Mini laptop (netbook)

[Andy]

Andy I am not sure which post you are referring to. The SD card reader problem is one of not being seen. If it is seen then there is no speed problem whether you use a 2Gb SD card or a 16Gb SDHC card. Quite often you can see the card in the reader if it is inserted before booting up but most the time you can't hot switch the cards but sometimes you can especially in Mandriva a Linux distro.

I lost track of which post I was referring to 

Anyway, it's not so bad if the SD card is seen if it is plugged in before booting up. Seems like a software driver problem.

[donecweb]

I lost track of which post I was referring to 

Anyway, it's not so bad if the SD card is seen if it is plugged in before booting up. Seems like a software driver problem.

Yes but it is the drivers for both Windows and Linux.

[sryk]

yeah, they are worth the price mate..try it out i like them

[12noon]

The Advent 4211 netbook i bought for my wife turned up today. I've just taken it out of the box and i'm just starting to set it up for her.
 
The first thing i noticed was that i couldn't get on to the internet via wireless. It turned out that i needed to press Fn & F11 to turn on the wireless part before i could connect. Oh and the netbook doesn't kick out much heat and doesn't burn my leg like my own laptop does. I'll let you know more once i get it all set up.

[Andy]

I was tempted to get one of these but decided to upgrade the memory on my laptop instead. It had shared video memory and a total of just 512MB RAM running XP so I upped it to 1GB + 256MB. Not sure if it has improved the speed yet but at least it has more than enough memory now.

It has a 1.6MHz Celeron CPU, not sure how this compares to the Intel Atom on Netbooks?

The problem I have with my laptop (AMILO 1310G) is the slow boot up. One workaround is to go into standby rather than completely switching off. But I should do some timings to see how it compares. The wireless connection is a bottleneck and various applications that are in the toolbar. When I come out of standby on my desktop PC it is very fast, like a few seconds. So it will be interesting to try and find out how to make the laptop fire up faster.

[12noon]

As far as i know a 1.6ghz Atom is roughly the same as a 900mhz Celeron. It's the fact that the netbook computers are designed to be small and the main use for them is doing email and browsing the internet that make them seem fast.

BTW my Dell Inspiron 1501 with AMD dual core Turion 1.6ghz and 2GB memory and Windows Vista takes a lot longer than my wife's Windows XP netbook to start up. The battery life on the netbook is a lot better also. Oh and apart from the size of the screen and the netbook not having a DVD/CD drive, i'd swap her computers.
 
Andy have you tried a disk clean up and defrag ?

[Andy]

Andy have you tried a disk clean up and defrag ?

Yes I did.

I think the problem is the applications that run during startup. I need to get rid of some of them. I think they access the web to check for updates and maybe the wireless connection is not ready.

I just timed it:

10s to Windows
44s to blank screen
1:00 to Windows Starting
4:36 to HDD LED stopped blinking (I could have logged in earlier)

Logged in ...
30s to Loading personal settings
Then various updates to Antivirus and Flash player. Flash player downloads 100% and says an error occured. Try 2 more times, the same thing happens.

16 minutes from power up, the HDD LED finally settles down 

Now the laptop is ready to be used.

[donecweb]

I think the problem is the applications that run during startup. I need to get rid of some of them. I think they access the web to check for updates and maybe the wireless connection is not ready.

Sounds like you need to get the free Windows program Startup Control panel from...
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
It allows you to remove or just disable the programs that you system starts at start up. There is also a program like it that will allow you to delay some programs wile others are loading called Startup Delayer from....
http://www.r2.com.au/software.php?page=2&cat=4&catname=System
Hope this helps.

[Andy]

Thanks Don, these look useful 

[12noon]

Found a way to speed up my vista laptop with dual core CPU.

I click the Start button and typed msconfig in the Start Search box. I then right clicked msconfig.exe and choose to Run as administrator and clicked Continue. I then selected the Boot tab and clicked the Advanced options. Then checked the box Number of processors and selected 2. The last thing i did was to check the Maximum Memory box.
 
It sort of worked and made things a little bit faster.

[12noon]

Anyone still thinking about buying a netbook might find this useful.

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/10/21/scc_table_8.pdf

It gives CPU, memory, SDD & HDD, screen size, OS and weight. Plus a few other details of all the netbooks and mini laptops specifications.

[12noon]

Sorry for replying to myself again, but keep you eye out for the new Sony Vaio P netbook.
 
I've not got all the details about it yet, but it looks and sounds good. Oh and is almost pocket sized.

[Andy]

Sony tend to add a lot of multimedia features to their laptops. I was kicking myself after buying my Toshiba, I spotted a very feature-rich vio with HDMI output in a department store sale. I almost bought it but already just bought a laptop, darn.