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  1. #1 Roadworthy Laptops 
    Senior C-Moto Guru euphonius's Avatar
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    Jape, ChinaV,

    Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. Maybe we should move this to off-topic, but this topic of how to upfit a netbook is definitely appropriate for this forum. Why? Given the risks of weather, trauma, theft, spilled noodles, puke flying from buses, etc, I've wanted to develop a cheap "road laptop" that I could use for 1) email, 2) skype, 3) web browsing and 4) picture and video editing on the fly. I'd prefer not to carry my Macbook, as that is my main working machine and it would be catastrophic to me if it got puked on or stolen or crumpled.

    So can we create a new thread called Roadworthy Laptops?

    The Samsung was a gift from a Chinese company at their share-listing party, and it's loaded with WinXP in Chinese. Gag me with a hard disk. For an OSX user, if there is nothing uglier and recoil-inducing than WinXP, it's WinXP in Chinese. (I have XP loaded on my Mac in the Bootcamp partition, but I don't think I've ever fired it up.)

    Conventional thinking would be to install WinXP in English over the Chinese version, and suffer with XP. Not for me, thanks. I want nothing to do with Windows ever again, even though, as Jape has noted, it's apparently finally gotten to be a tolerably good operating system. A year ago, when I got this little netbook, I was attracted to Moblin as it had a reputation for support (which seemed to have had an easy interface and some commercial backing), but now I read it's been superceded by something called MeeGo, whatever that is. There must be 100 choices of distro out there, which is 99 too many for me. I'm not that dedicated to this project. I'm not ruling out some Linux flavor, but it seems there's still a lot of churn and partisanship out there. I'm not a technie, and I want an easy path.

    Now OSX -- that's an interesting idea and one that had not occurred to me. So I'll perhaps spend an hour or two this afternoon at least reading up on the idea, starting with that link you forwarded, and see if I can find anyone who's done it on the N128.

    Thanks!
    jkp
    Shanghai
    2010 JH600 "Merkin Muffley" (in Shanghai)
    2000 KLR650 "Feezer Ablanalp" (in California)
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  2. #2 Re: battery tenders & chargers 
    Senior C-Moto Guru euphonius's Avatar
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    OK, I am going to give it a try with that protocol that ChinaV forwarded, based on the close similarity of the N120 to my N128 as indicated by this side-by-side comparison.

    cheers
    jkp
    Shanghai
    2010 JH600 "Merkin Muffley" (in Shanghai)
    2000 KLR650 "Feezer Ablanalp" (in California)
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  3. #3 Re: battery tenders & chargers 
    Life Is Good! ChinaV's Avatar
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    I moved your posts into this new thread, good luck with the Hackintosh, I think the N120 and N128 are pretty close so it should work.

    The one catch that people seem to get hung up on with netbooks is the photo/video editing. This is where these devices fall flat. They're getting more powerful, but the Atom processor and video cards most manufacturers use just don't have the horsepower necessary to perform these tasks.

    Cheers!
    ChinaV
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  4. #4 Re: battery tenders & chargers 
    grumpy old sod jape's Avatar
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    der!

    so you end up with a 'hackintosh' that Apple deliberately scuppered past 10.5 as they of course knew they were going to have the Ipad and other delights coming out and wanted to kill stone dead any Apple netbook types. Well heck, the best way to deal with the OS wars I suppose is to just use the one that does it for you and not get too proprietary so if it works, fly it mate. Have fun!
    Kinlon R/T KBR JL200GY-2
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  5. #5 Re: battery tenders & chargers 
    Senior C-Moto Guru euphonius's Avatar
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    Jape, appreciate your sentiments very much, and loathe the way Apple manipulates its customers. But I only have so much gray matter for tech stuff, and don't at this stage in life want to stuff myself full of another disparate system, having at long last -- as you yourself have done -- purged my fading bioROM of Windows.

    I just don't want to have to take my shiny Mac on the road, but want to be able to stay in touch and upload pix so I don't find myself in the situation I'm in now -- having multiple ride reports stacking up in the to-do pile!

    cheers
    jkp
    Shanghai
    2010 JH600 "Merkin Muffley" (in Shanghai)
    2000 KLR650 "Feezer Ablanalp" (in California)
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  6. #6 Re: battery tenders & chargers 
    grumpy old sod jape's Avatar
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    Yeah, I recognise all that mate, hence the last sentence;, in the end if it does what you want then it is worth the money or time and effort.

    When CC gets back, we might ask to get a techie section for phones/GPS/computers/cameras and assorted accessories, maybe service providers, we all use them and it is good to get the 'ride reports' on these devices and their accessories too. They have direct or indirect relevance to motorcycling and travelling!
    Kinlon R/T KBR JL200GY-2
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  7. #7 Re: Roadworthy Laptops 
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    Any laptop other than genuine Mac runs OSX must have Steve Jobs' blessing. If you could manage all the components work properly (Screen brightness adjustable? Sound card can make noise? Ethernet working? Wifi receve signls? Video plays? Screen resolution display correctly? Core video working?........), the hackingtosh would be my first choice too. Or less pain for fine-turning everything after OS installation, Ubuntu Linux, maybe?
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  8. #8 Re: Roadworthy Laptops 
    Senior C-Moto Guru euphonius's Avatar
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    Dear TD,

    I'm sure the hackintoshes do not have Steve Jobs' blessing, but there's quite a big subculture out there of people porting OSX onto their netbooks, and most of the operability issues that you've raised seem to have been resolved. As Jape noted, it seems your best bet is with the Leopard build (10.5) rather than Snow Leopard (10.6), which is pretty much OK for me too. Then again, I think I've seen reports of 10.6 hackintoshes, so we'll see. I'd be happy with an ordinary leopard.

    I'm downloading the installation torrent as I type, and I'll let you know how it goes.

    cheers
    jkp
    Shanghai
    2010 JH600 "Merkin Muffley" (in Shanghai)
    2000 KLR650 "Feezer Ablanalp" (in California)
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  9. #9 Re: Roadworthy Laptops 
    Life Is Good! ChinaV's Avatar
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    Been running this Hackintosh since last year, both my home and work machines are desktops pieced together with off the shelf PC components hooked to Dell monitors.



    But when it comes to portables, nothing compares to the price and performance of Apple laptops. Netbooks are weak, and cheap PC's are just cheap PC's. Apple may not have a $500 notebook, but compare a top of the line Dell with a top of the line Apple, and you get more computer for less money from Apple every time.



    If you want the best possible piece of kit for traveling on a Moto, it's the Apple MacBook Air. The 11" model with 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM and 128Mb flash drive completely anhilates anything in the netbook world. That's a real Core 2 Duo with an NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor, so you can edit videos, play photoshop, and use MS Office 2011, while running Ubuntu and Windows XP in the background with no problems. All of that comes packaged in a chunk of aluminum that makes other laptops feel like the cheap pieces of shit they are, and it still only weighs 335 grams (.74 pounds). It boots in 15 seconds, and the China Telecom USB dongle keeps me connected in almost every podunk town I've ever been through across the entire country. It's a lot of money, and I'm sure there will be plenty of other more economical options mentioned, but I've tried netbooks and MacBook Pro's on many trips, and nothing is as tough, powerful and compact as the 11" MacBook Air. It's the only current piece of Apple hardware I own, and the one thing they've made in the last couple of years that made me feel like an Apple fanboy again.

    Cheers!
    ChinaV
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  10. #10 Re: Roadworthy Laptops 
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    Quote Originally Posted by ChinaV View Post

    If you want the best possible piece of kit for traveling on a Moto, it's the Apple MacBook Air. The 11" model with 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM and 128Mb flash drive completely anhilates anything in the netbook world. That's a real Core 2 Duo with an NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor, so you can edit videos, play photoshop, and use MS Office 2011, while running Ubuntu and Windows XP in the background with no problems. All of that comes packaged in a chunk of aluminum that makes other laptops feel like the cheap pieces of shit they are, and it still only weighs 335 grams (.74 pounds). It boots in 15 seconds, and the China Telecom USB dongle keeps me connected in almost every podunk town I've ever been through across the entire country. It's a lot of money, and I'm sure there will be plenty of other more economical options mentioned, but I've tried netbooks and MacBook Pro's on many trips, and nothing is as tough, powerful and compact as the 11" MacBook Air. It's the only current piece of Apple hardware I own, and the one thing they've made in the last couple of years that made me feel like an Apple fanboy again.

    Cheers!
    ChinaV
    I think you mean 128GB flash drive. SSD's are worth it on a for a road warrior. No moving parts means longer battery life, less noise, less heat, also less disk space for same $$ Also safer in case you drop your laptop, especially if it's still on.
    Other bulletproof machines are the Thinkpad lineup from IBM. Best keyboards made. But I'm haven't checked thinkpad prices lately. Last I checked, it was more expensive to buy thinkpad's here than the US, eventhough the thinkpad lineup is now (6 years ago?) manufactured and sold by Lenovo, a Chinese company.
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