While there are blizzards going on in some parts of the country, it is 70 degrees and sunny here in South Carolina. I have the back door open, the windows opened, and I was in the kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee at about 1:34pm when this occurred…
Knock Knock…
Who’s there?
UPS.
UPS who?
UPS is at your door with a Chrome OS notebook, come get it or I’m taking it home!
This is how my afternoon started…
December 7th 2010 I caught this post over at ZDNet…
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/google-debuts-first-chrome-os-based-laptop-the-cr-48/20552
I followed the link and signed up as an individual, not a business. I have not heard a think since I submitted the application (nothing new, I’ve never won anything in my life, except contests where everyone wins…) So let me say the first thing that came out of my mouth when I started opening the package was “Damn, I think I just shit my pants.”
Below are pictures I have taken of the packaging and contents, and some videos of turning the notebook on (which by the way I did not have to hit the power button like the instructions said).
I have noticed so far that if you let it sit after 1-3 minutes the display dims, then after 1 or 2 more minutes it goes to sleep., but about the time when the screen dims, but has not yet done so, if you try to move the mouse there is a second or two before it responds, as if it is setup to allow the touchpad to be shut down to conserve power.
A quick overview of the startup, which you can watch on the videos…
I took it out of the box, popped the battery in, flipped it open and the Chrome logo was on the screen by the time I had it open all the way. The first message was to connect to my network, then it checked for updates, spent a good 10 minutes updating (wifi N (if it used it) and a 15MB down 4MB up internet connection). After the update it rebooted and I went to log in again, but it had forgotten my network passkey… which is when it displayed a popup that offline mode failed. I re-entered my passkey and it was back online right away (there was an option for verizon wireless, but I did not want to activate that yet, as it is only 100MB per month for free, for 24 months though! With an option for $9.99 unlimited per day…).
videos are now available, I’ll apologize in advance for the quality, I am not a video editor, nor do I have video equipment, but there are just somethings that pictures and words can not adequately portray.
I apparently have forgotten how to embed the videos, will resolve this shortly.
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
VIDEO 3
VIDEO 4
VIDEO 5
VIDEO 6
VIDEO 7
VIDEO 8
(this is an old post that apparently was stuck in draft mode, releasing it now. A good bit has changed since then, but I will not edit it now.)
What has happened and what I have learned over the last 10 days.
Well, I have had several issues, fixed a couple of others, and ordered an extended battery.
Right, so for starters, DISABLING the “Enable Always on Mobile” setting in: ‘home –> menu –> settings –> Wireless & Networks –> Mobile Networks –> Enable Always on Mobile’ is the cause of all the “rebooting issues”, which I have determined were not actual reboots, due to the fact that the uptime counter does not get reset when it happens, it is simply a major system function restart, that requires reloading nearly everything. 2 points to androidforums.com for discovering this.
Next, I resolved my randomly starting apps issue by running Startup Auditor, which has 2 settings for each app, (both called disable, but for two different things)
1. “Startup Disabled” really means Disable automatic startup during boot.
2. “Keep Disabled” really means prevent app from ever running, even if you launch it.
Startup Auditor polls something in the system (chron tab?) for all apps that auto load on startup and then allows you to modify these two settings for each one. The help information does not tell you what the options really do, it is what I figured out from both what it says, and the effects of what it does. I had many apps acting weird, or crashing during use, without providing a Force Close “OK button”. ALL of those issues were caused by option #2 in this app. I have learned that disabling the following is a bad idea:
1. anything that says HTC in it is bad if you run Sense UI
2. “Google Partner Setup”
3. “IQRD”
4. “Android System”
5. anything bluetooth if you intend on using any bluetooth devices, causes pairing issues, connectivity issues, prevent some features from working (like A2DP!!)
6. “calendar” x2 – one is google, one is HTC and both interact with your clock, alarms, all social apps, email, messaging…
7. “clock” x2 – one is google, one is HTC unless you don’t want the clock to update properly, calender to work well, emails to sort properly, messages to sort properly, mostly small issues, but annoying if yo ucannot figure out why it is happening…
8. ‘DM’ anything
9. ‘DRM’ anything (affects media mostly, but also web and emails
10. anything that says ‘Download’ – affects all apps that try to download data.
11. anything that says ‘Upload’ – affects all apps that try to upload data.
12. “Messages” – this is not just email!!
13. “Media Storage” – unless not using an SD card! may also affect the internal storage
14. “Open Sense Plugin Manager” – another HTC system service
15. “Rosie Utility” – this is an HTC function and SENSE UI does not like not being able to use it! *edit – Rosie is part of some widgets, not necessarily HTC.
16. “Updater” – does not refer to sending files to another computer!! But is a service called by anything that needs to periodically make minute changes to it’s display (like the clock, or battery widgets)
Most of these are things I have tested and found out the hard way, others I am assuming, as they have related names (all the HTC services and apps are for Sense…)
Onwards!!
My Nuvelli Stereo Bluetooth headset does not seem to have full 33′ range even though it has the ERD designation, oh it will stay connected at 33′, but you will hear lots of static and the other person (if you are on a call) will not hear you so well either. the forward and backward controls do not work with the default music player (DL’s 2 more, haven’t tested them yet, Meridian and Zimly)
My Jabra Cruiser may also suffer from range, but since I am using it while I am driving, I have not tested that either. but it plays sound fairly well, a touch hard to understand from the built in speaker, I would not want to take a 2hr conference call on it without a radio to broadcast the output to. That said, the output via FM is pretty good, although the FM transmitter is strong, but has an excessively short range, moving it from one side of the car to the other makes a difference in the amount of static received (front end antenna).
On Monday this week, I performed a Hard Reset of my Evo (shut down, then turn it on while holding in the “volume down button” then follow the on screen instructions (in size 3 or 4 font!!) and navigate through the menus to find the reset option.
Immediately afterwards the phone was 100x more responsive and everything just “worked” I immediately installed 184 apps and it stopped being quite so responsive!! I know, but I’m working on it, I’ve installed 2 apps, but removed 6 since. Still widdling down the list, and I have purchased 7 or 8 apps at this point (staying under $6 per week), all ones I have been using on my wife’s Samsung Moment since February, or that I have tested the free version of on my Evo.
I have also, as mentioned above, ordered the Seidio 3500mAh battery for the HTC Evo from MobileCity Online, you can read about my experiences with this purchase by going to my post about it, on androidforums.com
I have stopped using Advanced Task Killer and Advanced Task Manager, in replace I have SystemPanel, which in combination with Startup Audit and Startup Cleaner 2.0 handle everything I could with ATK nad ATM, but also gives me more options. I am testing to see if I truely need SA AND SC2.0, but I think they compliment each other more than fight against each other.
I have also stopped charging my phone at night, it has been discovered that the Evo does trickle charge until full, but then instead of maintaining the trickle while plugged in, it stops charging completely unti lothe battery charge level drops down to approx 90% (the Android OS does not determine battery charge by percentage, it just reports it to us in that manner), then it starts to trickle charge back up to full and repeats. This appears to be an 8 minute cycle. (please read section 5 and section 7 for information on these batteries) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Advantages_and_disadvantages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Charging_procedure
This “float charge” can dramatically reduce the batteries maximum life span. Using the BatteryTime Lite app and setting it to give notification allows me to pull down the notification bar and see the current voltage and temp of the battery, so I can pay more attention to it so as to maintain performance and prevent accelerated deterioration. Even though I am getting an extended battery (not sure if the BatteryTime lite app will compensate for it), I still want to keep my stock Li-Ion in good shape, and have good battery habits for my new monster!
I have also been having a new issue (started before the Hard Reset, but continued on after it) where my home button only refreshes whatever screen I am looking at, and does not return me to my home screens, causing me to have to hit the back button 8-40 times to return to the home screen, which in turn ruins any chance of leaving an app running in the background at a particular position. Happens about 90%-95% of the time. This has not changed since it started. I would also like to kill the touch based hardware search button, I have never used it intentionally, but hit it accidentally at least 10 times per day now. Very extremely annoying, almost enough for me to want to get a different phone!!
The biggest issue facing me now is keeping up with all the app updates!
Right so first off I have to say that it is all my fault I am not currently up and running 100% in FreeBSD 8.0, I agree before anyone else can say it… I’m an idiot. I went out and bought (went out=I hit up newegg.com) a wireless card so I can stop bridging my network connection off my laptop, and I just had to buy an 802.11n dual antena (very cool looking too…) wireless PCI card, one that has a BRAND NEWish CHIPSET that is not currently supported in Linux, or BSD. So, I will gladly bend over and take what’s coming to me for that one… But, it was the same price as the 802.11g card and supports MIMO!! so I think I deserve some brownie points for that…
Well, here is a copy of what I have posted on the DesktopBSD forum (more on that later)
Ok, well I had a nice long post typed out here (twice now, but I copied most of it before I hit the stupid key this time) with lots of details and useless additives; however I hit the stupid “back” button that IBM thought would be a good idea to put on the key board of this laptop right next to the up arrow… and so it is gone.
this will have to be a quick version, minus some heavily laden with porn russian websites (oh! there was also one trying to sell an iphone x-ray vision app too!!!) I can find zero info on this chipset, I have a Encore Electronics ENLWI-NX2 802.11n PCI card, works in Win7 AFTER running their config/setup progy. Shows up in pciconf with class, card, chip, rev, and hdr hex codes, and a vendor and class listing, but nothing else. It shows up in windows as an RTL8190P, I was unsuccessful in finding it in FreeBSD 8.0 x64; but I may have forgotten to capitalize the “R” in Realtek when I grepped the “pciconf -lv” results.
manufacturer product page: http://www.encore-usa.com/product_item.php?region=us&bid=2&pgid=81_2&pid=412
I followed the ndisgen instructions posted in this forum by sqlbsd, and all went well until I tried to load the RTL8190P_sys file, then the system hangs for 3-6 seconds and finally the PC just shut off. So a bit more PC info… I tried running FreeBSD 8.0 x64 first, but did not even find the card listed in pciconf (or dmesg) when I grepped for Realtek (maybe I forgot to capitalize the “R”? but either way I didn’t see it, and although I got KDE setup and it booted to the login screen, I could not log in, the KB and mouse only worked on the console screens, so I came back to DesktopBSD). So, I have a clean DesktopBSD 1.7 x64 install on my machine, only 1 network card and it is this wireless card.
I am going to try the 32bit drivers, the win 2k drivers, and then the vista drivers that shipped with the card. I also have the setup file from the manufacturer’s website DL’d and will check that for a different version. if anyone has any ideas I’d be happy to give them a go. I may try an Ubuntu Live CD to check if it will recognize the card, also puppy linux tends to find wifi cards out of the box, so I may give that a shot and see if I can figure out which drivers they use.
I knew I should have just bought the 802.11g card… but I had to go with the 802.11n just cuz it was the same price… and had MIMO support…
****edit 10 minutes later****
I did notice that the Encore ENLWI-G is listed on the FreeBSD 7.2 Hardware list, so there is hope…****update 8:12pm EST****
So, the newly downloaded drivers from the website were slightly more generic (RTL819xP drivers) but they are 7 months newer, so I tried them. The Win64 failed to convert invalid syntax line 2355 or so, the the winxp2k drivers loaded fine, but failed to create the .ko file. The vista x64 drivers converted with no errors and loaded without crashing the PC; however the system still does not recognize the wireless card. so I guess I move on to something else?
Right, well then… now you know… and we all know what happens after that… (right, if anyone can’t find those russian sites (I searched for “RTL8190 FreeBSD”) I’ll be happy to email you the links… j/k 
) so on to a little more explaining…
As stated in the post I failed to find the wireless card even listed in the installed hardware listing, I am 90% sure at this point I did not capitalize the “R” as that just makes no sense. After which I just dumped the FreeBSD install and went to Desktop BSD, as I have installed DBSD 1.6 previously on this hardware and it had KDE working in under 50 mins with no manual configuring and I was unable to type on the login screen currently in FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE. So I booted up of my newly minted Desktop BSD disc and away it went. I learned that if you create more than one UFS partition during install that when you reboot you get a “Invalid Partition Table” message instead of your OS. easy fix, don’t make multiple partitions. The OS is up and running at this very second, but without inet access.
So I am off to try an Ubuntu live CD, Fedora Live CD, and a Puppy and or Slax USB bootable File System. In an attempt to find out if any non-windows OS can auto configure or even load the Windows drivers to get that wifi working (I believe I have a post around here somewhere about my HP laptop running Puppy and it finding th ewifi adapter and being able to locate networks, but not able to connect, and Ubuntu 8.x on that same laptop working perfectly with wifi, so we shall see what happens…)
*****quick update, before I even post it… HA! *****
after reading the reviews on the NewEgg site (specifically one from feb 28th), I decided to DL the RTL8192E drivers from the Realtek website, will give them a shot before the other OS’s.
*****update March 12th*****
So, I went ahead and added the lines to /boot/loader.conf to automate the loading of the driver during startup, but I have also been getting the same results with all driver versions. (XP drivers fail to convert, and Vista and 7 drivers convert fine, but the system still refuses to acknowledge the existence of the hardware device after using kldload or even restarting.) I currently have a KUbuntu live CD loaded and an lspci from a terminal screen shows the network controller, states it is a realtek and gives a device of 8190. however, the control panel does not acknowledge a wireless adapter as being present nor does ifconfig show the wireless adapter as being present.
I tried installing ndiswrapper from the cd and attempted to load the windows drivers from there. First I tried running ndiswrapper and it told me it was not installed and to run ndiswrapper-common, when I installed it and tried to run it it told me to install a bunch of other things. All were available except ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 which replied back that it was missing, obsolete, or no longer available, then that it had been replaced by ndiswrapper-common. so I could not run ndiswrapper because I did not have ndiswrapper-utils and could not install it because it was replaced by what I already had? got me, without doing an actual install, the good news is that it completely recognized it, I’ll have to check with an installation if it is already in the newest linux kernel, I have just moved on to Fedora since I do not intend on doind an Ubuntu install if I do not have to.
I booted up the Fedora 12 disc I have and it failed to bring up the KDE GUI. The Vterms were available, and an lspci -v showed the full information on the wireless card, so I am going to try a reboot and see what happens.
Everything came up fine with a reboot, not sure what happend the first time. it is not working; however an lspci -v shows no kernel driver in use. I will need to do some research to find out how to add the driver while running off the Live CD, probably get to that later. been working all day in front of a computer, need to relax my eyes some now.
*************Update 3-17-2010**************
just found this website and I think this is a linux driver for the rtl8190p 802.11n chipset
http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/r8190_rtl8256.c
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