forth to my house, I stopped in the local Starbucks to get some writing done.
The keyboard works well for me, although I miss my “home” and “end” keys. I use those frequently on my desktop and there are no dedicated keys for those on the netbook. I can press the function key and an arrow key to get the same effect on the Mini, but I haven’t quite gotten used to that. The function key is in the lower left, it’s a little small, and so I don’t have the muscle memory yet to easily hit it. Perhaps if I can wrestle this away from my wife for a few more days….
The performance of this machine for web browsing and getting editing/writing done it great for me. It handles my Powerpoint viewer fine, though I do find that switching applications can be slow at times. The resume is quicker than my Toshiba Core Duo when I open it, and the wireless radio seems to work as well.
The only complaint I have is the screen size takes some getting used to. It seems that most web pages need a little more vertical space to display well. I scroll more often than I’d like. I am glad I got the 10” screen as I think the 8” one is way too small. The toolbar is set to auto hide and I’ve removed some menus from applications to give me more space.
If I had any complaint, it would be that the touchpad sometimes doesn’t register clicks smoothly or quickly. I might tap it 2 or 3 times to get a click. I’ve gotten used to using the buttons on the side of it, so that’s not a big deal.
Overall this has worked out well. I’ll be traveling to SQLSaturday #17 in Baton Rouge with only this machine for a presentation, so we’ll see how it does.
When I bought the HP Mini 1030R netbook, I had every intention of using it for presentations, taking it on short trips, and having a lightweight machine for those times that I didn't need to carry around my larger Toshiba. The size difference is amazing, with my laptop feeling like a luggable next to the netbook. I'm looking forward to just taking the netbook with me to SQLSaturday #17.
I mentioned in another blog that I had issues the first night getting the netbook to recognize the USB display adapter that I'd purchased. It just would never see it, and it wouldn't turn on. Every time I connected the device, it would search for a new driver, despite my having run the install. Then when I tried to point it at the install folder, there were no drivers found. Apparently, Tritton Technologies, in the infinite lack of wisdom, hides the drivers inside their CAB files.
Note: Developers, don't do that. You can have an install routine, but leave the drivers in the file system.
When I got home, I had every intention of digging into the SEE2 USB adapter to determine if it would work, or if I needed to return it and the netbook.
My first step today was to re-run the install, and remove the drivers that were installed. Having a clean system helps, so I did that and rebooted the Mini. Then I went back to the SEE2 support page and downloaded new drivers. They listed a separate See2 driver file, which is a different file from the one I downloaded earlier. They both should have worked, and I had a later driver, but when in doubt...go backwards.
This setup program had a few more setup items. These drivers aren't WQHL certified, but many aren't and the instructions say to continue anyway when XP gives you the stop/continue dialog. I got that 3 times with this driver, and continued each time before it wanted to reboot my machine.
Typically external devices in Windows 2000 and XP have asked you to install the drivers first, then connect the device. I did that, connecting it after I'd rebooted, and got the same "find the driver" dialog from Windows. This was annoying, so I went and downloaded the user manual. One didn't come with the device, and since I had no CD drive, I hadn't viewed it.
The PDF file says to connect the device first, and then install the drivers. That's contrary to the poster and the explicit sticker that's on the device itself saying to PLEASE install the drivers before connecting this, but I thought, what the heck. So I uninstalled, rebooted, connected the device, and ran setup.
Setup completed, but things still didn't work. So I checked device manager and the main device was registered under display adapters with a good driver, but under the USB section there was a yellow icon next to the USBVGA item. So I clicked "update driver" and then instead of looking at the download folder from Tritton, I went to System32/Drivers/ and let it find the driver on it's own.
It did, and all of a sudden I could enable the second monitor in my display settings. I extended the desktop, and sure enough it turned on. I started my presentation with the Powerpoint Viewer I'd downloaded, and it appeared on the external monitor, leaving me my main screen for other things.
Like Twitter.
I’ve been managing backups of my video files using USB hard drives for a year, and I’m fed up. I currently have 3 drives, with video, and pictures, spread across all three, none backing each other up, and files off my various machines. To add more hassles, I also have issues with my XP desktop not allowing people to log in remotely and access files. My wife used to back up onto my desktop, or grab photos off there. I’m sure that’s not something that’s too hard to fix, but I don’t want to spend a few hours digging in there.
I also needed an external drive for my VM work, wanting to put SQL Server on one of my disks, but they’re all almost full. So that spurred me to look at solving both problems at once.
Last year I asked Cali Lewis, of Geekbrief, what they did for backup. They shoot a daily podcast, generate more formats and storage than I do, and I was curious. Since Drobo is a sponsor of hers, I should have figured it out, but obviously they use a Drobo.
This morning I tweeted my followers asking what they thought. I mentioned I was considering a Drobo and wondered what other people did. I got a couple of USB drive responses, even with NAS add-ons, but those don’t really help. What I really wanted was:
I was considering a Drobo with 4 drives, since it looks like a nice device. I can add drives as I need them, multiple sizes, and allow the Drobo OS to balance the data across these drives and provide protection.
The base Drobo only has Firewise and USB ports, but I can add network connectivity if needed. However the Ethernet addition is $200, on top of a $500 device, so I’m at $700.
That’s not too expensive for protecting my data, but it’s a bit more than I’d like.
I also get a basic backup device that I need to use the Windows backup to schedule data moving from my machines or the iMac to the device. There are some apps that will stream media off this device, so it would be a nice central solution for the family.
However one thing that concerns me is that if the Drobo goes down, those drives aren’t readable anywhere else. I’d need another Drobo to access the data.
Someone tweeted back, actually a few people, that I should look at the MediaSmart server from HP. My first reaction was really, a Microsoft Home Server? I haven’t heard great things about them, but to be fair I haven’t heard much at all.
So I Google’d and asked a couple questions on Twitter. I found a few reviews, but this was one someone sent me from SlashGear.
As I read it, it seemed like they really had done a good job with this product, and it supports MAC OS as well.
It’s a 64-bit CPU, albeit Celeron, and it has 2GB of RAM. At $500, the price compares favorably with other servers I’ve priced, and this one has lots of features. I verified that it saved sata on multiple drives, and that you can add drives of different sizes. I also l like that it has Amazon S3 backup integration. I’m not sure if I want that, but it’s a good option.
It also has a lot of options for streaming data from other computers, especially media (pictures, video) and sharing it. I really like that since that’s a lot of what I deal with these days. All my writing can be backed up on a USB key since the text is small, but the video and pictures, especially pictures, are important and too big to manage effectively.
My other choice, is NAS of some sort. I had this D-Link 2 bay NAS enclosure recommended as well. It has a network interface that allows FTP and SMB access (file shares) and can handle RAID 1. It has a USB printer port as well, which is very interesting. We could use some printer help, especially since ours wants a new network interface ever time the power cycles.
This device is $157 from Amazon, but without drives. I could add 2 1TB drives for
about $200, so this is basically a $350 solution. The other thing is that this is a completely manual solution. I’d have to script the backups, and manage them going to and from the machine. I’m not sure about streaming stuff, though I suspect that I could let each machine access it as a file share and pull data off it.
The MediaSmart server is $500, but that’s with one drive. Adding a second for protection gives me $600, or $250 more, but I get a lot more, management of files to prevent duplicates, streaming access for more devices, including iTunes, and it automatically looks for new media files. That’s an interesting plus.
It’s a business cost to me, and $200 doesn’t seem like a lot. I’m really leaning towards a Windows Home Server, both for the testing and the convenience. I’ll do more research, but that’s my first thought.
The other day I was wandering around Best Buy and noticed that they had a few netbooks for sale. I stopped by because I've considered using one for presentations and some light travel, instead of lugging around my full sized notebook. Vacations, maybe short trips, things where I don't need to full horsepower of my main laptop, and to reduce the risk of carrying it around everywhere.
All of these netbooks ran Windows XP, and I'm sure most people are familiar with XP, so there isn't anything major to test there. What did I look at? I checked out the following:
The three notebooks were these three, with the prices I found in the store:
My impressions of these three devices are below:
This was the only device that I couldn't physically pick up as it was locked with some bar device and I didn't have time to try and get a salesman to unlock it. Actually I didn't feel like talking to a salesman. However it felt light and small, perhaps slightly smaller than the Aspire in depth, slightly wider, perhaps heavier, but these are all lightweight machines.
The keyboard here was really good. My test was to pop open Notepad and type a few sentences, include capitals, periods, backspace, etc. The keys worked well for me, were a good size, and easy to hit without a lot of mistakes.
The display looked good, it's 10" and is a good size for working with text and writing, browsing would be a little tight compare with the Toshiba Qosmio I normally use.
Later I found this has Wireless G and a 60GB HDD.
I ran into one of these in September or October and thought it was cool. At the time that one ran Linux, so I was concerned about using some of the apps I would want to use here, like Powerpoint.
I picked this up and it's light. It's something you could easily carry around, and if it were smaller, it would be a like a heavy point-and-shoot camera in a jacket pocket. It's larger than that, slightly larger than the Kindle and felt larger than the HP. More a 4:3 ratio where the HP is more 16:4 ratio. I'm not sure if those are accurate, but those were my impressions.
Typing was easy on there, though the shift keys are to the far right and left of other keys and I struggled slightly to hit them. After a few minutes, however, it became easier, so I think this keyboard would work for my writing. This device also has Wireless-N, a big plus for me. I need to check if the HP has that. You have the option of a 16GB SSD here as well.
This is the smallest device I tried and it is small. It feels like a kid's Leapfrog laptop or something and the white and pink colors didn't help. It's not quite small enough for a pocket, but it's close. This device is about the size of my Kindle, although thicker.
The display here felt really small, and at 8" or so, it's much smaller than the others. It looked bright enough and had enough resolution, but I felt it was small.
However the killer here was the keyboard. It's just too small for me. I couldn't ever get the shift keys or the backspace to work without looking for them and lifting my hands, something I'm not willing to do. Perhaps if you had smaller hands, it would work for you. Definitely try this one out if you type from memory or touch type. I spent 5 minutes or so and couldn't get this to work for me and I'm not confident I ever would.
If I had to buy one today, it would be the Asus, but I'd like to find out more about what will actually run on these machines.
