Lenovo 100s-14ibr low power laptop

[wizard]

Added a 2016 Lenovo 100s-14ibr laptop to the old computer pile.

100s-3.jpg (47.28 KiB) Viewed 1494 times

display=14"
cpu=Intel dual core 1.6ghz n3060, soldered to MB. Passmark v9=874 (really low for a dual core)
drive=32gb eMMC, soldered to MB
ram=2gb, soldered to MB
micro SD card slot
usb=2x2.0, 1x3.0
hdmi
wifi
bluetooth
camera
OS=MS Windows 10 Home x64 (factory installed)

This thing is thin and light, but W10 x64 is a colossal mismatch . Everything is soldered to the MB so is not upgradable in any way. This kind of design and mismatch guarantees a quick trip to the scrap bin.

It arrived with a jiggered up AC adapter port, but was able to repair it. The previous owner had loaded down the little 32gb drive with so many downloads and apps that it was almost paralyzed.

The first thing I found with W10 was file management was impossible since the Defender (anti-virus) program used "real time protection". That meant it had to examine every file you selected before allowing any action. No easy way to modify or temporarily turn off, so had to disable with a registry hack, UGH.

Cleaned W10 up and lightened it to where it will run one or two apps or browser tabs at a time, still W10 is taking 20gb of the 27gb drive space available. Installed a stripped down Firefox and it will stream videos acceptably if it is the only thing running. Reconfigured MS Edge browser, what a rabbit hole that is to turn off all the stuff MS sets up. Surprisingly, when done, Edge streams with less cpu and ram than Firefox.

Tried several Pups, booting from USB, and settled on F96CE_4 as the best choice for its ram use and zram memory swap. Of course Puppy runs much better on this poor under powered system.

In the end, W10 takes 1.1gb ram at idle and F96CE_4 takes 233mb.

Thought at first I might use this as a low powered file server, but without a Ethernet port it is to slow.

Bottom line, the 100s-14ibr will run Puppy OK, but has limitations. Anyone wanting an older inexpensive laptop for Puppy should probably skip this model unless it's very cheap.

For now I can use it to test low resource Pups or maybe give it to someone I really don't like.

wizard

[Chelsea80]

@wizard

You say you are using F96CE_4 on your Lenovo.

From the desk-top boot menu have you tried the option RAM only - no pupsave

I wonder if you get the same result as me, see.

https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 80#p114331

Page 7 - 6th Post, scroll down for more posts.

I have asked @rockedge but as of yet no fix is available.

Thanks.

Chelsea80

[wizard]

@Chelsea80

If I remember correctly you are using a Lenovo Thinkpad 100s, mine is a Lenovo Ideapad 100s-14ibr. They are two different animals and I haven't had any issues booting any Puppy version on mine.

Thanks
wizard

[Chelsea80]

@wizard

Thanks for your reply.

Just to bring you up to date:

Gateway MX8716b is my daily workhorse lap-top running BionicPup32+28 19.03.

F96CE_4 is being booted and running from the USB stick on same Gateway MX8716b.

Glad to hear that everything runs OK for you.

Guess I have to wait for @rockedge to find out what the problem is.

Cheers

Chelsea80

[wizard]

@Chelsea80

Think I confused you with another member, so there goes the memory. Hope I can find my way home today.....

Thanks
wizard

[mouldy]

Factory windows will slow those cloudbooks with 2GB RAM to a stall. If you really want windows, go look for the version "Tiny10" that is like 900MB ISO. Its like 1809 version win10. There is an even smaller 32bit version that is only like 600MB iso. But think the 64bit version is better. Its on archive.org. It has had all the cruft and then some n-lited out of it. Mine didnt try to update itself but I still ran all the anti spy and anti update stuff just to be sure. Put portable Firefox on it, worked fine. Trying to run anti-virus on computer like this is counter productive. Full factory windows is an effective anti-virus all in itself, cause it prevents you from using it enough to ever get a virus. Tiny10 only takes about 5GB hard drive space when fully expanded/installed. Lot better than the factory version that takes like 25GB of the 28GB available.

I am still surprised what some of these used cloudbooks bring on ebay, for what one in good shape brings you can buy a much nicer though older i5 or even i7 laptop, though usually minus the hard drive or SSD. Least you can put a decent size drive in them. Some even have dvdrom so you can boot from that if you want. New battery usually cheaper for the i5/i7 laptop. Like $40+ for battery on the cloudbooks.

[wizard]

@Chelsea80

From the desk-top boot menu have you tried the option RAM only - no pupsave

My apologies, I did not answer your question before, I did select ram only in the grub menu and it does boot without issue.

Thanks
wizard

[Chelsea80]

@wizard

OK thanks, I don't have the expertise to work this one out.

BTW: Your recovery time = 1 day, not bad.

Think I confused you with another member, so there goes the memory. Hope I can find my way home today.....

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Chelsea80

[wizard]

@mouldy

cause it prevents you from using it enough to ever get a virus

LOL, think you're right.

I did try Tiny10 23h2 and it used 13gb of drive space, a big improvement, but didn't have much effect on ram usage during streaming. Seemed to have some other issues, but may try setting up again on a better computer.

Certainly the early "cloudbooks" are anemic and there are much better choices, at least here in the U.S.. Even old 2006 vintage Intel dual cores can out perform this Lenovo. I have a number of the Intel "I" series cpu, gen 1, 2, and 3 laptops that are excellent platforms, all acquired for about $50 US.

Thanks
wizard

[bigpup]

This has similar specs to a Chromebook I have totally converted over to being a Puppy OS laptop.
Also to an HP Stream laptop that I did the same to.

I suggest you totally delete Windows 10.

Completely redo the internal drive with a new partition table (msdos type).
First small partition, 300MB size, formatted fat32, and flagged boot. (boot partition)
Rest of drive a partition formatted ext3 or 4.

If you are using a Puppy version, setup to use zram, no need to have a swap partition or swap file.

In computers bios setup disable secure boot, enable legacy boot, or enable CSM. (whatever option the bios has)
This eliminates a lot of Puppy Linux boot issues and booting with UEFI bios computers.
It is your Puppy OS booting the computer, There is no security issues with it.

Do frugal installs of Puppy versions on 2nd partition.
Install a boot loader on 1st partition to boot them with.

Both of these computers work very well using Puppy Linux as the operating system.
As long as you only try to run one program at a time.
2GB of RAM has never been an issue.

[mouldy]

Puppy or Dog works much better on low power computers, yes faster than tiny10. However, think I posted elsewhere, if you use Rufus, there is an option to turn a windows iso into a portable windows. Not installer, but full install that will boot from usb. I did this to that 1809 smallest version Tiny10 and after replacing some file Rufus complained about, with one from an older win10, Rufus made a bootable install of it to usb drive.

Hey sometimes one is stuck needing windows for something. This seems ideal, Make an external usb bootable win10 install and then nuke it off the eMMC drive and install your favorite puppy or dog. Only boot windows on rare occasions you need it.

Believe it or not they are now selling the low end celeron computers new with full constantly updating win11. Ok, personally think only truly clueless would buy one unless ultra cheap on some Black Friday sale with intent of installing linux, but..... at least going to be plenty cheap used computers for linux installs.

Oh most of the cloudbooks/chromebooks come with a sd card port built in. Most make this unusable to boot from. There are complicated GRUB workarounds but I did find the old Dell Chromebook I converted via mrchromebox, that the mrchromebox UEFI bios can boot from an SD card on it. SD cards not the fastest thing, but was able to boot Bookworm Pup from it in reasonable time. Sure if you have super high end SD card, it would work better. This maybe a case where the mrchromebox conversion of a chromebook is better than an old windows cloudbook. I have yet to see a cloudbook that bios will natively let you boot from SD card without a painful GRUB workaround.

[wizard]

@mouldy

I did make a bootable Tiny10 23h2 USB with the same thought you had, rather interesting at the least.

mrchromebox conversion of a chromebook is better than an old windows cloudbook

Yes, I have three converted Chromebooks (2014-2016), all are 4 core CPU, Passmark v9= about 1600 and 4gb of ram. They run, of course, much better than this Lenovo cloudbook. None have bootable SDcards, but not a real issue for my use.

Thanks
wizard

[wizard]

Inspired by @mouldy in this thread: viewtopic.php?t=11112 did some reading and found that the some of the 100s had a m.2 drive slot on the motherboard. Took off the bottom and found it on mine. It also had the screw connector for a 2280 length drive so ordered a 128gb sata m.2 from Ebay.

m2-socket.jpg (83.39 KiB) Viewed 836 times

m2-128.jpg (82.31 KiB) Viewed 836 times

The drive has a B+M key and fit right in the slot. Here are the speed test compared to the 32gb eMMC drive it came with, the m.2 sata (on the right) is much faster.

eMMC-m2SATA.jpg (47.99 KiB) Viewed 836 times

I migrated the MS Windows 10 Home install to the new drive which gave it much needed drive space. Also installed F96CE_4 and set up dual boot with Grub2.

It's all working smoothly altough in use the speed improvement is not that noticeable. Windows 10 is still to much for this CPU and only 2gb of ram. Puppy does run acceptably if not overloaded with apps or browser tabs.

wizard

[mouldy]

Try watching a youtube video and that will quickly tell you difference. Course 2GB RAM is just not practical for any current version windows. Win8.1 and early win10 is lot different than current win10 and win11. Even BookwormPup64 uses 1.25GB RAM just idling. So even Puppy is kinda marginal though with good use of swap it can handle it.

But 4GB RAM still doable. That little Dell chromebook 3120 with nvme and BookwormPup64 does ok with youtube, Thats N2840 processor and 4GB RAM. Its frankly kinda choppy with windows or even linux like MINT. Course hard to get full effect cause no windows sound driver so unless watching an old silent movie.... With Puppy, you dont so much notice difference the nvme makes other than when watching video, but you sure do on anything else. Its just a very marginal system for 2024.

Anyway congratulations on finding that m.2 port. That turns something pretty worthless into something usable and without giving up your internal wifi card. Such a waste for all these small laptops not to come standard with a M.2 port so people could expand storage to reasonable amount. Didnt even need to include a SSD, just have the port there for the end user to upgrade if necessary. Same way should have way to upgrade RAM. Could even do like that old D430 and have half the RAM soldered and the other as replaceable. Though the D430 bios limits total to 2GB. Some did say they managed 3GB total on 64bit system using a 2GB in the removeable slot. This was made back when most people ran 32bit system even on computer capable of 64bit and 2GB was lot RAM. Suspect most of these lived out their life with no more than 1GB.