Cæptain's Log

Archive for the ‘Hacks’ Category

I would like to thank Lewis Carol for the new codename for my netbook: The Jabberwock.  It’s appropriate because of all the stuff I’ve done to it / will do to it will make it look like a clusterfucked mess.  On to the topic:

The heatsink on this netbook’s processor / gma chip are lame – the part that makes contact w/ the chip is recessed so you have to use a thermal pad – stupid.

Until I get my brazing stuff set up to fill the gap and switch to AS5 or TuniQ or something, I’ll need an additional method of keeping my monster from heating up.

This works really well, even as a prototype:

I just stuck a tiny fan that I pulled out of an aftermarket PS2 vent thing onto the exhaust port at the bottom of the Jabberwock and plugged it into the nearby usb port.  I don’t know if there’s a 5v trace nearby that won’t blow something up that I can leech off of, so I’ll play it safe and probably just install a simple 4 port hub over one of the usb ports to I have stuff inside to work with (any ideas on just stacking the fan’s supply with the existing port for the time being?  it doesn’t use data).

I affixed it with some silicone I had lying around temporarily, but I’ll need screws with spacers (the free part of the fan is facing the bezel) and I might need to add an additional vent cover so I don’t accidentally plug the exhaust port and blow the fan up….
Developments coming soon….

The 9-cell battery I ordered came in recently and I figured I’d do a write-up on it, since there wasn’t much out there when I was researching these and kinda bit the bullet on it.

I bought the battery from an Ebay seller called Everwaypower in Shenzen, china for $55.88.  Shipping was free but took about 10 days to arrive.

The package was completely coated with packing tape and once I deciphered the box style I managed to cut the seams open.  Inside was the battery, extremely well packaged in cut foam and anti-static bag.

The battery was easy to install, as all the Aspire One batteries are considered universal (for the most part).  Unfortunately this 9-cell doesn’t meet flush with the seam of the bezel like the stock 6-cell does.  I also noticed that I could force the battery out of the lock, so don’t trust your battery to stay in if you hang onto the battery like a handle and swing it around (no sane person would do this but I’ve abused the hell out of my netbook and can attest to the stability of things).  This may be due to this series of battery being ‘optimized’ for the AoA (8.9″) series of Aspire1’s so if you shop around then you can potentially expect a better experience.

I’ve also included shots of the size difference.  Some of the older 9-cells I’ve seen had the cells stacked in a linear fashion, but this battery had them in an L formation, so it’s more compact (than older 9-cells).

Despite noted flaws this battery does hold up to the kind of quality I would expect for anything I’d affix to my netbook.

The battery is advertised as a brand new 7200mAh capacity battery.  As anyone should know, this manufactured capacity is not the true capacity, so I did some analysis with a program called Battery Care to learn more about my batteries.

This program reads capacity in mWh (miliWatts per hour) as compared to the standard miliAmperes per hour, so I’ll just use mWh for the rest of this writeup for sake of ease.

The ‘designed’ capacity of this particular 9-cell was 73260mWh; it’s actual capacity is 71817mWh, which equates to a very low wear level (the designed capacity is like a theoretical maximum, where the actual capacity goes down as the battery is worn) which is expected as it’s a new battery.

Battery Care isn’t very good at reporting accurate ‘time remaining’ calculations very frequently, but based on my tests the 9-cell lasts about 7 hours.  This should shock you as this is barely over what’s advertised as the battery life of the 6-cell, but keep in mind I’m now running Windows 7, with a lot of intensive processes (firefox / thunderbird / utorrent / gmabooster / dashboard widgets / full screen brightness / max wifi) so you have to consider this.  If you ran your netbook with the intentions of saving battery life then you should see some serious time clocks.  Contrast this with my previous 6-cell that now only gives me about 4 hours of life (50461mWh), and things make sense.

The lesson here is that my disregard for battery life and the use of windows 7 is costs me a great deal of battery life, however by using a 9-cell I can compensate for every watt of power consumed…

So to wrap things up:

Overall, this is a helluva deal if you can score it for as cheap as I did.  It takes a bit longer to ship from China but the quality is still good and assuming you don’t get a dud (as is known to happen with aftermarket batteries) then you will notice a difference.  There are the obvious flaws with using aftermarket products, like how the battery doesn’t fit flush with the bezel, but it does fit and lock in place (although it can be forced out).  Hopefully this helps those out there considering buying a 9-cell battery to more effectively weigh the pros and cons of owning one, at least for this model and style of battery.  I know there are other styles out there so I can’t assure you that you will have the same experience, but I encourage you to take the jump as you do get a performance gain.

• Pros
  • About 150% more charge time
  • More real estate on the back for pirate stickers
  • Priced about the same as any of this model’s 3 or 6 cell
• Cons
  • Can’t buy stock, so you gotta spend extra money to get one
  • Big and heavy
  • Might not fit flush with bezel
  • Takes a little longer to charge (obviously)

There’s too many ‘reviews’ about Windows 7 out there to bother doing my own full fledged “COMPLETE WINDOWS 7 REVIEW, WHY OSX IS STILL THE ONLY THING WE USE AND WE HAVE NO BUSINESS DOING THIS WHATSOEVER!” (see Wired.com).  I’m only doing this to add my little perspective of using one on a netbook.  I’ve also been a Windows user since ‘95 and I’ve tested at least one flavor of every operating system they’ve released, including Nautilus (windows ‘99) and Longhorn (pre-vista).  I’ve also taken every chance I could get to test other reasonable alternatives to Windows, as I’m very familiar with the disadvantages to using an operating system with over 90% market share.  I’ve found that until OSX becomes a more competitive option (ie: Apple releases a more eclectic line of hardware available to people with sub $1000 budgets or provides support to people who want to run OSX on non-apple hardware) then I submit to you that unless you’re A.) not a service professional that uses Windows because it’s what all of your clients will use and it enables maximum compatibility in networking and in troubleshooting; B.) you are very skilled and knowledgeable (or wish to become so) with the terminal interface of your particular distro and have an impressive command of your operating systems and C.) don’t need to use any proprietary software and all your hardware has open source compatible alternatives that function well enough for you to use them then Windows is your best bet for an OS.

I bit the bullet and loaded Win Se7en on my netbook recently and the process was as smooth as ever before.  I have an official beta key I got a while ago, but I’ve used it a few times so far and they stopped giving them out AFAIK; so you’re just gonna have to use one of Orbit30’s cracks until it’s up for sale, in which case you should only install the most affordable version of Se7en for your budget -or just wait for your crack to fail and find the next working one.  Doesn’t bother me.  Just find a 32-bit (x86) image of Build 7600 and run any number of programs that will load it onto a flash drive and make it bootable for you.  I used MagicIso – mount the Se7en iso and plug in your 4gb+ thumbdrive (some don’t boot right so use a sandisk cruiser or known compatible drive to be sure), then you just use the make bootable feature built in and dump the se7en image onto the drive.  Boot, configure, install, done.

Here’s a link to the torrent I used to download the proper build of Se7en:

http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/2041552/7080272/

There are plenty other builds that will work just fine, but I like to have confirmed torrents and I can assure you that you’re not missing anything if you get this – he included a good working orbit30 activator for if M$ turned your beta key off and some other simple stuff you don’t need.

Hit me up for a demonoid invite if you need it.

It migrated all my files (including the installers for my programs) and once I finished reinstalling my software and copying my personal files over to the new directories (it creates a complete backup of your windows installation called windows.old) I was good to go.  I also prefer a minimalist OS that, although is feature-full, stays out of my way when it’s business time – which is why I praise Micro$oft for retaining the classic windows theme.

The only real catastrophic change from moving to Se7en from XP, assuming you’ve never touched Vista, is the use of administrative privlidges to run certain processes and the UAC service.  All this means is that certain software will require you to authorize it to run if it’s doing anything that effects system settings.  Minor inconvenience and you can either leave it at the default ‘black out screen and everything I’m doing’ mode, or what I use, the ‘inconvenient pop-up’ mode – or just turn the bastard off…

As far as benefits go, my favorite is the new taskbar.  You can not only re-arrange blocks in the taskbar, but you can ‘pin’ programs to it that stick in that location and minimize to an icon when closed – this replaces the space-eating ‘quick launch’ bar and is exceptionally well done.

As far as performance on my D150 goes, it’s probably a bit slower (due to all the extra stuff I run over xp).  Of course, I’m comparing it to a fresh install of XP, which as everyone knows, if you don’t maintain the registry and clean shit off of it all the time, it bogs down exceptionally.

I’ve been using Se7en on several machines before this one, and I can honestly say that if Win7 has the same problem as XP did of getting ‘dirty’ and needing a cleanup, it’s barely noticible and stays the way it’s at.  It’s consistent.  I still run Auslogics BoostSpeed now and then to keep things at max performance, but I can run Firefox 3 with about 7-10 tabs open, Thunderbird 3beta and an Adobe program like Photoshop or Dreamweaver and while idling still have about half my memory and 3/5 my processor to spare.  I should note that I’ve got 2gb of ram (mandatory for everyone – you’re stupid if you only use 1gb and have room to upgrade – it’s so damn cheap these days – you obviously have no idea what we went through back in the days to get just a second 128mb stick of ram; it was like you had to slay a damn dragon and take out a second mortgage to get one… blah blah </rant>) and I also run GMABooster (it’s free but if you donate anything, like $5, then he gives you an activation key that keeps it from turning itself off and mandating that you re-download it every week).

I’m about out of words for this right now, comment back if I need to elaborate on something.  Hope this helps somebody make a decision about Se7en, even if it’s just an opinion (not that I was trying to be persuading).