• AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core Mobile ZM84, 2.3GHz
• 4GB of RAM, I haven’t checked the brand but it seems fast
• 320GB of hard drive space on a Western Digital drive
• ATI M92 (Mobility Radeon 4500 series, 4530), seems to have 512MB of RAM
• eSATA, USB and FireWire
• ExpressCard
• XD/MMC/SD slot
• HDMI and VGA
• QuickDock (v3 I think)

HP Blurb

The biggest problem so far has been the graphics card, so far I’ve been unable to get it working with fglrx. I have the standard X drivers working and they give me full screen output but that too was a bit of a fight. However under Vista the card seems incredibly powerful for a laptop and it has no problems playing DVDs using the standard X drivers under Linux. However the iPlayer will not play without major chopping. Hulu plays but only at standard resolution and without full screen.

The sound works perfectly using the snd_hda_intel module and one small adjustment to its config. In fact I’m quite impressed with the volume and power the speakers can create. The file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf now contains:

options snd-hda-intel model=hp-hdx

eSATA, USB and FireWire all appear to work correctly. All I’ve noticed is that the eSATA port’s USB functionality seems to be a little low power, I can use everything except for hard drives which act as if I’d plugged them into a USB 1.1 port.

Strangely I can’t get the XD/SD etc slot to work, this is pretty normal though so I’m not too bothered. It does seem to help if I disable the power saving for them and FireWire in the BIOS. No idea why, maybe someone else will have more information on this.

The laptop can take two hard drives and I’ve found a second miniPCIe slot. Unfortunately the second hard drive needs a ‘kit’ to be installed, I’ll blog more about this when I get a chance to install one. However, with hard drives the size they are these days this makes for at least 1TB of space without too much heat overload.

I haven’t yet worked out the obligiroy IrDA, it seems it’s somehow hooked through the BIOS to allow the included remote to function (including the luxury of a power button). I haven’t had any other problems with it yet, the ExpressCard slot seems to work perfectly as do the other various ports.

Over all this is an excellent laptop with a lot of power, although it’s large enough to watch DVDs on it is also small enough and light enough to be portable.

Kind regards, Robert.

Just a quick blog to say that I’ve added a few things to Chute Stick. I’ll thin down the number of packages as soon as possible, but we’re still well within the 1GB memory stick so I can spend time doing that later.

I’ve added all versions of Skype. Skype provides a reasonably secure method of getting a message to someone; it also permeates firewalls better than most viruses. I added 7zip as it seems to be a good free alternative to WinZip, the 7zip compression itself is remarkable. In some of my experiments with it I’ve experienced almost 50% smaller files than standard zip (using `zip -9`). Because of this excellent compression I’ve included a copy of p7zip (the *nix port). CamStudio may seem like a strange choice, but it does offer a way for you to quickly record a video of how to do something, this could be essential if you’re unable to tutor someone face to face but need them to (for example) administer a box for you. I’ve debated if a Linux desktop recorder is needed, but if you have ssh you can probably do most administration through that.

Well, that’s all so far, I’m snowed under with work at the moment so I was just popping this through. Most of the additions have been related to things I’ve needed for work over the last few days. I will be blogging about some other things (mostly work related) soon, when I escape anyway!

Kind regards, Robert.

http://www.robertsmall.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Chute_Stick#The_Software

 http://www.robertsmall.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Chute_Stick#The_Software

I will provide more information on each item in the near future including versions and links. I expect a few of you are thinking of cloning my setup until I release a script.

Kind regards, Robert

http://www.robertsmall.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Chute_Stick

If you’re in a situation where you only have one memory stick, what’d you want on it? If baggage handling lose all your bags and you just have the encrypted hard drive in your jacket pocket and the memory stick round your neck, what do you want on the stick?

You’re stranded on an island (or somewhere with a really poor internet connection) and you want to acquisition a computer for your own uses, what do you want on your stick? Someone else on the island wants you to fix their computer, what do you want on the stick?

In general, what do you want on a memory stick when you don’t trust or want to use your internet connection? This is what the Chute Stick project is meant to provide.

Although there are many different situations where this may be of use and some of them wont require most of the software provided this is meant to be an ‘in any event evacuation plan’. I know a lot of you have already contacted me about this and so there probably wont be that many comment; however, there are several things which I’d love to be posted here:

• Situations where you might need a rescue stick.
• Software suggestions/requests.
• Things to stay away from.
• Suggestions for replacement software, I know I may not have picked the right stuff all the time.
• Suggestions about ways of packaging or unpacking software.
• Ways to make things more accessible to more people.

Of course you could just tell me I’m doing something useful!

Which brings me to another point, what am I doing? Well I don’t intend to distribute too much software, I’d prefer to write a script which downloads and updates software to a memory stick for you. Much of the software I’m looking at is either not free/libre and so I don’t expect to be able to do more than provide a script to get the end user to download and use the software correctly. If anyone is familiar with the gentoo ebuild context they’ll understand more of what I mean, my script wouldn’t require pre-built packages but do it’s own work.

The wiki page is: http://www.robertsmall.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Chute_Stick

Kind regards, Robert.