Hi
I picked up my Umax laptop. It has been a traumatic 24 hours.
Hard drive was tiny so that needed replacing. It had very little RAM so that needed upgrading. Then the CD drive was on its last legs so I had to swap that out. Then it turns out it only displays at 800x600 despite being told it would display at 1024x768.
I had trouble installing Windows XP but that was down to the CD drive being old and my disc being scratched. The combo drive I had worked fine.
This morning I am trying to install Linux Mint 9 LXDE and I am not having much luck. The machine boots to CD every time no problems. Then most of the time it will sit on the 5 coloured dots screen for ages. Some times it will then go to a black screen with a mouse pointer.
I did get to the live desktop this morning and started the installer, but it hung on the partition creating section and I havent been able to get back to that process again. It is infuriating, I had no problems installing it on my 600E.
The combo drive spins up and down all the time. You can hear it accessing the disc sometimes, but then it will spin down and do nothing for ages, just the 5 coloured dots changing colour.
This is so annoying, any ideas. Is this laptop broken, am I doing something wrong.
Spec is: AMD K62 475Mhz, 256MB RAM, 15GB hard drive, combo drive.
Simon Royal
--- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Umax ActionBook 347T running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.
On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 10:31:28AM +0100, Simon Royal wrote:
I picked up my Umax laptop. It has been a traumatic 24 hours.
This is so annoying, any ideas. Is this laptop broken, am I doing something wrong.
Spec is: AMD K62 475Mhz, 256MB RAM, 15GB hard drive, combo drive.
Well, you've bought an ancient laptop that was based on a Clevo model and that had pretty bad hardware support at the time when it was new. Now we're 10 years down the line and things have moved on. My honest answer, buy a laptop from a more recent period of time as it is unlikely to ever work very well with modern software. Clevo hardware was dreadful when it was new and was difficult to make it work nicely so your chances of making it work well are slim.
At least the Thinkpad 600E was good hardware for the time it was made and popular and long lasting so you will have far better chances of making it work. As for the Umax... I'd take it to the recycling centre.
Adam
Adam
As I replied to Marcus, beggers cant be choosers.
It isnt bad hardware and like I also said XP runs nicely on it, but I dont use XP very often. I need to get Linux Mint 9 LXDE installed on this beast.
So any helpful suggestions apart from chucking it in the bin.
Simon
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Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:41:25 +0100 From: adam@thebowery.co.uk To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] Umax Laptop & Linux Mint LXDE Problems
On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 10:31:28AM +0100, Simon Royal wrote:
I picked up my Umax laptop. It has been a traumatic 24 hours.
This is so annoying, any ideas. Is this laptop broken, am I doing something wrong.
Spec is: AMD K62 475Mhz, 256MB RAM, 15GB hard drive, combo drive.
Well, you've bought an ancient laptop that was based on a Clevo model and that had pretty bad hardware support at the time when it was new. Now we're 10 years down the line and things have moved on. My honest answer, buy a laptop from a more recent period of time as it is unlikely to ever work very well with modern software. Clevo hardware was dreadful when it was new and was difficult to make it work nicely so your chances of making it work well are slim.
At least the Thinkpad 600E was good hardware for the time it was made and popular and long lasting so you will have far better chances of making it work. As for the Umax... I'd take it to the recycling centre.
Adam
New signature required, suggestions on a post card please.
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Hi Simon,
A thought for the future might be to check online whether the hardware you're about to get works well. If you do this it should stand you in good stead.
That laptop sounds ghastly, by the way - you might find that the best place to run it might be over to the nearest bin.
Failing that, I would suggest that if it's very, veeeerrrrry slow you might want to leave it booting/installing while you do something else that takes a long time.
Marcus
I was fully aware of the specs and I did ask about the screen resolution, which does bother me too much.
Spec wise it is better than the IBM 600E I had, although not by much. It runs XP very well, a lot better than the 600E did. Once I get LM9 installed it will run better too.
Beggers cant be choosers.
Simon Royal
--- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Umax ActionBook 347T running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.
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Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:55:07 +0100 From: runlevelten@gmail.com To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] Umax Laptop & Linux Mint LXDE Problems
Hi Simon,
A thought for the future might be to check online whether the hardware you're about to get works well. If you do this it should stand you in good stead.
That laptop sounds ghastly, by the way - you might find that the best place to run it might be over to the nearest bin.
Failing that, I would suggest that if it's very, veeeerrrrry slow you might want to leave it booting/installing while you do something else that takes a long time.
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On 28/07/10 11:06, Simon Royal wrote:
Marcus
I was fully aware of the specs and I did ask about the screen resolution, which does bother me too much.
Spec wise it is better than the IBM 600E I had, although not by much. It runs XP very well, a lot better than the 600E did. Once I get LM9 installed it will run better too.
Beggers cant be choosers.
Simon Royal
If the CD drive is a problem, why can't you do a net install? If you also suggest that the hardware is an improvement on the Thinkpad, then use Windows to create any boot media you need and try again.
I wouldn't give up at this stage.
Can I just ask though, why do you need a laptop? Is a desktop machine out of the question?
Simon,
Did you try leaving it to do its stuff for a very long time yet? The reason I suggested it, is that It's not uncommon on that kind of hardware to have outrageously long waits during installation for things like starting X and so on - despite the fact that the machine is actually doing something.
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Adam Bower -
Chris Walker -
Marcus Harris -
Simon Royal