Chris’s Domain

Today, my new X301 palm rest arrived, after a 2 week wait on a special order from IBM. The parts were shipped directly from the US and cost me $77. It was definitely a worthy upgrade as I am finally able to replace the poor Alps touchpad on my X301 with the new Synaptics multitouch touchpad. Two finger scrolling FTW!

HP’s EliteBook 8730w mobile workstation is the flagship in HP’s current professional business notebook range. As HP’s top-of-the-line business notebook, it offers a multitude of configuration options, from quad core CPUs to the highest end Nvidia and ATI mobile workstation graphics cards. It is a replacement for the previous generation 17” 8710w.

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Watching the WWDC segment on the new Macbook Pro line up this morning and then reading the comments on various web forums, I began to realise how shallow some people can be when it comes to owning a computer. Apple rebadged the 13″ unibody Macbook as a Macbook Pro, and suddenly, I see comments from people saying how they now deem this to be a worthwhile purpose, all because it is now a “Pro” device.

Come on! It’s only “Pro” because Apple says it so. How is the notebook different in any way from its predecessor, besides the addition of some features which is probably irrelevant to most buyers. Let’s break it down:

1) Firewire 800 - Unless you’re a digital content professional (which probably means the 13″ Macbook was never the right device to use in the first place due to the limited screen resolution, processing power and graphics chipset), you’d hardly use this. An eSata port may have been a better solution.

2) Built-in Battery - Now, this is probably worth an upgrade IF the single battery 6 hour light to moderate usage scenario suites you.

3) Better Screen - The original Macbook doesn’t have such a bad screen either. Now, if the resolution was higher at say 1440×900, then it will be completely worth it.

4) 8GB RAM - Too expensive and by the time I can get one, I’d be upgrading the notebook anyway.

5) Larger HDDs and SSDs - NewEgg.

6) SD Card Slot - Seriously? This is a cheap addition and completely unnecesary. A full-sized ExpressCard slot would offer better expandability.

7) Processor speed bump - Insignificant

Backlit keyboard - Already have it if you had the higher end model.

9) Pro nametag - Ah ha! The big ticket item, or so it seems. I can assure you there are people who refused to buy the first unibody model because it wasn’t “Pro”. It’s interesting how people actually react to branding. Must be the reason why GM was so successful.

Head on to eBay in the next few weeks and expect to see a whole bunch of people selling off their Macbooks in order to “upgrade” to a Pro’er version. I’d rather wait for the next Intel platform refresh which will actually bring in real performance gains worth waiting for.

Clearly Lenovo believes that its customers are immune to the current economic climate. With prices like these, how could Macs possibly be overpriced? Apple tax vs Lenovo tax, your pick.

It’s too beautiful to resist. and I have to replace my aging G3 iBook, so why not?

Next step, Vista on a Macbook = perfection

Ok, I’m definitely not thinking straight right now as the stress is getting to me, but this morning, I woke up and realised that the new aluminium Macbooks are really really attractive.

I spend half my life loathing Apple products after my last iBook died and couldn’t be repaired. I always find Mac users to be conformists as they purchase the exact same notebook with the same configuration and OS that virtually everyone has due to their popularity. I love to feel that I own a unique device which is part of the reason I never bought into the whole Mac sub-culture. The other thing is obviously I never found the previous iteration of the Macbooks that attractive, but the new E2E display has created a really nice effect like that of HP’s Pavillion without the overglossy finishing.

Wondering if I should get a Macbook, install Vista/Ubuntu and proudly attach the Vista case sticker onto it. It would be an awesome laptop.

I figured this could be useful for anyone trying to set up their X301….

Vista Issue
I was having problems trying to do a clean install of Vista Business x64 on the X301 as the Windows installation disc failed to use the generic AHCI driver and also failed to load the ICH9 driver that I provided. The Vista setup repeatedly ask the user to load a missing CD/DVD driver when the HDD is set to AHCI mode.

DO NOT ATTEMPT A CLEAN INSTALL BEFORE BACKING UP C:\DRIVERS and C:\SWTOOLS to an external storage device.

I solved this by performing the following steps:
1) From original Lenovo image, backup C:\DRIVERS\VISTA64\IMSM\Vista\IaStor.sys
2) In BIOS, under Config, change the HDD mode to Compatiblity.
3) Install Vista from standard DVD.
4) Boot up Vista
5) Replace IaStor.sys from C:\Windows\System32\drivers with the one you’ve backed up earlier.
6) Shutdown PC
7) In BIOS, under Config, change the HDD mode to AHCI.
Boot up Vista

If it doesn’t raise a BSOD, then the switch to AHCI mode is working.

You can then proceed to download and install all drivers from Lenovo’s site. SP1 updates should automatically come through as there should be no further conflicts.

Ubuntu Issues

Ubuntu 8.10
UPDATE: Everything essential works out of the box with the latest 8.10 Beta release. I’d strongly recommend installing this rather than performing all the fixes below.

Ubuntu 8.04
The latest stable release is 8.04 LTS, so this is what I installed. Alternatively, you can either recompile the 2.6.26/27 kernels for OOB support for the Intel 5100/5300 driver support or try out 8.10 which will be final in a month’s time.

The LiveCD will not boot normally and you will get a BusyBox terminal. In order to fix this, hit F6 in the initial screen and enter “irqpoll” as part of the boot arguments to launch Ubuntu from the LiveCD.

The Intel 5100/5300 card is not recognised by default. You must perform the following steps as listed here:

First, you should do an apt-get upgrade to get the latest updated kernel image and modules, then reboot.

sudo apt-get install build-essential
wget http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwifi/downloads/iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11.tar.gz
tar -xzvf iwlwifi*
sudo cp iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11/iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode /lib/firmware/2.6.24-19-generic
wget http://www.orbit-lab.org/kernel/compat-wireless-2.6/2008/09/compat-wireless-old-2008-09-09.tar.bz2
bunzip2 compat-wireless-old-2008-09-09.tar.bz2
tar xf compat-wireless-2.6-old.tar
cd compat-wireless-2.6-old/

Type:

gedit config.mk
 

A file will open. Search for the string CONFIG_IWL4965_HT=y. Directly after that string, on a new line, add this string if it doesn’t exist:

CONFIG_IWL5000=y


Then save and close the file, and finish the installation with:

make
sudo make install
sudo make unload
sudo make load
 

Steps modified from here.

The only catch here is to download this specific version of compat-wireless as the versions after this broke the 5300 card support again.

Almost everything else works OOB for Ubuntu 8.04, including the webcam and sound. I did not test the fingerprint reader, but it should work as well as the drivers exist for it. Touchpad support sucks as this has the ALPS touchpad and its hopeless in Linux. The Active Protection System does not work in the X300/X301 as the hdaps project has yet to support the newer models.

To optimise battery life, set the power management for the wireless card as follow:
iwconfig wlan0 power on

There are other more sophisticated tweaks such as hard disk timeouts etc that you can play with. Installing powertop may be a good idea too.