To start off, I need to pick a good 'always-on' OS for the laptop. I have a CF to IDE adapter for the HDD which I can use to hack together an SSD. I will need good BT support, so perhaps XP + nLite may be one way to go. I only have 512 megs of Ram which means I should either upgrade or use a light OS. The 'small' Linux flavors (especially ones I can get to run off the RAM - DSL/Puppy) do offer the advantage of lower resource consumption while on, but that depends on which WiMAX card I get and whether I find the right drivers.
The next step would be to configure my setup to a point where I am able to seamlessly use my laptop instead of the phone whenever I have access to WiFi. This will help me configure my laptop to do all I want it to do in addition to handling phone functions. I will also be doing an internship in France between August and December, so this will additionally help me keep my pre-paid phone bills there to a minimum.
This prepares me to get a WiMAX connection and trial run the setup while keeping my current phone alive merely as a safety net. At this point, I'll be able to identify and resolve any issues with battery life, stability of connection and call quality.
The path from there on depends mostly on the results I get. Hopefully, at this point I can dump my phone connection and get a shiny new MID with a built in WiMAX adapter to replace it. Maybe there will be a need to address some issues with the OS to ensure sufficient battery life for the described use. This makes me lean towards using Linux as the OS so that I can work with a bunch of interested parties to create a 'remix' that will serve the outlined needs.
We'll see...
About Me
- Vig
- I'm a Masters student at Georgia Tech in Mechanical Engineering. I work predominantly in CAD/CAE related stuff and have a natural turn for computing. When I am not being a nerd, you'll find me singing, playing cricket or very leveraging the internet to provide myself with wholesome entertainment.
2 comments:
Have you looked at the Nokia N810 Wimax Edition? It gives me around 7 to 8 days of battery life (albeit, with the wimax radio off) and is a pocket friendly form factor. It also has BT, and supports a wired handset, and also has support for Skype and SIP services. It also does a very good job of battery management when compared to the current crop of netbooks.
Thinking about picking one up although in absolute terms, an n810 wouldn't offer me much that a Palm Pre or a good smartphone wouldn't. Hopefully, the network will check out and then picking an appropriate device to address battery life and portability will be an easy choice! Thanks for the input.
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