Netbook | When Software Attacks!

Vista on Dell Mini 9: Using junctions to move files off the SSD

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).

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, October 17, 2008

Vista on the Dell Mini 9: Installing applications on an SD card

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.

So, Richard wandered in this morning and handed me a 4Gb SD card to experiment with. The question: Can we use the SD card and install app onto it?

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, October 17, 2008

Getting Vista on the Dell Mini 9

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.

I have not spent any time tweaking or prodding yet. I used install media with SP1 included and obliterated the partition on the SSD, then installed the drivers from Dell where necessary, and a driver for the battery hardware that Vista itself suggested rather than the Dell solution.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Vista on the Dell Mini 9: Redux

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.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 14, 2008

First thoughts on the Acer Aspire One

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…

To be fair, I have been looking at them closely, and Tesco are by far the cheapest place to get one. I picked up the 1Gb RAM, 120Gb HDD Linux model for about two hundred and fifty nicker, which I thought was pretty reasonable.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 7, 2008

When Software Attacks!

Vista on Dell Mini 9: Using junctions to move files off the SSD

Vista on the Dell Mini 9: Installing applications on an SD card

Getting Vista on the Dell Mini 9

Vista on the Dell Mini 9: Redux

First thoughts on the Acer Aspire One

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