a reaction, plus my us$0.02.....

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Alex Chan wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 07:01:32PM +0000, Rasputin wrote:
> > >
> > > Since Workpads seem to be a bit thin of the ground these days, I
> > > wondered what the alternatives were?
> >
> > it occurred to me to take a Sony Picturebook (pricey, but powerful), and use
> > a CF->2.5" HDD adapter to fit a solid-state drive into it. (solid-state
> > taking less power and being more durable). it's a spendy option, tho.

my current thinking is that i personally would use a microdrive. i forget 
who suggested this to me originally. wasnt it you Carl?

it draws more power than the CF, but it's bigger and faster. both of those 
are good for me. i'd like to have room for both BSD and Windows, tho it 
pains me to say that. 1gig smartdrive seems like a good choice. i am sure 
they'll come down RSN :-)

> > IBM's X-series laptops are only a little bit larger than the z50; but I'm
> > told by someone who has one, that it can't be booted off the CF adapter. :(

but if you yank the ol' hardrive and replace it with a IDE2CF adapter, 
then you can put it where the original hd used to be...

> 
> If you are considering a picturebook, I would recommend looking at the new
> fujitsu lightweight, which starts at $1500 USD.
> 
> http://www.fujitsupc.com/
> 
> They are similar in form-factor to the Sonys, but have much better battery
> life.  I don't know how easy it is to get NetBSD working on it, but I
> imagine Linux is also an option.

oh my goodness! this thing is *beautiful*! however, it fails my "Would i 
commit hari-kari if i forgot it on the bus" test, because at us$1500, yes, 
i would :-)

> I'm happy with NetBSD on the NEC MobilePro 780 which is about the same
> size as a PictureBook, but can be had on eBay for around $300.  I don't
> run X too often since the screen is small.

The mobilepro 800 is really nice i think. the hp jornada's are nice too,
but they are arm based, and i dont know if netbsd will run it. some 
mobilpros are 800x600 and that is  adequate for X IMHO, esp if you get the 
jmk fonts.

what *i* am using is another popular EBAY item, the hp 800ct. i payed 
us$205 for mine, but the price seem to be climbing to around us$300.

p166mmx, 10.4" 800x600, 2 gig hardrive, sb sound, 80M ram max, really nice 
keyboard, SCSI port (for the external CD). evidently runs linux, i *know* 
it runs FreeBSD because Warner Losh fixed it for me! :-)

big downer is the ghastly battery life. about 2.5 hours. maybe. with a new 
battery. and a tail wind. downhill.

hoping that going from 32M to 80M of ram will help get me closer to the 
2.5 and farther from the 2.

i know that swapping the hd out for a microdrive would help even more, but 
a microdrive is still a bit too pricey for me. likewise for a decently 
sized cf card...

oh-ho, a microdrive for us$121.00!

http://www.c-source.com/csource/newsite/ttechnote.asp?part_no=043479

and here's the adapter

http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/cfa.html

> -alex
> 
> 

-- 

John L. Utz III
john@utzweb.net

Idiocy is the Impulse Function in the Convolution of Life