Just a quick post from the train using my newly configured Sony Vaio P (the tiny Sony netbook) running Windows 7.
Peter bought this earlier in the year but didn’t get on with it because it was just too slow to do anything useful on. He’s now upgraded to a macbook air (it’s a hard at the top isn’t it!) so I thought I’d have a play around with this.
The initial idea was to stick Ubuntu on it as a few others have done and after some messing about with USB keys (this thing’s got no optical drive) we configured a PXE boot server and got it to boot from the network and install Ubuntu – result!
Well, more of a no score draw really… Initially the display doesn’t run at the almost impossible to see 1600 x 768 so you have to do some play\ing around as detailed by Richard Walker on his blog. Once that’s all up and running it’s ok but the display is painfully slow and video’s are just unwatchable. Not so much of a problem in itself but combined with the fact that suspend/resume and the HSPDA/GPRS modem don’t play ball meant that Ubuntu was for the bin.
I was tempted to try OS X but apart from the fact it’s not legal, I suspect lots of pain and a result which is no better than Ubuntu (and probably worse).
So, back to Windows it was. A word of warning here: Do not suspend the machine halfway through the ‘recovery’ process! Obvious really, but after waiting 2 hours for it to complete I wanted to go home! The result was a machine that booted into Vista, displayed a message that system configuration couldn’t complete and then restarted. Booting to safe mode didn’t solve the problem either.
Anyway, to cut a long story shorter, some more playing around with PXE and the WAIK resulted in a network boot server that wouldn’t quite install Windows and a 4GB USB key that wouldn’t format anymore (sorry Peter). Trying to make a bootable USB key with the Win 7 ISO should be easy but for some reason it just wasn’t.
Then on Wednesday there appeared on my desk something that looked like it had been made in a shed 10 years ago from components bought in Maplin. In actual fact it was an external USB optical drive, dusted off from the ‘archive’ of our CTO. 2 minutes later and I’m installing Windows 7 and we’re cooking with gas.
Well almost. You have to do a fair amount of hacking around to get everything to work as detailed in this great windows 7 install guide and I had to download a different WAN card driver from option but so far so good. I’ve got a vodafone SIM in the slot and it all ‘just works’.
It’s not rocket fast but it’s still a pretty impressive device, I’m now on the tube and literally put it in my pocket for the walk between the mainline and the underground, it’s that small. If only Apple would make something similar my life would be complete!
Next stop, install some real software, configure my Macbook for VNC so I can leave it in the office and remote into it from this, oh and swap the hard drive for an SSD – that should speed things up a bit.
