Adaping a Generic Power Supply for a HP Laptop

The power supply I bought in Kandy for for my HP DM1 laptop stopped working. At the local computer store I tried a couple of replacement HP power-supplies. These made an odd beeping noise and delivered no power. So instead I cut the DC plug off the failed HP unit and soldered a socket on the cable. I then plugged the generic power supply from my old Kogan Agora Laptop into the socket. Even though the two power supplies have slightly different specifications (HP: 18.5 Volt and 3.5 Amp. Kogan: 19 Volt 3.42 Amp) the setup works fine.

Buying a Replacement Laptop Power Adapter in Sri Lanka

After chairing the Education Reform and Innovation session and speaking on "Synchronizing Asynchronous Learning" at ICCSE 2013 in Colombo, I left my HP DM1 laptop power supply in the conference venue. By the time I realized this everything from the conference had been packed away by the very efficient people from SLIIT. In the local paper there was a double page advertisement from a national chain of computer stores, including mention of replacement Hp Power Adaptors. As I was in Kandy the next day on a sightseeing tour, I asked the driver to take me to the computer store. He commented that computer gadgets were cheaper in Colombo. We found the store after a few phone calls.

Arriving at the store turned into something like a royal visit, with the driver phoning ahead to reserve parking (always a premium in any Asian city). The store security guard directed the car to a spot and then the store staff arrived with an umbrella. Explaining my need, by pointing to the power socket on the computer, I was directed from the glossy computer showroom, up to the less palatial service department on the top floor, where a computer support person, who had that world weary attitude of support staff worldwide, explained they did not have a HP power supply in stock.

I had noticed a smaller computer store packed with goods, next door. So I went in there. Again pointing to the socket on the computer, their technician offered me either a genuine HP power supply or a "universal" third party unit.

The universal unit was about half the price of the HP model, but has the worry of having the interchangeable plug fall off. So I bought the HP adapter. There was then the problem of a power cable. The store only stocked UK mains power cables, as used in newer Sri Lankan premises, so I had to also buy an adapter (about $US2) for the other Sri Lankan power sockets common in older buildings.

Now back in Australia I need to buy a clover-leaf  IEC 60320 C6 cable with an Australian mains plug, to replace the UK one.

Doctor Who Finds Hacker HQ Using My HP Laptop

The episode of TV series "Doctor Who" broadcast in Australia last night featured a HP Pavilion DM1-4000 series laptop. The plot of "The Bells of Saint John" centers around WiFi being used to hack into home computers and then download the mind of the computer user (the latter is fanciful, but the former a real risk).

he Doctor's companion Clara, uses the laptop to locate where the WiFi hack was being coordinated from, by using information the staff have posted to social media. While the speed with which this was done is hard to believe, the technique itself is real. US computer security company Mandiant released a report in February, where they located a building in Shanghai from which the PLA's Cyberwarfare Unit 61398 was alleged to conduct hacking attacks.

It will be interesting to see if any political theorists conduct an analysis of the TV show. During the cold war US depictions of invading aliens were seen as a metaphor for the communist threat. This fictional depiction of aliens attacking western minds could be seen as a warning.

The HP Pavilion dm1-4000 Series is a low cost 11.6 inch screen laptop. I have found it useful to carry around. Like my unit, the one used on Doctor Who appears to have had the stickers removed and the shiny bezel around the screen painted mat black.
 

Installing Solid State Disk in HP Pavilion Notebook

With Mint Linux 14 installed on my HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU notebook, it was time to swap the hard disk drive (HDD) for the Solid State Disk (SSD) from my Kogan Agora. This was easier than upgrading the RAM. The hard part was getting the back off the computer (it slides off after removing the battery pack and pressing the battery catch as far as it will go). There is one screw holding the disk in place, after removing this the disk lifts up and out, after which the connector is pulled off. There is a diagram and step by step procedure in the excellent HP Pavilion dm1 Entertainment PC - Maintenance and Service Guide. The disk has a metal carrier held on by four screws. The SDD has the same screw holes and connector, fitting in place of the HDD.

Previously I had installed Mint Linux 14.0, but there had been an upgrade to 14.1 in the interim, so I tried that. The result was a blank screen, so I went back to 14.0 which worked fine.

 

As I had reinstalled Linux I needed to reset my favorite settings. One annoyance is font sizes, which are too small by default. Setting the Resolution DPI to a larger value than the default 96 helps (I use 192) in: Menu > Preferences >Appearance > Fonts > Details. But Thunderbird and Firefox still use tiny fonts for displaying email and document. There are thousands of postings on the web about how to fix this and hundreds of add-ons offered. It is curious that Mozilla can't have these applications use the operating system default DPI and font sizes. I found "Firefox Tweaks" helped.

I have solved the problem of the shiny black bezel around the HP's screen, by painting it with a can of flat black enamel paint. The bezel is held on by clips (explained in the service manual) and so can be removed with care for painting. Remember to cover the window for the web camera before painting. The silver painted hinge covers are attached to the bezel so I painted these black as well. The result is the removal of distracting reflections. This looks so good I am tempted to paint over the remaining sliver portions of the case, to make the computer less conspicuous. I have also removed the five stickers from the case which advertised Windows 7 (no longer installed), HP's support line, HP Premier Experience (whatever that is) and the AMD chips. Some problems remain with the HP hardware, in particular the shiny screen is still an annoyance and I have yet to find a suitable anti-reflective filter.

Anti-reflective filter for 11.6 Notebook Computer Screen

My  HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU notebook  computer works well now I have more RAM and Linux running on it. But the 11.6 inch screen is very shiny, making it hard to read in a room with overhead lights and almost impossible to use outdoors. There are anti-reflection add on filters: Fellows and 3M Flat Panel Privacy Filter. The smallest Fellows filter appears to be for a 12.1 inch screen (3m have a 11.6 inch unit), but it looks like the plastic sheet can be cut down to a smaller size. These appear to consist of a sheet of tinted plastic (3M describe theirs as "microlouver privacy technology"), shiny on one side and textured on the other. You place the filter on textured side up if you want to cut down reflections. The plastic also has the effect of blocking viewing from an angle (thus "privacy filter"), but it is not clear to me how that is achieved. These filters are relatively expensive (about $25 for the 11 to 12 inch units) and I have not seen them stocked in Australian stores, although Office Choice offered to order one in for me. There are also anti-glare screen protector which do not claim a privacy function and start at about $5.

4GB Extra RAM for a HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU

My HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU Notebook computer came with 2 Gbytes of RAM. An extra 4GB of Single DDR3 1333 SODIMM RAM (Kingston KVR1333D3S9) cost only $23 from MSY Technology Pty Ltd. The hard part was getting the back off the computer, in order to put the RAM in. Rather than a small panel held on with a screw (as with my old Kogan Agora), the whole back of the HP comes off in one piece. This makes it easy to access the fan and disk drive as well as RAM, once you work out how to get the back off. To do this you first remove the battery and then, keeping the battery latch slid fully open, slide the whole back of the computer off. This is very difficult to do the first time (with the fear of breaking something).

I bought my RAM at MSY's Sydney Ultimo store (behind Sydney TAFE and University of Technology Sydney). The location of the store is hard to find as it is on the end of a block overlooking a park (not on a road). Going into a small nondescript door, I found a bustling computer store with a queue of people getting rapid but knowledgeable service from the staff.

With the memory purchased and the back off the computer it was easy to upgrade the RAM.

Installing Linux on a HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU

The screen broke on my trusty Kogan Agora and it was not feasible to repair. So I looked around for a similar unit: a low cost laptop with a screen between 11 and 12 inches, which is suitable for running Linux. I chose the HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU from JB HI-FI for $368. This has only 2GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard disk, the disk is upgradable but the RAM is not (there is a HP Pavilion dm1-4210us with 4GM RAM and a 500 GB disk). It has Windows 7 and so was selling a bit cheaper than the newer Windows 8 models. Linux can be installed, with WiFi needing an extra driver and the laptop is good apart from the shiny screen.

The HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU looks a lot more expensive than it costs, with a black and silver case (the silver highlights look like aluminum, but are painted plastic). My Kogan Agora looks down-market in comparison with a lot of plastic and screws, but has survived a fall onto a stone floor and is much easier to upgrade the hardware due to all the screws.

The case over the LCD screen on the HP is a little too flexible for my liking but the biggest problem is the shiny LCD screen and surround, making it more subject to reflections than the Kogan (but most small laptops now seem to have this problem). The HP's keypad is very good and it has a good range of ports (three USB, HDMI and VGA video), which is one reason I did not buy a Chromebook.

After reviewing J.A. Watson's excellent article about installing Linux on a similar HP model ("HP Pavilion dm1-4310e: Swapping Windows 8 for Linux"), I decided to try Mint Linux. This worked well, apart from the problem with WiFi, which Watson had noted. I also tried OpenSuSe Linux, which was equally impressive. To remove Linux and install another version I found the video "How to Safely Uninstall Linux with Windows Dual Boot" by Britecto be useful.

Ubuntu, came with a proprietary driver for the Broadcom WFi hardware BCM43103. I had been avoiding Ubuntu as I don't like the Unity interface (but you can install Gnome in ubuntu). Unfortunately even with the driver I still could not get WiFi to work.

Then I tried Puppy Linux. This was because of a comment on the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum saying that WiFi was slow on the HP DM1-4108 au, but at least it worked ("Wireless hp dm1-4108au Slow"). Normally I would not try such an unusual Linux version, but I was getting desperate. Puppy Linux is designed for running on old hardware and has been criticised for lack of security and applications. It runs fast but the installation process is not as polished as Mint, Ubuntu and OpenSuse.

The "Precise" version of Puppy is designed to be compatible with Ubuntu packages, to address the application issue. The Puppy ISO file downloaded very slowly (70kbps) and was not available from a local mirror site as it is so new (17 December 2012). This reminded me of the old days of dial-up modems, where software downloads could take much of a day. Unfortunately the Precise version did not work and so I tried "Slacko Puppy 5.4 final".

One curious problem I had was that I could not get the usual utility to write the Puppy ISO file to a USB drive. So I ended up using "Linux Live" on Windows 7. The WiFi worked, but was so slow as to be unusable. This showed me the WiFi could work, if I could get a suitable driver, so I went back to Mint Linux, as looked at how to load the correct driver for the Broadcom. The posting " Possible fix for wireless: BCM4313 (14e4:4727) on hp dm1 laptop with Ubuntu 11.10" suggested the wl driver not "brcmsmac":

Then save the file. Reboot, and then go into Ubuntu Software Centre again - search "bcm" and reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source and then broadcom-sta-source and broadcom-sta-common. ...

I then had Mint Linux working with the WiFi. While all this involved downloading many Linux distribution files, it had to be kept in perspective. I did spend a lot of time waiting for various Linuxes to boot. But I spent even more time waiting for Windows 7 to download updates and install them.

The Mint Linux ISO installation file is about 1 GB compares to about 300 MB for most others. But Mint comes with many extra packages which you have to download separately with other Linux distributions. It is still not without problems. It is odd that I still have to search the web to find out how to make the text large enough to read on a small screen for Linux and various packages. Given that there will be more people with poor eyesight as the population gets older, this is something open source developers need to address. Here I am not talking about special magnifier applications, just one place I can set the font size larger and have each application adjust accordingly.

I doubled the Resolution Dots Per Inch  in Appearance > Fonts > Details (making the text twice as large). But this did not make the text large enough to read in received email in Thunderbird, or on web pages in Firefox.

One catch with the HP DM1 computers is that they come with one of two different processors: Intel or AMD. The DM1-4108AU has the AMD processor and according to the "HP Pavilion dm1 Entertainment PC: Maintenance and Service Guide" (page 2) and has two RAM slots, whereas the Intel has only one. See "How to upgrade a dm1-4108au memory to 4Gig?" along with the showing how to get the back off the computer to install more RAM.