I’ve I was having lunch with another SQL Geek and we were talking about netbooks and how practical they are. Is it worth getting one if you have a laptop, especially if you have to pay for it yourself. It’s only $300-400, but that’s not an insignificant amount of money. And if I was going to spend that much on equipment for my career, I think I’d be tempted to get one of the 32” LCDs that I saw at Wal-Mart.
I’m writing this post using LiveWriter on my HP Mini netbook and at the same time I have Powerpoint 2007, SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition and SSMS running. Starting these four things up was a little slow, but once they’re going, the performance isn’t bad.
I can switch between SSMS and Powerpoint, adding code to the demo, running it, and going back to the presentation without too much delay. In fact, the biggest slowdown to my working with the netbook on the presentation is the small screen size. It hampers my ability to easily work on things as I can only see a (relatively) few lines of code at a time.
The true test will be during a presentation when I am running code live, but for now this appears to be working fairly well. I’m not sure I’d recommend this if you do a lot of demos, compile code, etc. as those things can be slow on a full powered laptop. If you are running light queries, across dozens of rows to just show how something works, however, I think this might be fine.
Even the keyboard doesn’t seem to slow me down too much.
It’s certainly not close to a fulltime computer, but for the traveling tech professional that is presenting, I think the netbook will do a decent job in many cases. As with anything, you’ll need to test it for your work.
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.
I'm searching for a new laptop bag. After getting a backpack from Microsoft and using it on a few trips, I realize that it won't work. Since I know there are a few other people looking for them, I commissioned a review on a Maxpedition bag from the Scary DBA. I'm looking forward to seeing what he thinks of that one.
In any case, when I was trying to stuff things into my bag and struggling. So I unpacked the bag and then took stock of what I had in there. My list of things:
Wow!
I was actually stunned by how much crap I was carrying around. No wonder I didn't like carrying the backpack. I can cut down a touch of this stuff, but I'm missing my camcorder, which I'll need at PASS along with a microphone.
I definitely think that I need to consider a rolling bag of some sort.
Don't look for all this at SQL Saturday #17. I'll be there with just the netbook, leaving the 15" laptop at home.
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 arrived in Richmond, VA this morning earlier than expected. I was meeting a few people and things were pushed back, so I had the chance to go by Best Buy and find a USB->VGA adapter. Apparently they don’t have the HP VGA cable, so I got this adapter instead.
I opened the box to find the device, and a CD. That’s interesting because the netbook doesn’t have a CD drive. I’d debated about grabbing an external DVD drive when I was in the store, but my bag is heavy enough. With my laptop, power adapter, extra USB disk drive, and now the netbook it feels like I’m carrying quite a load.
So how to get this working? Luckily I had an idea. I hit the local Starbucks and then connected to the web, downloading drivers from Tritton Technologies. One annoying thing was once I’d gotten to the site, they list a number of models, all of which look alike. I had the device with me, but not the box, and there as no model number printed on the device. A serial number, but that didn’t help. Grrrrr.
I had to go back to the car, look at the box, and then download the driver. I suspected that there was one driver for all models, but I hate trying to uninstall drivers. I’m still a little gunshy after all these years working with Windows.
Once that was done, I wrote a couple blogs, including this blog on the device. Some impressions:
I’ll have more impressions over the next few weeks as I use this and compare it with my laptop.
Unpacking the netbook was pretty simple. Open it, grab the large one page poster, and then the netbook. There were basically 3 steps. I'd completed one by removing the netbook. Step two was to snap in the battery, and then step 3 was to connect power. I guess step 4 was to turn it on, which I did.
It has a power brick, which is annoying for a small device, but there's not much you can do since they are trying to keep the device itself so small. Power and wireless on/off are on the front, connections on both sides. They even include a USB snap in cover for that port.
Turning it on starts the Windows XP setup, which I haven't seen in years. Even with a 16GB SSD, it was surprisingly slow. I think that's just XP setup, which was slow. I turned to my laptop, trying to ensure I had things working there while that device booted. I knew it had booted since I had a nice Yanni/New-agey music track playing in the background. I looked over there, and sure enough it was waiting for me to choose the XP setup options (English, etc.). I walked through the setup, including giving it a name. I chose "Tiny" since that's what it is. I'm tired of having names like "desktop", "Steve_Laptop", so I'm following Jerry Pournelle and giving my machines nice names.
After that happened, the machine rebooted, which was noticeably faster, and I was ready to go. I connected to the hotel's wireless network and I was online.
Now time to experiment with some work.
It was not what I expected. When I was leaving for a run this morning, I decided to apply an update to Vista and let it reboot, thinking I'd defragment the drive when I returned. It was acting funny and running slow, so this seemed like a good idea to me.
I got back from the run, went to sync my Nike + run and noticed the machine was off, so I pressed power and then sat down to stretch with water thinking this would take some time. After I was done, I went to check email and noticed that the laptop was still stuck on the POST screen, with the progress bar about 2/3 of the way across.
Uh oh.
This had happened last week, just before we left, and it had me worried. I thought the hard drive had failed, but when I powered down, left it for 10 minutes, and powered up, it seemed to work fine. I thought I'd do that here. After 10 tries, I was seriously worried.
My first thought was Holy Sh*t! Here I am, on vacation, 1700 miles from home, I got that from a sign nearby :), and I have a presentation to do tomorrow. I don't even have the presentation on a USB key, because well, I'm an idiot. I do have it up on Live Mesh, so I could get it, but I needed to work on it. I also had some stuff on a USB drive, but I am by no means sure I have most of my stuff from the drive.
So I sat for a few minutes and thought about it. My best bet was probably to go get a netbook. I've been thinking about it, and it would be a good solution for a few days. I should have a service contract with Toshiba (this machine is a Qosmio F45), but they won't likely get anything done before I get home, and I have all the 411 at home, and I'm leaving for Richmond tomorrow, then back here Fri night and flying home Sat.
Luckily I have the amazing T-Mobile G1 phone with 3G and I could look up the local Best Buy. I found one on the S side of Baltimore, about 10 mi away, so I showered and packed up. Just before leaving I tried the laptop again, and success! It booted, so I hooked up my USB drive and copied over all documents, pictures, downloads, and videos to the external drive. At least I have a copy of everything. Then it was off to Best Buy.
My purchases were:
I'd asked the Geek Squad person in the store, since I knew there were ways to clone a disk drive, and he pointed me in this direction. I can use the Black Widow dock with any SATA drive, 3.5" or 2.5" and that will let me hook both drives to my laptop. From there I can boot the Acronis software and then clone my 160GB drive onto the 320GB one. Hopefully with one partition, but in any case, I'll have a working (fingers crossed) laptop.
Since I wasn't confident, and I could use a traveling machine that can be low power for presentations, the HP will come in handy. Once I have the laptop squared away, I think I'll move to Windows 7 and see how that does.
I'm afraid to clone the drive right now since I need to get a few things done, but I'll try it later and see where I come out.
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.
