Sony VAIO p-series
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For anyone interested in wireless devices that work with Trisquel...
I just got my hands on a Sony Vaio p-series laptop. The model is vgn p-50 and it is literally just a tiny, tiny laptop build circa 2009. The screen is like 7 inches wide. The versions sold in the US apparently do not have sim card capabilities or something like that but this one is from Japan and it does.
Anyway it works wonderfully with Trisquel mini. Wifi and bluetooth are working out of the box and I spent all afternoon working on it. For a 32-bit computer with a single core processor and an HDD it is surprisingly fast. It is *significantly* faster than the 32-bit Fujitsu laptops I tried out. It even boots up quickly. Midori keeps crashing so I installed Abrowser and everything was fine.
The only sim card I own is a micro sim card so I haven't managed to test the 3g capabilities but at least the sim card reader seems to be detected just fine. As a bonus, it has a hardware switch for the wifi. I have verified via rfkill that it is really a hardware switch. I'll update if I get the 3g modem working...
Except for the fact that it has pretty bad battery life (somewhat mitigated by the fact that the battery is easily removable so you could carry around extras) this has some real potential for being a really cool almost libre "cell phone"
By the way, this device originally came with the ability to boot into some kind of alternative version of windowsXP with just basic functions i guess for quick access or something? There is this button and when you push it the device powers on and tells you to reinstall Windows. It would be pretty cool to have linux put something there. I have no idea how to go about doing that.
I have checked the said model. Its CPU, namely Atom Z520, is indeed a 32-bit one (unlike most other legacy Atom processors). Another drawback is the onboard RAM (can't upgraded). The HDD seems to be a 1.8-inch IDE one (either ZIF or Toshiba-type interface). You can try to find a CF card converter to natively convert CF card to the IDE interface.
However, I'm a bit surprised that you could still browse webpages using Abrowser (Firefox based). I once had an Asus eeePC with 64-bit Atom processor and 2 GiB of RAM. But browsing any JavaScript enabled webpage is practically impossible. The CPU utilization was always 100%.
According to official specifications, the WLAN card seems to be an Atheros 9285, and some models do have modem (so-called WWAN card). However, it's uncertain whether Sony imposes whitelist restrictions on either WLAN or WWAN adapters.
PS, I'd prefer my current Panasonic Toughbook CF-LX3. This is a 14-inch non-ultrabook but lighter than X1 Carbon or Macbook Air. (Trust me, it's true.) The battery life has been determined to be longer than 20 hours. I also confirmed that Boot Guard is not enabled. The only drawback is that I can't replace its WLAN card, so I have to use a USB based ath9k-htc.
UPDATE: It seems that, depending on sub-models, some VGN-P50 may come with 2 GiB of RAM and 64 GB of SSD. Such configuration seems still usable except for browsing webpages.
Yeah everything you said is true about the configurations. My model has a 32 bit processor and only 1GB of ram.
But I can assure you that pretty much everything works relatively smoothly in terms of browsing the internet. Videos are a little rough. But gmail, google maps, eBay, this website, etc worked really well. It is definitely not "practically impossible"! CPU usage is of course high and things are not snappy but it is definitely usable. I literally did all my internet browsing on it yesterday. I am not sure why your other computer was unusable.
In real life, I admit the battery life is kind of a problem. I have ordered a USB SIM card modem and probably will prefer using it with my normal laptop.
Maybe I just think the tiny computer is cute.
My Asus eeePC totally failed only a couple of weeks after purchasing (from a dark market, of course). Maybe there were already non-lethal damages to the CPU/chipset when I purchased it. I recovered the memory, harddisk and an Atheros AR2427 WLAN card (with only one antenna) from its corpse.
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