Minor Upgrade

I have blogged before about my hunk o junk HP Omnibook 4150b laptop. While it will win no beauty contests, it does work and it doubles as a very good lap heater in cold weather. Well last week when my old TL retired, he was cleaning out his office and I noticed a laptop in the mix. I ask him about it and he told me that it was destined for the recycle pile since it was outdated and was not supported any longer. I looked at it and it was an HP Omnibook 900b (our customer has been through several stages of hardware...HP, Gateway, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Dell) in near mint condition. The only thing I could see "broken" was one of the doors on the PCM/CIA card slot was missing (and later on I noticed on of the rollers in the DVD-ROM was broken...causing it to stick sometimes). It did not have a NIC, but it did have all the other accessories. I asked him if I could have it and after we talked it over with my boss (the HD had been thoroughly wiped) he said I could have it. Sweet.

Now some of the specs on the 900b are the same as the 4150 (650 mhz speed step processor being the most important). The 900b however is a "travelers" laptop...thinner and lighter (not to mention a .5 inch smaller screen) than the 4150b. Also the CD/DVD-ROM and the floppy drive are external (and are the same as the ones for the 4150b), connecting via SCSI port and it has 64 meg of RAM built in where the 4150b does not. However it only has one RAM slot and since I have two 256 meg sticks of laptop RAM at home, I can only have a total of 320 megs. Not great, but more than the 4150b.

I have been putting the 900b through the paces for the past week. Like the 4150, it has Simply MEPIS Linux on it and I easily connected it via wireless "b" to my home network. Oddly enough, network manager, which seemed to choke on the 4150b (with the same NIC and wireless card) seems to work on the 900b. I can plug and unplug either NIC and plug in the other with no ill effects.

The 900b, just like the 4150, has two batteries. The 4150b can run two batteries (running about two hours on wireless) if you remove the CD/DVD-ROM/Floppy, but since the 900b has no internal bays, it can run only one battery at a time. The batteries for the 4150b are in so-so shape. Running WiFi, one only lasts about 30 minutes while the other lasts about 1.5 hours or so. The batteries for the 900b last one hour for one and about two for the other...but only one at at time.

My old TL stated he never ran it on battery power and left the AC plugged int all the time. Since the batteries have not been used on a regular basis, they may very well give me 6+ months of use before they lose their usefulness. I have been trying to condition the batteries by alternating them and only charging them when they get below 50%.

Related to battery life, I noticed when I tried charging the battery the first time that the charging light on the 900b would only come on if a small amount of pressure was place on the left side wrist rest. Once the pressure was removed, the light would not flash any more. This worried me since a short could mean a fire hazard. I left it plugged in and when I came back to check on it, the battery light was on solid, not flashing...indicating a fulling charged battery. I fired it up and sure enough, it was charged. I tried the same thing with the other battery and the scenario was duplicated. I have not researched this much yet, but it appears that the charging circuit is functioning, although the external indicator fails to indicate it unless pressure is applied to the left wrist rest. No major worry for me...if that is all that is wrong with the 900b, then it will make a good replacement for my decrepit 4150b. I am sure it will make it back into the recycle bin...where it belongs.

HP Omnibook 900b

CPU - Intel Pentium III, 650 mhz Speedstep processor (500 mhz on battery, 650 mhz on AC)
HDD - 12 gig
RAM - base 64 megs, one DIMM slot (320 total RAM)
Video - ATI RAGE Mobility - AGP 2x (4 meg RAM)
Weight - 4.6 lbs
Display - 13.3 inches


More later.