Why buy an expensive 19″ rack when you can build it yourself for 8 Euro and a bit of work?
There is no magic here. The ingredients are really simple actually: A few pieces of wood, screws and glue.
The construction is rigid. No angles are required due to self-stability of the quadratic frames. Just make sure the inner length of each edge is exactly 19″ (48.26 cm). Glue and screw the pieces together and that’s it.
So, I replaced my U810 with the newer U2010 model a few weeks back. Contrary to the U810 the U2010 has an empty and functional Mini PCI-E slot. I am using the O2 Internet-Pack L plan here in Germany a lot and tethered my Sony Ericsson K850 with the U810 before, which was quite a problem since this setup used to drain the batteries of my mobile phone quite fast due to UMTS/HSDPA + Bluetooth connectivity. I figured an internal solution would work better in my case. :)
The Novatel Expedite EU850D Mini PCI-E card seems like a good fit since it already includes a SIM card slot on board and is readily available via several retailers.
The big problem with this solution however is the fact that the U2010 is so crammed internally that it is hard to add any new conventionally available antennas. The device already has six antennas: two for Wifi, two for GPS, one for Bluetooth and one for the FM Transmitter. However I was not able to use any of these without sacrificing the functionality of these connectivity options.
Some retailers offer antennas with the module which are to be installed in the display lid and are too big to fit into the casing of the U2010. I refrained from opening up the lid and was looking for a different solution instead:
Why not use the same antenna a mobile phone uses?
As luck had it, a friend of mine had a broken Sony Ericsson K800i lying around, which I took apart and removed the antenna assembly from. You can also get the whole assembly as replacement part from several dealers at eBay. Fortunately the antenna is a film based one which can be stripped away from the plastic part it is fixed on. Due to the flexible form of the antenna you are free to place it almost anywhere in the case.
So I got an antenna cable with a Hirose U.FL / IPAX pigtail and soldered the other end of the cable onto the copper pads of the film antenna.
If you intend to do the same here is a word of warning: Be sure to use a placement inside the casing that is not covered by the silvery radiation shield coating as it will dramatically reduce the reception quality of the signal.
I recently decided to upgrade my Fujitsu U810 with a solid state drive.
Unfortunately, since the U810 only offers a PATA interface the options are quite limited to just a few high-priced (compared to SATA) 1.8″ SSD models by either Samsung, Sandisk (SanDisk SSD UATA 5000, discontinued) or MTRON (MSD-PATA3018-032-ZIF2 et al.).
I went for a 64 GB SLC drive manufactured by Samsung. The exact model name is MCCOE64GEMPP. The same 1.8″ PATA-drive is available as bulk version without the metal enclosure that is protecting the PCB: MCCOE64GQMPQ
Here are some photos of the drive itself and how to install it in the U810. Note, the drive is 5 mm high and will fit into the U810 without any modifications.
Also keep in mind that the U1010 has a different connector (50-pin IDE instead of ZIF), so these ZIF-drives will not work here. However, there are reports on UMPC Portal that suggest that it is possible to get a replacement connector flat band cable for the U810 that is the 50pin IDE cable, so I guess it is also possible the other way around for the U1010.
Here are the obligatory benchmarks comparing the new SSD against the old Toshiba MK1011GAH 100 GB hard drive that was previously installed in the U810:
Needless to say that applications cold-launch a lot faster with the SSD. (Firefox with 12 add-ons: ~10 s before -> ~6 s after, Chrome: ~3 s before, ~1 s after, Thunderbird: ~8 s before -> ~3 s after).
Startup time was reduced quite a bit but not dramatically. However, returning from sleep and hibernate saw a huge improvement. Unfortunately I can not provide values of the old drive, so no comparison.
I did not notice longer battery run times. However, the whole system runs a lot cooler because the SSD naturally does not produce heat as extensive as the HDD did.
I am satisfied with this upgrade – especially since it has boosted compile-times when working with CodeGear RAD Studio and Delphi – due to the great performance when accessing, reading and writing small files. Your mileage may vary.
