Everex NC1500 Laptops

Two refurbished NC1500 Everex notebook computers arrived from Walmart.com yesterday. At $398 + tax & s/h, the price was right. These puppies feature 512MB ram, a 60GB hard drive, a Via C7-M processor, a build-in ethernet card, DVD burner, and a 15.4" screen.

Installing Linux on the Everex NC1500

S3 Unichrome Graphics
I immediately installed Xubuntu (my now favorite linux distro) on one of them, and had a little difficulty getting the display to work properly (the booting framebuffer is still buggered up), but it looks amazing now. I followed the Ubuntu Community Documentation Howto on setting up OpenChrome for use with the VIA / S3® Unichrome Pro integrated graphics processor (IGP). It took about 5 minutes and worked exactly as described. I manually set the screen size in /etc/X11/xorg.conf: 1280 x 800, rebooted, and smiled.

ACPI
Other than that, I haven't tried to get too many things working on the laptop. ACPI seems to work fine, though the processor fan seems to blow even when the CPU is very cool. There is a thermal zone, and the processor seems to have some impressive frequency scaling capabilities.

Fan Problems
The fan won't shut off at all, and I think it is impossible to make it do so with the current DSDT from the BIOS. I am totally surprised I was able to do this, but I was able to make the fan work. Here are some notes on a DSDT fix for the Exerex NC1500 DSDT ACPI fan on and off controls.


Ethernet, Wireless
Ethernet worked fine, haven't tried wireless, though ath0 does show up with an "ifconfig".

Review of the Everex NC1500

BIOS
The bios are very limited but one of the options is to boot off a USB flash drive - very cool - but I haven't tried it yet.

Battery
The battery is tiny and I have my doubts about its longevity. But it is light, which is great. In fact the entire laptop is very light for its size. I actually bought this machine to be a server so the battery is not important to me.

Energy Consumption
This machine is the most efficient I've ever seen. It runs at about 14 watts with the display on. With some tweaking, I'm sure I can get it under 10 watts. Amazing!

Via C7-M CPU
The C7-M also features the Via Padlock technology for accelerating AES encryption, for applications like IPSec vpns, ssh connections, and scp transfers. Nice. This could be a quality server after all! See the related links section at the end for benchmarks.


Case
The case seems flimsy, but its actually quite good looking and as I mentioned earlier the machine is lightweight.

Software
The machine comes with one software restore CD. I haven't checked the contents, but I imagine it comes with Windows Home. Upon initial boot, I saw some multimedia software and CD/DVD burning software.

Documentation
The notebook comes with a photocopied warranty! And the manual is pretty skimpy.

At $398 - this laptop rocks. Especially if you run an efficient operating system like Xubuntu, you've got an incredible machine for super cheap. I am tempted to buy a couple more of these.

Everex NC1500 Related Links:
VIA C7-M CPU Review at HardwareSecrets.com
OpenChrome Documentation at Ubuntu
VIA Padlock ACE benchmarks on the VIA C3 Nehemiah

Refurbished Everex Laptops at Walmart

You can't beat these prices:

Everex StepNote 15.4" Widescreen Laptop PC w/ 1.5 GHz VIA C7-M processor, Refurbished at Walmart for $398 as of February 27, 2006.

	15.4" diagonal TFT screen with DiamondBrite Technology
		Active-matrix widescreen LCD offers WXGA resolution of 1280 x 800
	1.5 GHz VIA C7-M processor with 256 KB cache)
		For quick, efficient operation
	512 MB of DDR2 SDRAM
		Ample memory has 533 MHz speed and can be expanded to 2 GB
	Spacious 60 GB hard drive
		Store your MP3s, JPEGs, files and more
	Versatile DVD+/-RW dual optical drive
		Burn your own DVDs and CDs on a variety of blank media formats

Additional Features:

• Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2
• Graphics: S3 UniChrome Pro with Chromation CE video display engine
  
• Audio: AC'97 with headphone/line-out jack and microphone/line-in jack
• Wireless LAN: IEEE 802.11b/g
  
• Ethernet: 10/100 Mbps LAN
  
• Fax/modem: Built-in 56K v.92 with 1 x RJ-11 telephone jack
  
• I/O ports: 1 x DB 15-pin VGA port, 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x DC-in jack
  
• Pointing device: 2-button glide pad
  
• Software: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2, CyberLink Power DVD, CyberLink Power2Go, Norton Internet Security (trial version)
  
• Battery: Rechargeable lithium-ion
  
• AC-DC adapter: 65 watts
  
• AC adapter measurements: 4.25" (L) x 1.75" (W) x 1.13" (H)
  

I plan to ditch Windows XP Home and install Linux. However, to preserve the license that has been granted for using Windows XP Home with the Everex, I will backup the drive if it doesn't come with restoration cds. I'll probably use Xubuntu. Xubuntu linux runs well on the Satellite 5205-S703.

I'm very surprised that I can't find any published attempts to install linux on this beast. To be sure, my attempts will be published. In my research I found positive reviews about the efficiency of the processor, which is good. If worse comes to worse I can always use Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux to brute force the laptop into being something useful. When in doubt, install linux!