I’m still trying new things with the Mini 9. I now have an image file that I can restore to the Mini which has my base install after running sysprep. The problem I have is storage space – the SSD isn’t quite big enough.
Flush with my success earlier in getting apps installed on the SD card now mounted as ‘c:\SD Program Files’ I installed a few things. I then hit a snag.
When you install apps using an MSI, the installation files get cached by Windows Installer. Steadily, c:\windows\installer gets bigger and bigger, so whilst my apps were no longer taking up space, the install files were (and some of those are quite large).
I’ve been chipping away at this for a while now today, and I’ve learned a few things on the way:
When Vista says it suggests installing the battery drivers for the system, don’t. The zip file it suggested I install broke power management. Patch the system fully as an admin user before logging in as a restricted user. It will save you hours of time. Sysinternals Diskmon doesn’t work with Vista - you need to run it as admin, and that certainly isn’t an option for my restricted users. Vista when hibernating just shows a black screen. That’s not very helpful the first time you try it, on a silent machine with no disk activity lights at all. think Vista takes longer to hibernate and come back from hibernation than XP, although coming back from sleep is much quicker than it’s older sibling. Overall, I’m still happy. I have Vista, Office 2007 and Live Writer and 3.5Gb of disk space free. With no serious hacking the Dell runs at around 50% memory usage witrh a browser and live writer running. I can live with that. Battery life appears OK. It’s 10:30 and I’ve been using the Dell since 8pm, thrashing the disk (as much as there is one) and the wi-fi, and I’m at 38% battery. That puts me on track for about four hours or so and I can live with that.
Our second Mini 9 arrived in the office today. This one is for Andy and myself to use whilst out of the office. Richard has successfully upgraded his to XP Professional, so we had to try to push the bar out a little further – we’re running Vista Business.
You can’t say that things never change. I nipped out to Tesco last night for a few bits of shopping – you know, some beer, spices for cooking, etc – and came back with an Acer Aspire One. As you do…
Colour me impressed. I managed well over four hours’ battery life today and found the Mini 9 a joy to use. I have encountered a snag, however, and it wasn’t one that I expected.
I’m down in London tomorrow, and rather than lug my laptop on the train I’ve borrowed Richard’s shiny new Mini 9.
Overall, I’m quite impressed with it. I’m still not sure about the keyboard, even after a couple of hours typing away – the keys are small and some of them are smaller still, which makes typing an interesting experience. However, I’m sure I would get used to it with time. The thing is, a netbook is not aimed at being your everyday machine, so does a quirky keyboard become a barrier to use if that use is intermittent?
You wait around for ages and then two come along, all at once! No sooner have I downloaded IE8 beta 2 than Google announce Chrome!
I’ve been using IE8 for a few days and I’m quite impressed. I’ve just downloaded Chrome and I have to say, it’s a darn good browser. The feature I most wanted from any tab-based browser and one I’ve mentioned before in the context of IE is present in Chrome - tabs you can drag between windows.
In my last post about the Diamond I said I would let you know what the battery life is. I therefore carefully refrained from giving it any charge over the weekend, even when connected to my PC.
I need to update something like 300 web.config files today, with the same change in each. I turned to my old friend Google for his recommendations and up popped a magnificent free tool from Nodesoft.
You may have noticed that I have disabled comments on my old posts. You may also have noticed that I have now disabled the Contact Me function on my blog.
Received in an email today from the BCS:
I am delighted to inform you that your application for Chartered IT Professional (CITP) status has been successful.
You know, the thing about RSS is that it’s a bit like the advent of the motor car - you miss things. Just as driving around means you don’t get to pass the time of day with folk, or discover that tiny little deli you’d never notice from the road, RSS dehumanises the web.
Before I joined Black Marble I had a succession of Sony Ericsson smartphones - the P800, P900 and finally a P910i. They were great - the size was good, the UI was good, the handwriting recognition was excellent (with a grafitti-style interface that meant I could really get a good turn of speed) and I could work most functions one handed with the fabulous Jog Dial. Please note that the jog dial was sadly emasculated with phones after the P910i when Sony Ericsson foolishly reduced it’s degrees of freedom to simply rolling back and forth and clicking.
You know, one of these days I’ll find the time to properly redesign this blog. In the meantime, the excellent Kid Congo theme from the latest version of Community Server will suffice, albeit with the alteration of colours to match our corporate blue.
I’ve watched the debate with interest but not posted anything until now. The news of Internet Explorer 8 keeping it’s new rendering engine to itself unless you tell it otherwise caused a strong outpouring of opinion around the web.
One of the last projects I was involved in before I left the University of Bradford to join Black Marble was a new design for the external web site of the institution. I’d pretty much finished the construction of the page layouts and styles before I left, but it’s only now that the site is about to go live. I’ve threatened a few people with a series of posts on how the site is constructed and although I’m not there any more it seems topical.
