HP 2230S User Manual

Hp Compaq 2230s

Review and Step by Step Guide:

A UNIX perspective!

By: Kaya Şaman

Contents

1. External 1

2. Internal and Tech Specs 1

3. Operating system, usage and capabilities 4

3.1Install 4

3.2Configuration 5

3.3Wireless setup 5

3.4Upgrading system components 11

3.5Usage and testing 13

4. Conclusion 19

In this document I will review the Hp Compaq 2230s notebook in terms of design and tech specs which will be totally operating
system exclusive, then later on review the system coupled together with a UNIX based operating system using a hard disk install.

To start with let's approach this system from outside through inside dealing with the operating system and abilities later on.

1. External:

First of all the chassis is very attractive for a business grade laptop. No frills and spills with gimmicky coloration or graphics designs.
Plain black enclosure with a very ergonomic and functional yet easy to use layout. Dimensionally the machine is very small, cute and
compact with its 12.1” screen fitting very well within the tilt-able housing with an inbuilt 0.3MP VGA web-cam centered above with a
stereo microphone surrounding it. No speakers to be seen as they are cleverly tucked away under the perforated bar just above the
keyboard, the bar is of high quality material resembling carbon fiber and adds increased structural rigidity to the overall space-frame
(chassis).
Also included in the bar, is the power button, HP information button (only for MS Windows), presentation button, 802.11 wireless
controller on/off switch, mute button and volume control scroll zone. Below the keyboard is the track-pad with scroll slider and mouse
buttons.

All of the buttons above the keyboard light up with good luminous intensity making them easy to view and also change color
depending on which mode they are in (on/off, or in-use). In fact since these buttons are only hot-keys they can be reconfigured and
used for launching other processes or performing other functions, of course this all depends on how good the users' hacking skills are
as one would need to hack through finding out which ASCII value is generated by each key and then reconfigure accordingly if using
non-MS based OS's such as UNIX based systems.

The screen tilts to 120˚ which is a bit of a shame as a 180˚ tilt would be much better, however saying that it really isn't that much of big
issue as the 180˚ tilt would be a bit difficult to achieve utilizing the same hinge mechanism that is currently in place. This hinge
mechanism also gives the notebook an added level of attractiveness when opened so the 60˚ sacrifice isn't that much to pay and also
one can adapt their personal viewing style to compensate.
Overall luminosity is good for the display, although I'm not sure if the model in front of me came with the 'standard' or 'high­brightness' screen which is also listed on the HP.com website. The resolution at 1280x800 is pretty good and actually probably enough
for this type of machine being in the 'ultra-portable' range as this is not a gaming laptop and for work related environments is more
then sufficient. In fact 1280x800 seems about the norm with this size of screen as another one of my machines with a 12.1” WXGA
16:10 format display, also comes with the same resolution which is perfect viewing size. I think any higher resolution and seeing
what's on the display would be very difficult indeed in a generic sense, especially with small text and icon sizes.
While the display is closed the machine feels rock solid and upon opening it, the motion is smooth and when positioned at the desired
viewing angle sits perfectly with nothing but physical intervention or a gale force wind being able to move it.

The keyboard feels incredibly solid with absolutely no structural flex at all while typing and even gives the sensation that there are no
components underneath, only a solid surface which is a pretty welcome illusion. Likewise the palm rests do a similar job of keeping
the structural rigidity intact when pressure is applied and when palms are rested on them feel very comfortable to type on for an
elongated period of time. Even when picked up with the screen opened in 'user operation mode' the space-frame does a very good job
of canceling torsional and tensile stress applied to the chassis which results again in a very solid feel. The only disappointing side is
the structural strength under the CDROM drive. When picked up and fingers are positioned on this point there is quite a bit of chassis
flex which gets worse if fingers are positioned directly below the drives bezel which actually bends.

2. Internal and Tech Specs:

The Hp Compaq 2230s has a very attractive specification list; This list includes the Intel Core2Duo T6570 processor running at a
clock frequency of 2.1GHz with 2MB L2 cache and an 800MHz front side bus. The system is capable of taking up to 8GB of memory
which for a 12.1” laptop is actually quite impressive, of course this is provided that one has installed a 64-bit operating system which
utilizes EM64T (extended memory technology) as a 32-bit OS is limited to only ~4GB memory (theoretical max as realistic

maximum is somewhat less due to system resource mappings and GPU memory which also needs to be mapped – can be
approximated by calculation: (2^32) gives 4.29x10^9 which then dividing by 1024^3 results in 4GB).

For the remaining hardware list; a hybrid discrete/integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD GFX accelerator with up to 384MB of VRAM.
This is actually quite interesting as 256MB of memory is dedicated to the GPU with 128MB being shareable with the host based OS,
this is powered by the Intel GM45 chipset.

Again, as already mentioned the system can take up to 8GB of memory utilizing the dual channel memory capabilities of DDR2
Synchronous Dynamic Random Access based chipsets. This actually means that using any single SODIMM (small outline dual in-line

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memory module) chip the amount of memory per area on-chip is doubled. Hence, instead of the system maxing out at 4GB RAM, it
actually is able to give the system double which is the reason for the 8GB in total. The machine in front of me has 2GB of memory
which will be thoroughly tested later on, but standard configurations are 2GB or 3GB of memory. This should be more then enough
for the average user, the only times in question when one would need such high memory is when running multiple multimedia
applications or a programmer looking to build a large scale program or run multiple VM's to test the inter-compatibility of their source
code on different platforms.

Hard drive space is ample at 160GB, although a choice of 160 or 320GB SATA I based drives is available in standard off the-shelf
configurations for this model. This is especially handy as if not using a network based file share, such as NFS or SMB for Windows
users, one can store pretty much all their work related files on the drives with either space to spare in the long run over many years or
alternatively can keep multiple concurrent backups of each file/folder. Another point is that if dealing with rather large files such as
video files or VDI images, again there is plenty of room to store many of them and the host based operating system too. Alternatively
one can multi-boot the machine and have enough room for 2-3 host based operating systems with many further guest based operating
systems using a virtual desktop technology such as Citrix Xen, VMWARE's virtual desktop edition, or Sun Microsystems Virtual Box.
Or if using Sun's Solaris operating system then you can run multiple OS entries in different zones negating the use for a hypervisor or
desktop virtualization software.

Now that the features making up the core components has been mentioned, the non-essential hardware list is pretty impressive also
including a very clean sounding sound output which already I have tested on headphones and two LCD TV systems. In fact the sound
was very clear and vibrant coming out of a Sony X-series 40” TV display from the standard PC input section, meaning 25-pin VGA
connector and 3.5” stereo mini-jack for audio input.
Having an audio engineering background I can definitely say that this setup is pretty good for consumer based standards of course
being used to very expensive Pro line equipment myself I am quite picky with my A/V based systems. Where normally my Sun
Microsystems Ray 1 setup is connected to the data center downstairs over wireless bridge, unplugging and using the Sony display as a
secondary to the primary notebook internal display did wonders for full-scale cinematic viewing and effects when coupled with
compressed CSI Miami HD video files, full HD quality BattleStar Galactica video files, and non HD based Babylon 5 video files. An
example of this can be seen below with the 2230s connected to the 40” Sony display running the compressed version of CSI Miami
HD:

Img-1. Image taken on Nokia N95 cell phone and transferred over Bluetooth to Hp 2230s. Sys-config=Kubuntu 9.04 running NFS v4
to file server over WLAN.

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As can be seen the picture quality is cine-perfect having a resolution of 1366x768 which falls under the category of: Widescreen
eXtended Graphics Array, however there is no pixelation in the image at all and is totally photo-realistic.

In a small office based environment, coupled to a much smaller 4:3 format Samsung LCD display and Soundcraft Spirit Folio
Notepad desktop mixer again results were more then impressive with the notebook being able to handle everything I threw at it while
heavily multi tasking.
This actually was for my current home office setup comprising of the Hp 2230s and Hi-Grade Notino C2200 notebook which I use as
my 'all round' development platform. This type of environment not only allows me to do specific administration tasks in terms of
documentation and IT based administration meaning serial stty lines and remote telnet and SSH connections, but also a full blown set
of operating system and software development and testing too. An example of this setup can be seen below:

Img-2. Image taken on Nokia N95 cell phone and transferred over Bluetooth to Hp 2230s. Sys-config=Kubuntu 9.04 running NFS v4
to file server over WLAN.

The 2230s also comes with a Dual Layer DVD +/- RW drive with Light Scribe capability. This is very good but considering that the
much older Centrino CPU based Hi-Grade also has a DVD RW +/- drive I am wondering why a Blue Ray drive was not coupled to
this system or why it isn't available as an option. It would definitely save me burning hundreds of DVD's to back up gigabytes of
information, especially for server based small mail stores or user accounts.

The amount of provided external ports is also really good for a machine of this size. To start with 3 USB ports for connecting to
external devices in comparison to my older notebook's 2. Also VGA and DVI ports. Not having used DVI before myself I will need to
buy a cable for testing this with my Sony 40” display mentioned earlier as DVI has the ability to transmit both sound and video
through the same connector. One ExpressCard and Secure Digital (SD) slot means that connecting the machine to modern devices is
easy as PCMCIA technology seems to be getting phased out over this smaller and faster alternative. Of course the SD card is great for
digital images captured on camera or as a very expensive backup solution when a USB memory stick is not handy.

The system also comes with a biometric finger print reader which if I recall correctly IBM started off with their acclaimed Think Pad
series line of notebooks before running into financial difficulty and being re-branded as Lenovo. On the front of the system are the
line in and line out connectors of which the quality of the line out connector has already been discussed.

That leaves us only with the networking capabilities of the system which again are nothing short of impressive; A Bluetooth 2.0 EDR

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radio for connection to PAN (personal area network) devices such as cell phones, PDA's, wireless headsets etc.
The Intel 802.11 interface has dual radios which operate at the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency ranges. This means a,b,g, and n-draft
compatibility so this notebook can connect to any wireless access point (WAP), even in the United States of America as the 5GHz

range is the preferred operating frequency out there while 2.4GHz is preferred in the rest of the world. Also security abilities of the
Intel IPW5100AGN are completely business class offering backwards compatibility with WEP based networks but also being WPA
and WPA2 (enterprise) compatible.
The 802.3 interface is a standard 10/100/1000 full-duplex NIC (network interface card) so nothing special to write about here other
then I would be worried if it didn't operate at 1000Mbps as this is now the standard for all NICs of today.
Last but not least and something which I think is hardly ever used today is the V.92 56K modem, but it is still there for compatibility
when 802.3, 802.11 and 802.16 networks are not available.

3. Operating system, usage and capabilities:

Now that we've discussed the system's internals and externals, let's have a look at actually installing and running an operating system
on here. It is going to be interesting to see the level of specific hardware support.
Based on my previous experience with my older laptop the Hi-Grade which is now about 5/6 years old, running Debian 3.1 (Sarge)
Linux on there meant that I had to hack the system out quite a bit in order to gain compatibility for the IPW2200 wireless controller
and the Intel 855GME based chipset too. This meant installing the kernel driver and firmware for the Intel Pro Wireless 2200 NIC,
and 855 or 955 resolution for the i810 based Intel 855GME chipset in order to gain proper screen resolution of 1280x800 which
without, defaulted to SVGA resolution of 1024x768 superimposed upon the 1280x800 based screen area causing visuals to be
stretched and squashed.

As a UNIX engineer I could run any operating system on here from any of the following: Linux, Solaris, BSD, AIX, HP-UX, and
IRIX. Unfortunately AIX, HP-UX, and IRIX are all proprietary and I do not have access to them. Instead however BSD, Solaris and
Linux seem much more viable options. I must admit the decision is a bit hard as they're all really interesting platforms but since Linux
is probably the best OS out there for a desktop platform, having an amazingly high number of applications which are not just free but
very powerful too it seems like the best option to go for at the moment.
The key element now is to select a distro which is going to be pretty tough as there are so many out there with varying levels of
hardware support. Due to the newness of the Intel chipset and GPU I am going to go for one of the larger distributions as there is more
chance for support. Now not liking GUI's very much as they are really tedious and long winded I am going to elect to stick with the
CLI based interface as needing 2-3 hours for configuring the wireless NIC in the pre-installed version of MS Windows Vista Business
was not fun, as I did not enjoy fighting with the system trying to automate everything and leave me with no control whatsoever.

Out of the choices I have are: OpenSuse, CentOS, Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Now the Red Hat based distro's which are CentOS 5.3 and Fedora 11 as of 08/09/2009 (August 9), are definitely something to consider
as their hardware support has always been very good. However, after dealing with Fedora 11 on a PowerPC based Apple G4
Quicksilver edition, the Anacron chronological scheduler package seems to be broken and also CUPS (Common UNIX Printing
System) on CentOS 5.3 doesn't seem to be working correctly either. This means that I am either going to put Debian or Ubuntu onto
this system as I am not a fan of OpenSuse after trying Suse 10 many years ago I did not like the interface as it was too heavily GUI
based and stole valuable CPU cycles and memory in order to achieve this.
Narrowing down even further now, Debian stable edition packages are really old and so is the kernel version and the unstable or
testing branch has packages missing but is not something I would consider as is mainly for testing and development, not everyday use.
This leaves me with Ubuntu which is a Debian derived operating system and shares a lot in common with Debian but having the
advantage of more up to date packages and kernel which are totally stable.

For the last few months I have been running Kubuntu 9.04 which is based on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, on all my desktop based systems
and since it has a 64-bit edition this seems like an obvious starting choice. I actually think this is a good choice for a wide range of
users as Kubuntu will appeal to basic and more experienced users alike.

3.1 Install:

The install of this system went very smoothly and was very fast too. The Intel based GFX controller, although not recognized 100% by
the system didn't have any problems in reverting back to Intel i915 compatibility. This of course resulted in the system only being able
to achieve SVGA quality at 1024x768 resolution but since this was only for the GUI based installer it wasn't really that important an
issue.

I always like to use a custom partitioning scheme when I do any install unless it's MS based where in which I usually just have
everything on the C: partition. For UNIX systems I maybe dealing with multiple partitions and/or slices depending on the filesystem

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format, but however in this case I am going to restrict myself to simply ext3.
The system comes with a 160GB HD, which is more then enough for what I am going to use it for with a single OS based install
seeing as I always work from network server. Out of this 160GB I will allocate 30GB to my root / partition, 3GB to my swap partition,
and the rest to my user /home partition, this will be done by having the root on a primary partition and the rest on an extended or
logical based partition. The current partitioning scheme can be seen below:

kaya@Compaq2230s:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 28G 4.9G 22G 19% /
tmpfs 958M 0 958M 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 958M 132K 958M 1% /var/run
varlock 958M 4.0K 958M 1% /var/lock
udev 958M 168K 958M 1% /dev
tmpfs 958M 212K 958M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 958M 2.5M 956M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-14-generic/volatile
/dev/sda5 117G 6.8G 104G 7% /home

root@Compaq2230s:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x80d2f3ee

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3647 29294496 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 3648 19457 126993825 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 3648 19087 124021768+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 19088 19457 2971993+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Table-1. Filesystem and disk usage information.

3.2 Configuration:

After initial boot-up of the HD install, the system was again very fast to get from initial mode 0 (init 0) to initial mode or run level 5
(init 5) and rapidly went from the off state to the KDM login manager. From here the overall viewing perspective changed as I could
still see that the system was running at 1024x768 resolution superimposed upon the 1280x800 widescreen. Logging into the KDE4
desktop environment, the panels and windows were larger then they should be when compared to my other laptop also running at the
same resolution of 1280x800. This meant diving into the system to check what the overall status of everything was as it seemed to be a
bit of deja vous and the Hi-Grade all over again. First lets start by seeing if the KDE4 environment actually was in 1280x800
resolution or if it was running in 1024x768.

Opening the Kicker or Kmenu and going to System Settings and Display actually revealed that the system thought that it was at the
correct WXGA resolution. This meant that either we had a driver issue on our hands or something wrong with KDE interfacing with
the kernel and the X server. My immediate response was to perform an upgrade of all packages and kernel so that I had the latest
hardware support. For this to happen I needed to either use the wired or wireless network controller:

Before dealing with that though Ubuntu has a major security issue of having sudo enabled, meaning that if a sudoer's account gets
hacked then the hacker has potential access to the root user account and filesystem. Let's sort this out quickly as one can do everything
they need to by using the su command. Booting up a terminal window, Konsole in KDE4, then running: sudo passwd root and
entering the 'new' root password will set a specific password for the root or 'super-user' account. Once this is done we have the ability
to su to root without any problems or fear of weak security.

3.3 Wireless setup:

Now, as I was performing the install downstairs I needed to connect to my WAP in order to have inter/intranet access. This meant
connecting to one of 4 WAPs, since 3 of them were being used in a point to multi-point WDS bridge, that left me with connecting to
the Cisco 857W 2 floors above me.
Did the system even have support for the wireless interface??

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