Hi everyone,

Next week I'm going to Singapore and I thought of buying myself a laptop/UMPC. The reason I'm mentioning I'm going abroad is that in Israel we don't have a great variey of models, and the prices are about 10%-15% higher than anywhere else, and in some things (like UMPC's) the difference can get even to 50%.

I have some very unique requirements: it has to be VERY light (no more than 1.2 kg), and very cheap (no more than 700 - 750 $ US). It also needs to have a wireless connection. The upside is that I don't care about the specs that much: the CPU can be quite slow, and I don't need 1 GB of RAM, even 512 MB will be enough for my Mandriva . Also I don't need more than 10GB of memory, and any toys like webcams etc. are only nice to have.

I thought of buying a Kohjinsha SA1. I looked for it in the Mandriva comapatibility database and couldn't find this firm, so I have a few questions:

1. Does anyone have any experience with installing Mandriva or other Linux distro on this machine? If not, according to the specs, do you think it will run? Will mandriva be compatible to this hardware, in your opinion?
2. I plan to install the OS through an external optical device, as it doesn't have an optical drive of its own. Do you foresee any problems there?
3. Do you have any recommendations for other laptops which stand in my crazy standards?

Thanks!

I suspect you could get it to run but you may well have difficulty with certain components - for instance, the touchscreen.

Oh, the touch screen is part of the "nice to have" part.

(Although you can be certain that once I buy it I'll come back to this forum to ask how to configure the touch screen...)

BTW, does an old IBM X-series (e.g. X-31 or even X-21) have a better chance?

Hi,

I have installed Mandriva 2007 spring on a Kohjinsha with French language.
This model is the LX800 geode, 1Gb of RAM, 80 Gb HDD, with no touchscreen.

At the end of the installation, I got a little problem with the keyboard and got
to change some keymap file.

I did not get the sound directly (I have seen that there is a package to install on
Kohjinsha website) and did not try for the wifi (I doubt it would work easily).
Suspend to ram did crash too.
Bluetooth seems ok, the rest (ethernet, usb, suspend to disk, etc) works perfectly
but maybe a little bit slow (one needs to recompile I think because of the cpu), but
not much slower than windows XP .

yossarian :
Other things to answer your last 2 questions:
1/ I installed Mandriva through a usb DVD drive. The bios allows
to start on the CD. Previously I had shrinked the windows partition with PM.
2/ I think new UMPC laptops will arrive soon (I have heard about one from Sony
but you will find webpages and blogs about it). Anyway, I think the Kohjinsha
is nice, even if I don't like to use it with windows (for instance for wifi). You can
carry it in one hand. On the other hand one could have expected a bigger battery
(this is 2h30) and a larger screen (9 inches would have been perfect). But the price
is interesting too...

Have you also looked into the "forthcoming" ASUS Eee? It's also got a 7" screen and wireless, it's not out yet but they're currently promising "late 2007":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
And comes with linux as standard, may stand a better chance of working with Mandriva maybe? And if it's true it'll be a _lot_ cheaper than $999.

Welcome aboard

That might be a problem. Wifi is mandatory for me. I need to check it out somehow before I buy it. Maybe Ill try to mount from the Live CD in the store, if they allow me.



I'll check it. Thanks for the detailed answers.



Hey, man, I thought of it before you did... Great minds etc. As I said, not all models are arriving to Israel, especially UMPC's, and even more especially UMPC's with Linux, not to mention it belongs to Asus, and not to a giant label like Lenovo or HP. I would love to put my hands on the EEE, I just don't know when I will go abroad next time, and I'm afraid to lose my (maybe) only chance for a long time.

Oops, sorry, well I guess maybe I heard about it from you then! It does sound cool though, if it delivers what it says.
And even if it doesn't deliver _everything_ that it promises, it'll definitely drive down prices of other competitor products.