The Linux Extremist

My fiancee likes small laptops. One of her first recovery missions for me was to take an old Dell and see if Linux would revive it. Sadly, even Ubuntu can’t make a laptop that has a battery running as hot as short order chef’s griddle run better. She has since moved on, but I remembered that she liked having a tiny laptop, sufficient to fit into her handbag.

Recently, PC World made available a cheap version of the MSI Wind netbook, known as the Advent 4211. It’s based on the excellent Intel Atom processor; however, there are some ways in which it’s deficient: it has only an 80 GB hard drive, and only 1 GB of RAM. Plus, for some strange reason, it comes with Windows XP.

I tested it in Windows mode for a while and was somewhat surprised by what I found: the processor was powerful enough to run Rome: Total War without any hiccups. However, as my lady doesn’t play games, I decided to ditch Windows and give her a smoothly running Linux machine. I bought a 120 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 hard drive, and I had an old Dell 1490 broadcom based wireless card to replace the Realtek card that the machine contains. I also bought an additional 1 GB of memory: memory from Crucial only costs £14.

The Advent 4211 doesn’t have a CD ROM drive, but LG GSA-E50N drive is perfectly adequate for the job.

However, it’s important to follow a series of steps to ensure that you’re getting the maximum performance out of the laptop. These steps begin before you replace anything.

First, ensure you’re using the latest firmware. If you’ve purchased the Advent 4211, this can be found by clicking here. If you’re using an MSI Wind, this bios update can be found here.

Once installed, shut down and remove the battery for ten minutes. For whatever reason, missing this step can cause the keyboard to freeze up. Restart and then go into the BIOS; there is an option to optimise the system by pressing F9: do so, and then save and exit.

After rebooting to ensure everything is all right - switch off. Remove the battery. You’re ready for surgery.

Removing the cover is relatively straightforward: there are nine screws which hold the bottom in place. Once these are undone, the back pops off easily. There is a free memory slot which is instantly recognisable: detailed instructions on how to put the additional memory in is available here.

Removing the wireless card turned out to be the most difficult portion of the task. The wireless antenna leads, which are indicated by a small white and a small black cable leading into the card, popped out easily enough - however, the screw which held the card in place gave me no end of trouble. It had been screwed in so tightly, and the screw itself was so soft, that the treads were ruined with only a couple of attempted turns. I had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to get it free; this accidentally loosened the metal portion below the card which the screw turned into. Fortunately, a small dab of superglue at the tip of the metal portion, fixed it back into place.

Beneath the wireless card there is an additional screw which frees the hard drive. The drive after this, pops out relatively easily. The Advent 4211 comes with a Western Digital drive, a brand I detest: I took it out, removed the metal guide and affixed it to the Seagate, which slotted easily back in. I put the drive back, put in the screw and then put in the Dell 1490.

The Dell 1490 wireless card is not an easy fit. The antenna cables are particularly awkward. Furthermore, a thin sticker on the bottom of the card is all that prevents an ill-placed protrusion from touching a portion of the motherboard, which can lead to it shorting out. I screwed it in to the point that it was in place, but did not tighten it to excess.

After putting the back on, and screwing it in place, I put back in the battery, and plugged the CD drive in. My OS in this case is Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.1 - note this is the latest version, as the immediate predecessor did not work.

Installation was straightforward; the only complication lay in a difficulty I had made for myself in using the Broadcom based Dell 1490. I plugged in the wired connection into my router, entered the terminal and typed:

sudo apt-get update

After that, I went into System > Administration > Hardware Drivers and found that the Broadcom wireless card driver was awaiting activation. I activated it, following the steps in the installation process after this selection. Wireless gave no further issues after this.

Apart from this, graphics acceleration, sound, and all other features worked as expected: the MSI Wind / Advent 4211 appears to be a very good fit with Ubuntu Linux. Wireless is quick and punchy, and even the small screen (10″) is something one gets used to after a short while.

In fact, I like it so much, I may get one myself.

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