About a half-year ago I had some fun rehabilitating an ancient Sony Vaio Picturebook that my work was tossing. I wanted to see just how minimal a install I could run on it that would still be usable for web browsing *and* run off of a CF card without wearing it out too quickly. I ended up using a 2.5" IDE to CF adapter and modifying PuppyLinux to run on it; Puppy runs in RAM and only flushes to disk every now and then; most of the work was already done for me. Even with an old Netgear WiFi card and most of the power management not optimized I'm getting four to six hours on the ancient batteries. Part of that is due to eliminating the HDD, but also remember that when you eliminate half the screen, you half that power draw as well. (Hmmm...plenty of room in the bezel to replace the CCF's with LED's...). Resolution on the Picturebook is 1024 x 400, a really nice compromise in my opinion.<br><br>Six months later, I still find
myself grabbing that little box rather than any other portable in the house when I just want to do a little reading or catch up on email out in the backyard. Problem is, it was just a fun mini-project and only has a P1-266, so I've been very interested in the ASUS / Everex / OLPC boxes. However, despite the hype they all seem a gigantic step backward in terms of screen resolution. I was starting to think I'd have to settle for one of the later Transmeta-powered Picturebooks off of fleabay, but now it seems that one of these HP's just might be the sleeper I'm looking for...<br><br>By the way Kyle, the Fujitsu P1610 is beautiful, but I just can't see leaving one laying around with a three year old and a toddler! I'd also be a little more reluctant to break into it and make modifications...<br><br>-Frank<br><br> <br><br><b><i>Kyle Rankin <kyle@nblug.org></i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid
rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:38:40AM -0700, Steve Johnson wrote:<br>> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 9:49 AM, steven smith <sjs@sonic.net> wrote:<br>[..] <br>> I think it is cool that there is now a market for linux based laptops,<br>> but these things are tiny.. 8.9" screens.. Yikes, My Dell XPS M1210<br>> as a 12.1" screen and I can't imagine trying to use anything smaller<br>> than that.<br>[..]<br>> Is this new market of tiny laptops just a fad? or is there really a<br>> use for these little boxes?<br>[..]<br><br>It probably depends on the person, but my Fujitsu P1610 has a 8.9" screen<br>at 1280x768 and it works fine for me. I think the resolution is important<br>though, anything below 1024x768 these days can be difficult to use with<br>some websites/programs.<br><br></sjs@sonic.net></blockquote><br><p>