This Week at Mobile Tech Manor #54: Bricking a UMPC

By Aug. 28, 2009, 6:11am PT 14 Comments

Mobile Tech Manor Large 2It’s Friday and that can only mean it’s time to share my week with you. This week at Mobile Tech Manor a fun OS update turned a UMPC into a brick. I read a lot of e-books which was appropriate given the many e-book readers that were announced this week. I spent a lot of time carrying mobile devices around with me to work remotely. Come on in and share my week at Mobile Tech Manor.

I spent a good portion of this week with my sleeves rolled up, up to my elbows in one gadget or another. I started by installing Windows 7 on two UMPCs, at least that was my intention. The first upgrade was the Viliv S5 UMPC, which was harder than it should be.

Windows 7 on the UMPC

I have installed Windows 7 RTM on several PCs with no issues but the S5 presented a bit of a challenge. The S5 does not have an Ethernet port due to its small size, it relies totally on Wi-Fi for connectivity. I installed Windows 7 from a USB stick that I created for this purpose and it went smoothly. Windows 7 installs fairly quickly and it didn’t take long to get it on the S5.

The Viliv S5 requires a lot of drivers that Windows does not install to get all the hardware working properly, so I had prepared by downloading all the drivers and loading them on the USB stick. The fact is that Windows 7 has a lot of the hardware drivers either in the install itself or it gets them from a Windows Update immediately after the install, with a few key exceptions. Of course, that update is only possible if you have Internet connectivity, something the S5 lacked. I had the proper Wi-Fi hardware driver but I could not apply it as Windows could not see the radio.

The S5 lacks a physical radio on/off switch for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; it relies on a Viliv supplied utility, VilivManager. The problem I ran into is that the S5 default is for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios to be powered off upon boot. This means that Windows could not even tell they existed as they were off. Since Windows couldn’t see them, I couldn’t apply the drivers to get them going. A less than humorous Catch-22.

What I had to do was to get VilivManager installed and running well enough to let me turn the radios on. This required a little bit of finagling but once I had the radio turned on I was able to get the Wi-Fi driver applied. That let me connect to the web where I could run Windows Update. The rest was a piece of cake and Windows 7 runs very well on the S5. The interface is much more touch friendly than XP, although the special Windows 7 touch enhancements were not installed as only Microsoft certified touch digitizers get those.

Windows 7 Bricks Another UMPC

I liked Windows 7 on the S5 so much I decided to install it on the loaner Viliv X70 UMPC. I felt the 7-inch screen of the X70 would be a natural for Windows 7. I checked around on the web at various enthusiast web sites and a number of X70 owners indicated they had successfully installed Windows 7 so I set out to do the same.

Windows 7 began the install properly and went fairly quickly due to the SSD drive in the X70. It reached the point where it rebooted the X70 and then the trouble began. Right after that reboot the process hung, although it looked like it was completing the install. The activity light on the SSD was duly reflecting activity, but the install process wasn’t really doing anything.

I decided to interrupt it after sitting there for a couple of hours and redo the whole install. It went exactly as it did the first time and eventually hung up again. I was stuck at that point as it was dead in the water. I did some tweeting about it and quickly discovered that others with pre-production units like mine (I received it before the launch) also experienced the hang-up. Commercial units could be upgraded OK, but the pre-production units would hang up like mine did.

Upon hearing that others hit the same snag I decided to go back to Windows XP, and Viliv had me covered. They have a recovery partition (5 GB) on the SSD and all I had to do was boot the X70, hit the “C” key when the big Viliv boot screen appeared and the recovery process was initiated. In 20 minutes I had a fresh Windows XP install with all the drivers and utilities working as they should. Another hour of updating Windows and I was back in business. I am impressed with the recovery process that Viliv uses on their UMPCs. It is as fast and easy as any I have used in the past.

What I Carry Every Day

I get asked what device I carry every day, or how I choose which of the many gadgets I have in Mobile Tech Manor to throw in the bag. It’s a fair question without a simple answer. The philosophy I adhere to as far as mobile gear I carry is simple: I carry the smallest kit possible to cover all situations I may encounter when I leave the office.

That is an oversimplification but it is the basis for my decision process I go through before heading out the door. I find that any trip out the door will fit one of five possibilities:

  1. Need performance and battery life
  2. Need performance but not that much battery life
  3. Simple running around, may have to get some work done
  4. Running around, needing to work is not likely
  5. Running around and do not want to work

1. The primary purpose of these day trips is to get work done, and a lot of it. I need a good performing laptop with me that can go hours without a power outlet. These types of work trips qualify for carrying the 13-inch MacBook. It is a good performing laptop and I have two batteries. I can get around 10 hours of work with those two batteries so this goes in the bag. It’s usually overkill but it weighs less than 5 pounds with the extra battery and it fits in my little backpack.

2. These trips are different than type 1 trips. The primary purpose of the trip is also to get work done but I don’t expect to need extra battery life. Most of the laptops at Mobile Tech Manor will get a good 5 hours on a charge and that’s all I need on these trips. I often take the loaner Lenovo ThinkPad T400s as it offers great performance and is lighter than the MacBook. The 14-inch wide screen displays a lot of information and it’s my gadget of choice for these trips. Some days I will take a netbook for these trips, as they are as small and light as can be while still doing a good job. I will usually take the HP Mini 5101 or the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2; both of these evaluation units are solid netbooks.

3. Some trips are just running around performing errands and the like but I believe the random opportunity may present itself for me to get some work done. This would be in a coffeeshop or the like and would be a short work session at best. If I suspect that may be the case I often take the Viliv X70 UMPC along with the Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The 7-inch X70 is good for work sessions with its netbook equivalent screen resolution (1024×600) and the keyboard is full-sized to handle lots of writing. It’s a little desktop system that fits in a small gear bag and I love this kit.

4. Sometimes I head out for trips similar to the type 3 trip, mostly to run errands. I don’t think it’s likely I’ll need to work but I want to be covered just in case an opportunity crops up. This type of trip calls for the Viliv S5 UMPC due to its small size. I bring the keyboard and mouse with me just in case since they take up little room and bulk in the bag. The three gadgets combined make for a super little desktop system that can handle short work sessions without compromising too much.

5. The last kind of trip is my favorite. The sole purpose of these trips is to run around and I have no intention of working, no matter what. It’s good to clear the head with these trips from time to time. All work makes James a dull boy. I do carry the Palm Pre with me since it’s my main phone, and I often throw the iPhone 3G in my pocket. I always want an e-book reader with me and for these trips that’s the iPhone.

I should point out that for the work trips (1-4), the Verizon MiFi is always in the bag. That guarantees I will have web connectivity no matter where I end up. I always have the iPhone in the bag for the e-book reading, and the Palm Pre is in my pocket.

e-Books of the Week

This week has been a big week for e-books, both the ones I read and the Sony Reader announcement. Sony introduced several models of their e-book Reader line, and more importantly announced an affiliation with the New York Public Library (NYPL) to make it possible for Reader owners to “borrow” e-books from the library. I’ll have more to say on this soon, I did some light checking at the NYPL web site and discovered they already loan e-books. They offer e-books in ePub and Mobipocket compatible formats now, as long as you have a library card.

What I find interesting is that library e-books have largely the same constraints as the physical variety. The library buys a few copies of each e-book they intend to lend, and when those copies are checked out of the library, no one else can borrow that book. It seems strange, given that e-books are not physical things per se, but that’s the way it is. That’s why the NYPL has a big “recently returned” section in the e-book library.

You must have a library card to check e-books out of the NYPL, which makes sense. As near as I could tell that means that only New York state residents can check e-books out online. It’s not clear if the Sony deal will open that up and if so, will it just be restricted to the U. S. If they open it up, that limited number of copies will become a big factor limiting availability of popular e-books.

As busy as I was this week I was able to spend a fair bit of time reading e-books. I mentioned last week how happy I was to find a new detective series, the J. P. Beaumont series by J. A. Jance. I was even happier than I thought as this week I read the third through the seventh book in the series, and I started the eighth. The books I read:

I find I am breezing through these novels as Ms. Jance is great at creating believable mysteries involving realistic characters. I enjoy the mysteries, and I like the major players in them. I am going to be broke getting through the remaining ten books in the series.

Wrap-up

Windows 7 dominated my week, and I am liking it very much on netbooks and UMPCs. It seems to be easier to operate on lower resolution screens than XP and performance is almost as good as XP. Thanks for sharing my week once again, and until next week- take care of yourself.

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