28 days with the CF-U1

Due to weight on the chopper I brought my CF-U1 to work with me as my main pc. I brought a CF-73 Mk3 and CF-50 Mk4 with me also. They are going to a friend of mine on the rig that lives in the Philippines. These will be for his kids. Just a basic starter pc for them was going to be expensive in his home land. I haven't had a lot of time to use the U1 except for playing around with the GPS and few basic tasks. So let's see if I can survive a month with the U1 and what happens 28 days later. I have three of these units right now and brought one of these vista units to try out. I may put windows 7 on it and give it a test run.

 

Back on the rig, working on day two of 28. I had good highspeed internet so I started putting my regular programs on the U1 and working on teaking vista more to my liking. I played cards on the U1 from Bahrain to Heliport that is about 15Km from Kuwait. Still haven't charged it back up yet, it has plenty of battey left on it right now. I have put my paperwork in to have it put on the rigs wifi. So I will be using it daily before long. I got a little bit of eye strain with it on the ride to the heliport. It wouldn't of been bad if the roads weren't so rough or maybe it was just our driver. They love to pass on the right side over here. lol

 

Life with the U1 hasn't been bad at all. Only problem is the 16gb hd, I have less than one GB left of space. Vista takes up way too much space. I do have extra space on my sd card though. I have my 7 disks with me and will be trying to load one of them up. Going to try my cut down version first. I got to re-do it. I think I cut too much out and it affects the touch screen. We will see. Also only having one usb port got me when trying to swap stuff from one usb port to another one.

 

Here is a good video of the U1 in action.

Toughbook U1 vs. Rammer - YouTube

I have also been doing a little research on the unit. I think there is a couple of things that never made it to production.

This screen, looks like some kind of utility. Also I don't know if this keyboard ever made it to production status. I have three units and have never seen either of them.









Also going to run Android x86 live dvd and Ubunu 10.04 Live dvd to see how they run tonight.

I know linux is possible and everything can be made to work. They sell them per-configured like that here.

Panasonic ToughBooks - CF-U1 series with Linux pre-installed.

If I wouldn't of forgot the GPS unit I would have opened it up and took some pictures.

 

That screen looks similar to the diag screen in the bios.

View attachment 89418 View attachment 89419

 

I will have to look the bios over more, haven't played with it much besides my unit that has factory GPS. I have another picture like that one where it says close in the upper right hand corner is says "close to desktop" some of the wording above those icons are different too.

 

Windows® 7 Support and Upgrade Information | TOUGHBOOK | TOUGHPAD | Panasonic Global Notebook PC

Sweet, looks like Panasonic has Windows 7 upgrade drivers for the CF-U1

 

Well had some trouble last night. I only had my Ubuntu 10.04 not my 10.10 disk with me. Touch wouldn't work out of the box, don't have the bandwidth to update it. I had my new Ubuntu 12.04 live usb with me. Something is wrong with it. Started to boot up. Had the right screen then a error message popped up. "we cannot find a live image on your disk" oh well, may have to re-do it.

I took my modded windows 7 and installed it. It looked terrible after the install. The native drivers didn't work too well. I am slowly working on getting the right drivers downloaded now that I have found them this morning. Hoping later today I can try them out and see if they will work right. I still may have to put my 32 bit pro full image on it and test it out if touch won't work after the driver install.

 

Had to go to the rig next door and fill in as Barge Engineer so I haven't used the U1 that much last couple of days. Been running around trying to get stuff ready for an inspection. I loaded the cut down version of windows 7 and it ran well, but it was cut down a little too much and I could never get the touch to work. Even though it recognized the hardware and loaded the drivers for it. I loaded up windows 7 Pro 32 on it. Loaded up the drivers and it has been running well. Still got to tweak for the SSD and load a couple of programs but it runs lots better on windows 7 than it did on Vista even after I did every tweak I could think of on it.

Cut down version had
28 processes running first install
45 running after all drivers and programs installed
53% of ram used
14.8 GB of hard drive space total with 11.4 GB free.

Full Pro version has
52 Processes running after all drivers and programs installed
55% of ram used
14.8 GB hard drive space total with 5.16 GB free


Windows generic benchmark
Processer 1.9
ram: 4.2
Graphics: 2.9
gaming graphics: 2.3
hard drive: 5.8

This was pretty close to what the stripped down version was running. Forgot to write it down. The main one was the CPU broke the 2.0 mark on the stripped version.

It took a couple of calibrations but got the pen back to where it was dead accurate, even in the small corners.

 

I've been following this with great interest! Good thread and good background info for me.
Just a few questions: why the repeated calibrations for the pen? Was it so far off, does it get better if you repeat it several times?
Another question: do you need to calibrate in all positions for the cd-19? (Landscape, portrait and both upside down) to get better accuracy?
Last question, would you still take the u1 on your next trip if you are less heavy and you're not close to the chopper maximum weight?

 

The calibrations were just a tad off, on a larger sceen you wouldn't notice. But on a under 6" screen it makes a big difference. I kept doing it till it was spot on OR you can say till I was finally hitting all 6 red X's where they needed to be. I could of used it as is, but when menus would come down after using the pen to "right click" having it perfect made a big difference.

I think on the 19 one calibration is it. The calibration on the 18 can be off some when you rotate. I just got a 19 with working touch a couple of months back and haven't given it much attention after trying it out. Mk1 with xp, 40 hrs in bios and factory gps. I put it in tablet mode (calibration was done in notebook mode) and did a rotate a few times) and it worked good with delorme topo map I was using at the time.

I do like more screen space. I was carrying my CF-30 when we were in the shipyard, sometimes my 19. The gaming device I was carrying with me before I bought the U1 was an alienware M11x. Good mix of size and performance.

I have a Mk2 19 I plan on dogging on next hitch and pushing the x3100 video card to it's limits.

Do far I wouldn't have a problem using it again at work as a main PC. Battery life is excellent. I watched three movies last night that were on my hard drive. Screen brightness on full, hard drive spinning (transcend 500gb shock proof case) I still had 33% left on #1 battery and 10% on #2 battery. I keep Bluetooth turned off. I don't use it at all. It would come in hand for a remote keyboard on this model though. I see it as a battery waster mostly.

I will be trying a few more things soon. I got enough space to install Ubuntu in a dual boot. I found my Ubuntu 12.04 ISO file on my hard drive yesterday. I plan on running it live the next couple of days to see how well it works. If I can't get touch to work out of the box I will wait till I get home and try it on the other vista unit I have.

 

Well it looks like the Linux testing is just going to have to wait till I get home. My 12.04 usb stick isn't working, forgot my 10.10 disk, Though I had my 12.04 disk with me forgot it at home. Looking though all my files I found a Kubuntu 11.04. Though ok, this will work. I must of downloaded the wrong thing. It is Kubuntu 11.04 "mobile" port for a mobile phone. Touch works though, lol.

Ubuntu Mobile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Doing some research on Fedora Mini, it seems to made more netbooks. Got just about everything it needs driver wise for the hardware.


(Having hell finding apps for my BenQ S6 I got two months ago, had them down to 60 bucks new in the box. Got Mid Linux on it. I got everything to make it work on XP but looking to keep this one linux.)

 

Working on more SSD tweaks right now. Doing some speed testing with crystal marks. Wanting to test high speed usb, sd card slot and hard drive speeds on this unit. Going to see if I can get a video up too.

Me and another member discussed SSD drive speed awhile back and it is running ide channel not sata channel on the U1, shouldn't be that fast compared to a normal SSD. I will post my results tonight.

 

Well this is what I got from my results.





Reading up on the 64GB Transcend TS64GSSD10-M SSD on it's published specs Read up to 30 MB/s, Write up to 10 MB/s it looks slower than what I currently have. I forgot to write down what SSD it shows I have in my unit but from what I have read it's a SAMSUNG MCBQE16GZMPP-M1A.




Welcome to Transcend Online Store

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDsQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transcendusa.com%2Fimages%2Findustry%2Fdatasheet%2FDatasheet_Flash_SSD_10_PATA_SSD.pdf&ei=p_TsUIrkPIac2QXTzYDoBA&usg=AFQjCNEZX0HU17QP9FybqMkOLJpNU6gDRA&sig2=rFi9WDZbefIVzA4dgKe16g&bvm=bv.1357316858,d.b2I

Good pictures here of the SSD swap. I also seen in my research that super-talent is also making these SSD drives now. There's only goes up to 8 GB at the moment though.

TS64GSSD10-M TOUGHBOOK CF-U1 SSD

I know the SSD's are set up though a IDE channel, next step would be to see if this is being held back any.

 

Anyone know what the factory 32GB and 64GB SSD drives are?


Guessing we won't see the screen that is in the demo pictures. Just noticed this in the CF-U1 Mk2 spec sheet pdf. "Shown with optional numeric keypad.
Screen image is for demonstration purposes only."

 

Well 28 days are up. Overall I still like the unit. Windows 7 performs well on it. the smaller keyboard takes some getting use to but is usable. The smaller screen takes time to get use to as well. Multi-tasking does need some help but what early atom powered machine doesnt. The mk2 with larger cpu and double the ram will be one to look for. As a travel laptop it is a good unit, but would be better suited for shorter trips. A 19 would be better suited on trips like i am on now. I have three more days with the unit because I have a three day school to go to. Going to try out some more gaming on it tomorrow night.

 

Now I know I'm a mere hardware guy....That sounds like a bunch of letters thrown together.

 

I for that game on a GOG game sale and have yet to play it yet. I will have to try it ou