HP Mini-Note 2133 - SXS Offloading
 

Hello all,
Just picked the new HP Mini-Note laptop for offloading EX1 footage
Works beautifully.

SXS drivers OK - Downloads 16 GB card in about 8 minutes.
Clip Browser OK - You can scan/verify clips just fine.
The playback is naturally going to be choppy with the VIA UM Processor.
It's not an HD editor - just a really small, lightweight, SXS offload device for about half the price of one 16GB. It will playback audio full stream and your video at a few frames a second.

If you want to change the pre-loaded OS - you'll need to build a bootable USB key and install your preferred OS - or hook up an external DVD reader ($40)

Right now Vista Basic is on it and works like a charm.
I know you can get a full laptop for the same price ($500) but the size is well worth the price.

Cheers
Paul

Hi Paul,

We are considering the HP 2133 also. It appears to be one of the few sub-notebooks that offers both decent hard drive sizes (120GB or 160GB) and at 7200rpm.

What is the spec on your particular unit as far hard drive, CPU, RAM and O/S?

And for those reading who are also interested in a reasonably priced "bucket" for your EX1 footage, here's the link:

http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/cto...D=19701&SBLID=

And one note - reports are out that it appears Canadians are blessed with 7200rpm 160GB drives while the U.S. 160GB drives are only 5400rpm.

One other possible option is the "soon to be released" Gigabyte M912 sub-notebook which is offering hard drive sizes up to 250GB. See here:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/g...2-in-the-wild/


I think the HP 2133 with the Shotput Express software is an excellent alternative to the ridiculously priced and sized Sony PHU-60K 60GB field hard drive.


SG

Hi Steve !

Here are the specs on my unit sir

HP SMARTBUY MINI-NOTE 2133
-VIA C7-M 1.2GHz ULV processor (1.2 GHz, 128 KB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB)
-1024MB of DDR2 667MHz SDRAM memory
-120GB 5400RPM hard drive

Finish is nice and sturdy.
I picked up an 8 GB USB Key too - going to make it bootable soon.

For just a little more than an 8 GB SXS card, its well worth it

Cheers
Paul

For the record - I just visited Staples and confirmed with my own eyes that the 160GB drive in the 2133 was a Seagate Momentus rated at 7200rpm. I checked device manger and looked up the model.

Staples seems to be cheapest for the 1.6ghz/2GB RAM/160GB model at $729 (Canadian). This is with Vista but XP downgrade discs are included - you will just need access to a USB DVD drive for the install.

This is a very helpful site for 2133 owners/potential buyers:

http://www.hp2133guide.com/



SG

Steve, I paid $589 for mine with the 120GB drive.
The price you have seems good though - I saw that one for about $825

Cheers
Paul

A related question. Does anyone have advice on hard drives which will definitely operate at 5800m (19000ft). I have good advice that the 80 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 IDE will work , but I would like to be able to go larger. One option is to install a 64GB solid state IDE hard drive in the computer to make sure that it operates. Has anyone done this and how has it operated?
Peter Donaldson

Just got this lappy
 

I just bought this laptop, for offloading or even encoding footage before handing over.
I've got clip browser and vegas pro 8 on it and it runs fine.

http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/pro...SPIRE-2920-2GB

Paul.

Hi all,

We got our HP Mini-Note 2133 in today and it is indeed very quick for offloading SxS cards. It took roughly 3 minutes for a full 8GB card.

However, while the Clip Browser 2.0 is on it and running - it is struggling severely during playback - even at 1/4 resolution. What has your experienced been and with what version of Clip Browser?

For the record - we have the top 1.6ghz model with 2GB ram, 7200 RPM 160GB hard drive and WinXP Pro downgrade.

Thanks.

SG

I have clip browser V2.
This laptop is a cracking bit of kit.
8gb card offloads in 3 mins, slightly longer for a rewrap to mxf if the clip spans 2 cards.
I've also got vegas pro 8 on the laptop and that runs ok too, plenty good enough for showing the client footage because as you know, once rewrapped to mxf clip browser won't play the mxf clips so i just open vegas and show the mxf clips.
Picture quality of the laptop is very good.
No firewire but i'll get a expresscard to firewire for about £25.
Overall i'm very happy with this lappy.

Paul.

Given that the 1.6Ghz C7-M is at least 5x slower than a low end core 2 duo CPU (very rough estimate assuming OK multithreading etc), i would never expect it to be able to play any kind of compressed HD video, especially fullHD and especially any kind of GOP compression.

Even my audio is a bit choppy - is yours clean?

SG

Just a follow-up report for those interested...

We put Shotput Express on our HP 2133 Mini-Note and it seems to work very well. A card with 6GB on it offloads in about 2 minutes.

One possible setup that does work is setting up Shotput Express in auto offloader mode and then closing the lid on the HP Mini-Note (turn off standby mode first). You can then feed it cards and it will play a sound when the card is offloaded. You flip the lid open, remove the card, click OK and insert the next card.

And re: copying (using Windows Explorer) from the Mini-Note ExpressCard slot across a Gigabit LAN to a RAID-5 network drive, here's what I got.

Write (Card to Network Drive) - ~35 MB/s throughput
Read (Network Drive to Card) - ~17 MB/s throughput

Interestingly, Shotput Express does seem to be considerably faster for offloading cards than using just Windows itself.

SG

There is also this option, but of course you can shoot while transferring as it uses the USB on the camera. I'm hoping the make another model with ExpressCard built in to make it perfect for us!

http://www.nextodi.com/en/product/ND2725_en.html

Oh, and the price is right on this device!

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Cat...Xtreme+ND-2700

transfer to mac
 

Anyone tried moving ex files from the 2133 to a mac? Did you use ethernet and how fast was it?