Alpha 400 another "almost HPC" netbook

Yoldering, yeah got mine 2 weeks ago. I find it quite nice for the money. The screen/lcd is quite nice, better than i would've thought. It seems to be built quite well as it isnt flimsy, battery averages 4-5 hours etc. The default linux installed is pretty dumbed down, even crippled, but i'm slowly making progress on a better OS/userland for it, also packaged up debian etch for it. Once i'm finished i'll be sending a cd of the 2 flash images to littlelinuxlaptop.com, where they will be uploaded and linked from. I hope to have everything ready within the next few weeks.

Here is a screenshot of my current project userland for these mips netbooks: http://www.freeshells.ch/~wicked74/minibookrc1.png
It's gone through many changes since i took this screenshot, but only for the better.

Cheers

See here: What's Up With This Fee on My Receipt? It looks like you got the low end of the spectrum. Apparently it's charged to anything with a screen.

Edited by isotherm 2009-01-17 9:16 PM

It'd be interesting to see how well it performs under a real distro. It might be even better to use a source-based distribution, so you get every possible bit of performance. I speak from experience because ever since I switched from a binary distribution to a source-based one on my Epia (Via C3-2 667MHz) rig, I noticed very noticeable improvements in running X applications like firefox and such which were very slow previously.

For anybody who may have bought one of these, my "better than stock" userland will be available shortly from littlelinuxlaptop.com.

http://freeshells.ch/~wicked74/images/desktop-alpha400.png

For anyone in UK maplin are selling the OneT which is a version of this machine for £99

$159.99 at buy.com
http://www.buy.com/prod/alpha-400-mips-400mhz-128mb-1gb-7-linux-ultralite-notebook/q/loc/101/210486063.html

My distro for any of the 20 or so rebranded 400mhz mips netbooks is now released into the wild for anyone who is looking for something much more useful than the crappy default distro.

http://www.freeshells.ch/~wicked74/alpha400/

Cheers.

I'm getting to the point that I really want to upgrade from my LG Phenom Express. The MP900c won't run the software I need to run. Today I was looking at a couple of netbooks in the store. I tried putting the computer into Standby mode, then going back to the Run mode. It only took a couple of seconds for the machine to come up, and I didn't have to close any applications that were running.

I work out of my truck in the oilfields and I use my HPC about 10 - 20 times per day. Instant on is very important to me, but I'm wondering if a netbook in Standby mode will do the trick. Anybody have a clue about battery life in standby? I could get a 12v adaptor, but I already run a small refrigerator and charge a couple of cell phones off of the truck, so I'd rather not. I see that some netbooks use solid state drives, some use disks. I would guess that the disk drives would use significantly more power, but don't know for sure.

Anybody have any thoughts or experience with standby mode or battery life with these units?

Many thanks!

I picked up an Acer Aspire 1 at Christmas, and I've been a little disappointed with the battery life. I haven't timed it, and it differs depending on what I'm doing, but my MP790 seems to last much longer off a full charge. You'll want to check out reviews on available models to see what battery life is like, but I think for most models you'll get 2-3 hours on the standard battery. It may be worth it for you to invest in a long-life battery if it's available.

What software do you need???

just wondered.

John

One reason why we love HPC is because of the efficiency. Keeping 32mb or 64mb or even 128mb powered in standby mode uses a lot less power than the 1gb ddr2 ram in a netbook. Same for the CPU.

I do keep my laptop on standby all day (only hibernate when I sleep), but in order to do that on a PC laptop you end up getting the largest available battery, which makes it heavier, and so it is no longer comparable to an HPC.

Netbook is the same. It's not new technology obviously, and so it isn't any better in battery life than previous laptops. There have always been ultraportable laptops, which have always had unfavourable battery life compared to an HPC or PDA. Netbooks have all the characteristics of previous generations ultraportables. The only thing new about netbooks is the lower price.

I use ACT!, which is a customer database program. I also use Excel spreadsheets with thousands of cells, which is very slow on my 100 MHz machine.

Having a look it looks like sage do ACTLink for Pocket PC not sure if it would work on CE but most apps can be made to work.

Also I would have thought Softmakers Planmaker or SpreadCE would be more than able to cope with a sheet with 1000's of entries in it.

Would have thought a 900c, Psion Netbook Pro, Smartbook G138 or similar would be a usefull option. Add a Blutooth card and GPS reciver and all of the 3 can be made to run modern Navigation software.

Anyway just a thought.

On your original question yes an HDD may draw a little more power but I wouldn't worry too much. I would consider though HDD's are also more likely to die a death esspecially if vibration and bumps are common place. I would always recommend SSD or similar for an in Car/Truck computer.

I'm running the original ACT!, which was from Symantec. There is a PC version and an HPC version, I use both and they synchronize with each other. The HPC version is for a MIPS machine.

I bought the newer version (Sage bought the rights to it) and you're right, it is set up for a Palm device or PPC, not WinCE. I've got a couple of MP900s, one with cmonex v1, one with CE 2000. The new version of ACT! won't load onto either one. Also, rather than being a stand alone program, it embeds itself into Outlook, which I really don't like. I'm not sure if it will do what I want to do or not. I called Sage tech support--you have to subscribe to tech support for $200/year! I ain't going there!

The PC version of the 'old' ACT! has a lot more capability than the HPC version, so I'm thinking of getting the netbook PC and loading the full version of the old program on it. I could also try the new version and if I don't like it, I could remove it by setting a restore point.

I was also concerned about the life of a HDD in a mobile environment, but I carried a Gateway laptop with me everyday for 7 years. It probably travelled 400,000 road miles with me and no problems with the disk. Eventually I had problems with a loose connection on the display, but never the HDD.

Thanks for your thoughts!

SSD vs HDD consumption, it doesn't help that much with battery life if you have SSD. but it does make the device run faster.