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Brock Samson (my new laptop!)
(dateline 2006.08.16 -- I bought a laptop)
Medion MD95924 (MIM2220) reduced from £800 down to £400 from Woolworths!
Named after the cartoon hero Brock Samson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_Samson) from the Venture Brothers series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venture_Bros.) since it seems to be the burliest and most impressive machine I've owned in a long time!
Here's the blurb from the woolworths site (the information has since been removed)...
http://www.woolworths.co.uk/ww_p2/product/index.jhtml?pid=50701533
Description
This stylish multimedia Notebook has a unique personalization feature that allows you to create your own individual notebook cover on the internet in just a few easy to follow steps. The dual layer DVD-writer and 15.4" TFT colour monitor offers a comprehensive multimedia suite whilst the impressive 40GB hard disk provides an enviable amount of storage space.
Contents
* Microsoft media centre 2005 edition
* Intel Centrino mobile technology
* 15.4" TFT EXGA colour display monitor
* 16:10 for optimised DVD movie playback
* Dual layer DVD-Writer/-Rewriter (DVD+RW/+R-DL/RAM + CD-RW and DVD-ROM)
* Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
* 40 GB hard disk
* 256 MB DDR II RAM memory
* 16 bit soundchip & 2 integrated speakers
* Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 - Wireless LAN 802.11g/b with up to 54 Mbit/s
* 10/100 Mbit Fast-Ethernet and 56K V.90 modem
* 3 x USB 2.0
* Main powers supply
* Li-lon battery
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Here's Medion's website - http://www.medion.co.uk/ - it's the brand you find at Aldi, LIDL, etc. I've had some good computer and electronics components from this manufacturer in the past and I must say I've always found it to be good value for money.
So, my first impressions of the Medion MD95924 (MIM2220) and Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition (XPMCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Media_Center_Edition)
To date (Aug '06) I've managed to avoid having to play with XP, but now I'm a bona-fide Windows XP user! :) I can now slag off XP with authority rather than as a bitter Linux user! I will be keeping XP on there and dual booting to Debian as soon as I've decided on the install strategy.
I opened the box and unwrapped the laptop - nicely packaged - read manual to make sure all the parts were included and that I wasn't doing
anything stupid whilst inserting battery and connecting power supply, etc., and powered on for the first time...
It quickly booted straight into the XP first time setup wizard thing. I've seen this before with other OEM machines -- quite straightforward.
I tried to read the entire EULA (in fact there were two EULAs) but it was a
drag and I was impatient to get playing with it.
Regional settings were all already defaulted to UK.
The automatic search for a local network quite correctly fails to find one: I purposefully haven't yet connected to a network as I'm interested in what
XP and the bundled software will attempt to do with it!
I set the Administrator password to something suitably cryptic and set the computer name to BROCK! I'm given the option here to set a Windows domain - I understand that this stage is the only opportunity
to put XPMCE 2005 into a domain without some later hacks and I can't really be bothered to set up something with Samba so I leave it for now.
Interesting yet annoying music is playing during this wizard but I couldn't adjust the volume or silence it - no volume controls on the case, only laptop function keys but they're not responsive at this stage for some reason. When the
wizard completed it promptly rebooted (ah, the Windows world begins again! Reboot, Reboot, Reboot!).
Started writing this log!
Firstly I find I'm liking this keyboard - a nice big return key is a nice feature absent from other laptops I've had to work on in the past.
I'll have to get a mouse connected - i'm not enjoying the touchpad and I miss the scrollywheel.
First annoyance: the pre-installed eTrust anti-virus software (90 day trial) pops up asking me for contact details - I put in an email address to help identify any spam they send me.
At this stage I haven't yet connected to a network and haven't done any Windows XP activation, but I fully intend to do the whole Genuine Advantage thing as I want to register some proof with Microsoft that I paid for the license that I use - I don't want the BSA lawyers breaking down my door!
Quick test of the multimedia capabilities provided by the Media Center application
* inserted a DVD movie - it played
* inserted Audio CD - it played
* inserted cd of mp3s - it played
* tired a few movie file formats - Div-X, Xvid, MPEG, ASF, etc. - all fine
I noticed that the Div-X codec is pre-installed.
The Media Center proves a bit sluggish in response when playing some of the movies provided as examples. I also start to get annoyed with the unwanted buttons such as "Buy Music" which I can't seem to turn off. There's no options to change the GUI colours or fonts - a bit disappointed with that. The menu navigation is smoothly animated and swish but a little nonintuitive at times. Sometimes it is not clear whether a click or a hover is required to "enter" the next sub-area and the separate parts, e.g. movies vs music, seem to have been designed completely independently - not very consistent in look and feel.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Run the system info thingy and list the specs...
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name BROCK
System Manufacturer Notebook
System Model MIM2220
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 13 Stepping 8 GenuineIntel ~1695 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Insyde Software Corporation M2.00, 19/05/2006
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name BROCK\Mick
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 256.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 53.38 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 604.21 MB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
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Java 5 JRE is pre-installed - nice touch!
Software to install on XP partition
* better antivirus and perhaps zonealarm
* Apache 2
* latest Sun 1.4 JDK
* eclipse
* Ant, tomcat, etc.
* mysql
* virtualdub
* ActiveState Perl 5.8
* winamp? I wonder what that looks like nowadays!
* Scite
* NetBeans
* winmerge
* wingimp
* openoffice
* firefox
* gaim
------------------------------------------------------
Need a nice little wireless access point now!
Maybe wrt54g: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G £40 from ebuyer -
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/45025
Hey, hey! Maplin have the Linksys Wireless-G on offer. £40 with a pcmcia card thrown in! -
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=47808
Here's the Linksys page (horrible URL!) - http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US...
Needs WPA and decent PSK - http://www.kurtm.net/wpa-pskgen/
Tested the laptop in a number of other wireless networks using both WEP and WPA - works great on Kubuntu using knetworkmanager, kwifimanager, etc. Played a bit with kismet and aircrack to crack weak WEP keys - lots of fun!
Think I'll buy a WRT54GL (ebuyer quickfind code: 103185) http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/103185 then I can boost the signal strength if necessary. Maybe I'll be able to put my Devil Linux firewall machine to rest: it's the first PC I bought (cost £1000!!!) - a poor little Pentium 60 that has been running Devil Linux constantly for the past 5 years and protecting my internal networks from thousands of unwanted access attempts. The WRT54GL should be sophisticated enough to do the sort of port redirection I rely on and if not then I can resort back to iptables.
--------------------------------------------------------
Hmm, now I need a TV capture card!
* pcmcia, USB 2.0, firewire
* small
* ext antenna socket reqd for analogue - poor digital terrestrial signal at my house and we have NTL anyhow
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?product_uid=94486
-------------------------------------
Dapper and XP dual boot
Hey now! I'm editing this from brock under Dapper - just finished the install using the alternative install CD - the graphical one would hang thrashing the CD.
Had a few scares when the install appeared to hang with no activity. Turns out that the screen locked up completely - all black with a couple of white blocks on there - on the second go at install following a failed recovery, I figured it was just video and tried to get through the remainder of the install without any screen! thankfully it was late on in the installer and I just had to hit return a few times - the CD popped out and it rebooted fine. X came up OK, Ubuntu brown! booted back into XP which did a chkdisk due to the drive being repartitioned and it rebooted back into Dapper which is where I am now. Didn't have chance to see if XP still works correctly and Dapper is in the middle of a 191Mb update! I guess I'll play with it tomorrow!
BTW: XP still works!
--------------------------
Looking to set up aiglx, etc once I have the xorg driver running smoothly.
Graphics chipset - http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/810/index.htm
More RAM?
Kingston 1024mb 533mhz Ddr2 Sodimm - Non Ecc Pc2-4200
(http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/83934) £58.18 inc VAT - oh no! price increase!
Other reviews
http://www.mobilewhack.com/reviews/medion_mim2220_notebook_with_customiz...
http://www.whatlaptop.co.uk/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=192523
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OK, had this fella for a while now and it's still excellent - the
built-in wireless works great and the dvd-writer is flawless. I'm now running Kubuntu Edgy and dual-booting to Windows-XP Pro MCE occasionally to use some DVD ripping apps. I have the ext2 ifs installed under Windows so I can mount the Linux ext3 partitions. Works perfectly!
--------------------------
30th Jan 2007 - Time for an update.
Beryl: I've now had Beryl running for a couple of weeks and it's great even with 256MB RAM. I'll be getting another 1GB stick soon so I should be able to run it all the time without too much swapping.
According to http://tuxmobil.org/centrino.html we have a Pentium-M Third Generation: Sonoma CPU. Here's the CPU info...
mick@brock:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz
stepping : 8
cpu MHz : 1700.000
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr
pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2
ss tm pbe nx up est tm2
bogomips : 3396.82
I'm using 915resolution (http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/) in a debian package to get native resolution on the display...
mick@brock:~$ sudo 915resolution -l
Intel 800/900 Series VBIOS Hack : version 0.5.2
Chipset: 915GM
BIOS: TYPE 1
Mode Table Offset: $C0000 + $269
Mode Table Entries: 36
Mode 30 : 640x480, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 32 : 800x600, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 34 : 1024x768, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 38 : 1280x1024, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 3a : 1600x1200, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 3c : 1280x800, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 41 : 640x480, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 43 : 800x600, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 45 : 1024x768, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 49 : 1280x1024, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 4b : 1600x1200, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 4d : 1280x800, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 50 : 640x480, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 52 : 800x600, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 54 : 1024x768, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 58 : 1280x1024, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 5a : 1600x1200, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 5c : 1280x800, 32 bits/pixel
I now need to get the external VGA working to run presentations on the projector at 1024x768.
I have modelines for 1024x768 and 1280x800 but only 1280x800 works for som reason.
mick@brock:~$ xvidtune -show
"1280x800" 83.46 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 828
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Ordered a stick of ram to stop the swap!
Looking at external HDDs into which I can pour my media
* http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/116144
-----------------------------------
Wednesday 25 Jul 2007
Time passes and I realise I hadn't moved this page over from the old wiki into the new content management system. So here it is.
I want to summarise this in a sidebar div of some sort - say things like
* total cost and specs
* 1Gb added ram
* dual boot and why
* TV-out and dual screen under GNU/Linux + xorg
* hibernate and sleep - sound stops working
* beryl beauty
* add-ons: USB light, mouse, etc.
* Kubuntu feisty features
* DVD backup on Windows - success rates etc.