New Portable Computer
My wife and I decided to reward ourselves early this holiday season. So two days ago, we got a new portable computer. She’s working on her thesis and we’ve decided that we needed another computer. I would have gotten a new desktop instead but a portable seems to be more practical. I rarely get to travel these days because I would have to leave my work behind on the desktop PC.
We got a [Neo Q-Note Empriva 540NXi][540nxi]. It’s based on the Centrino Duo and it came with a few extras that I didn’t expect from a portable in its price range. Mine came with the following:
- 512MB RAM
- Built-in webcam
- Built-in mic and speakers
- Built-in mini IEEE 1394 port
- 3 USB 2.0 ports
- Built-in modem with RJ-11 jack
- Built-in Ethernet card supporting 10Mbps / 100Mbps / 1000Mbps
- Built-in Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG WLAN Module
- Bluetooth 2.0 support
- ExpressCard/34/54 Slot
- 4-in-1 Card Reader, (MS/MS PRO/SD/MMC)
- DVD-RW/CD-RW Drive
The software bundle includes Windows XP Landlubber Edition and the driver software for all the goodies. I don’t know yet if I can get a refund for Windows since I already have the Jack Sparrow Edition plus I was able to install Ubuntu Edgy Eft with minimum fuss.
Overall, this is one of those few things that I have no regrets spending money on. It feels solid enough and all the extras that came with it make it worth the price. I was unable to register my product serial number on their online registration form. I filled in all the required fields and submitted the form. A message then appeared confirming the success of the operation and that an email will be sent to my email address. The email was supposed to be where my password would be given. I never received such an email up until now. I have already sent a support query using their online form. But since it’s the weekend, I have not received a reply yet.
Installing Ubuntu on the Q-Note Empriva 540NXi
There are a few slight hitches I encountered when I installed Ubuntu on this portable. First, there was a problem with the regular Ubuntu install disc. It hangs during installation in the step where the timezone was being setup. Searching the forums reveals that there are still some unresolved issues in Ubiquity. Among them were seemingly random hangs and crashes. I decided to download the alternative install disc which uses a text-mode installer. It may not be much to look at, but it worked perfectly and I got Ubuntu installed.
Another problem I had was that Xorg was having problems identifying the valid screen resolutions that the video card supports. The Empriva 540NXi comes with the Intel 945GM graphics chip. Though Xorg supports this chip out of the box, some hardware that comes with this chip may have an old or buggy video BIOS. I had two options:
- Flash the Video BIOS – this will probably void my warranty
- Look high and low for a workaround.
I took it to myself to go with option 1 as a last resort. I still had a one year warranty on the thing and I did not want to lose it at this critical point. So off to the forums for a little digging. It turns out that there is a software-based solution to the buggy video BIOS. There is a package called 855resolution but a quick search in the default repositories revealed nothing. So I enabled the “Universe” and “Multiverse” repositories and ran the search again. 855resolution as it turns out is now a virtual package that depends on 915resolution. This package contains a daemon that must be started on boot. I installed the package and did a reboot and there it was in all its 1280×768 goodness.
Another issue I ran into was the Wi-fi thing. I have absolutely no experience when it comes to these things so it was the first time for me to setup Wi-fi on Linux. After a bit of searching, everything seems to point to the fact that 3945ABG card on this thing should work out of the box. But I could not find the interface for the Wi-fi card in the ifconfig -a output. A bit more digging reveals that the kernel modules for the card are not included by the default kernel package. So I had to install the restricted set of kernel modules:
$ sudo aptitude install linux-restricted-modules-generic
I thought that it would do the trick. But still ifconfig -a does not report the interface. I had read from one of the postings somewhere that one guy had to toggle the Wi-fi power on startup and toggle it back on after logging in. On this model, Fn+F11 toggles the Wi-fi power. I rebooted, toggled Wi-fi power off and once logged in toggled it back on and there it was. However, I don’t have a Wi-fi router so I can’t try it out. Maybe one of these days when I go to a Starbucks Coffee shop. At least now I know that the Wi-fi drivers are being loaded and the network device is detected by ifconfig -a.
I was on a roll, so I decided to try to get the 4-in-1 card reader to work. lspci reports that the card reader is a Texas Instruments card reader. Judging from the dmesg output, it seems that the kernel module for this device was already loaded so I took one of my RS-MMC cards and tried it out. The log messages confirm that the card reader was working, it could sense that a media card was inserted and removed. However, they were not being mounted automatically. I did a little searching and managed to find the answer:
$ sudo modprobe tifm_sd
This command loads an additional driver for the SD card reader that allows the kernel to detect and report card insertion properly. Inserting the RS-MMC card into the slot automatically launches a Nautilus window for browsing the contents of the card. Now all that’s left is to have the tifm_sd module load on boot. So I added the following line to /etc/modules
tifm_sd
Now the only thing that I have to figure out how to get to work is the webcam. On Linux, webcam support seems to be a mess right now. Since I have no use for it at this point, I will leave it unconfigured for now.
[540nxi]: http://65.99.222.146/products.do?action=singleProduct&productid=27 “Product page for Neo Q-Note Empriva 540NXi”