Portability At Last! Part 2

I had used my laptop in the car a lot, and in fact I still do from time to time. One day, I was talking to a friend from a forum I was on, and he said that he had a few old ThinkPad 570 laptops, with the docking base, that he was told by his job to dispose of. I had gotten one for 5 dollars. Time went by and he never sent it, then one day, I talked to him again and he had sent the laptop out to me. This was the first time I had a spare laptop, which I used as a "beater" laptop.

From ThinkPad 570

Now, this ThinkPad wasn't in the greatest shape. The battery was shot, the hinges were loose, and it was only a Pentium II 336MHZ. There wasn't much RAM when I got it either, only 128MB of RAM. There was 64MB soldered onto the motherboard, and a single slot that took PC66, but could use PC100 as well. I remember getting a 256MB low density stick of PC100 for it to the tune of 75 dollars. That was a lot of money to spend at the time, but I had figured that since the laptop was pretty much free, it was worth it.

The hard drive it came with was only 6GB. The drive didn't work but I had a spare 20GB hard drive from an MP3 player that I took apart, but that will be covered in a different post I think. So all in all, the computer had run Windows XP on a scant 320MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive. I had gotten a WiFi card for it and the laptop was useful for some basic stuff, but since the hinges were so loose, it was used mainly as a toy and stayed on my desk.

This laptop had a bad effect on me, since it jump started my addiction to old hardware, but what was really bad is the addiction to ThinkPad's I now had. I had met our fellow writer, Alex, on a ThinkPad forum. We had started to do some little trades, and one of the trades had been for one of my all-time favorite beater computers, the ThinkPad T20. I had been given a Treo 650 in a trade, which will also be explained in a later post. Alex had wanted this Treo since it was GSM, so we arranged a trade for his ThinkPad.

From T20

This one was not only a Pentium III, but a 750MHZ one at that! This was a huge jump up in performance from the 570 for sure! It also had 384MB of RAM since I only had the 256 and 128MB sticks of RAM at the time. I remember part of the trade was that Alex kept the RAM and the hard drive from the T20. I had used the same 20GB hard drive as the 570, since I had 2 of them.

Alex had also given me a WiFi card with this one and a battery that would last for about an hour. I was hooked on this computer, which had an even nicer keyboard then 570 had, so I invested some money into a new battery. That would make this the first TRUE beater computer because instead of taking my Acer, I would often take the T20 instead.

The T20 was sold to my friend's sister who needed a laptop for school. She paid me 100 dollars for the computer, and I gave her a mouse and a cooling pad with it. She had used the computer for about 9 months when suddenly it had developed the dreaded blink of death problem. This was a horrible issue that is only able to be fixed if you are willing to swap the motherboard.

Portability At Last! Part 1

In the summer of 2006, I got an early Christmas gift. It was in August as I recall, or maybe it was July but that isn't that important right now. What is important was what I got that day. Sadly this isn't something that I still use as it ended up going downhill after a year and a half. This was my first laptop, and one that I actually regret buying to be honest.

From Acer Aspire 5003WLMI

My first laptop was an Acer, a brand that I know avoid like the plague whenever possible. That is not to say that I wouldn't take one for free or if it was dirt cheap. These computers are not built to last and my friend who also got an Acer had the same problem as me, and that was they are not made very well. But the point of this post isn't about Acer or how bad Acer products may be, but about much more than that.

I had read the reviews on the laptop, and it was a great deal at the time. Nothing had seemed to be wrong with the laptop, so I went out and picked one up. I was excited as can be and I could hardly stand the car trip home, but in the end, the box made it home unopened. This was shaping up to be an amazing year it had seemed! Not only did I have a new computer but it was finally something that wouldn't be tied down on the desk. For once, I could be on the computer while sitting on the porch or sitting on the couch, or even go somewhere like my friend's house.

The laptop I got was an Acer Aspire 5003WLMi. That is a very catchy name huh? Well, the laptop was only $550, on sale from 800 dollars if I remember correctly, and at that time it seemed to be one hell of a good deal. It had an AMD Turion x64 ML32 running at 1.8GHZ with 512KB of L2 cache. It was 64 bit but came with Windows XP Home 32 bit. There was 512MB of RAM which I had then upgraded to a full 1GB. This made the computer run great. It also had an 80GB hard drive, which was something I thought was something I could never fill.

The screen was 1280x800, a pretty standard resolution for a 15.4" wide screen. The graphics card wasn't anything fancy, but it was an SIS chipset which worked alright. It did give me some issues with Linux early on though. What had really given me problems was the Broadcom WiFi card. I will talk more about Linux in a little bit though.

Now that I finally had a laptop, there was one thing that had to be done. I had taken the laptop with me all the time. If I was going anywhere, even if it was a short trip, I just had to take the laptop me. I would take it with me every weekend when I went out shopping with my parents and a lot of the time, the only thing I would use it for was to make a post for my blog. The few people have read my blog since I started it know that Saturday usually meant a longer entry.

It was all fun and games until the issues started to pop up. Some were minor, like the WiFi button being in a bad spot and very easy to bump. One of the major problems was the touchpad buttons had been very hard to press, as if they had something stuck under them, but they still worked enough so I let it go. The DVD drive had also failed and the laptop ran very hot.

HTC Flyer Review Heads Up

Well, I know that this blog was created for older computer stuff, but as technologies change, sometimes you just need to get a new toy because there isn't anything left in the market that can for your needs. For the longest time, I had tried to avoid a tablet. Sure they can be useful for a lot of things, and in fact I am typing this on my HTC Flyer, but the fact that I had a netbook kept me from putting down the money for one. So what changed? The simple answer is that I had wanted a new toy to play with. The longer answer, however is like i said when I started this review. The market changed and this is what fit the niche I had wanted to fill.

This is not the actual review as I still need to finish the Sigmarion III review, so take it as a heads up on what is coming to the site.

How CEATEC 2011 looks like.

Ever wondered what CEATEC 2011 looks like? Here is a video from CEATEC 2011, on October 4th, 2011

Went to CEATEC 2011!

I went to CEATEC 2011 today!

CEATEC stands for "Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies".

Lots of exciting stuff, and I got to touch Playstation Vita.

My New HTC Flyer

From HTC Flyer

HTC Flyer Video

HTC Flyer Video (shown to me by Mikey) By the way, Mikey got himself a HTC Flyer and I got myself a Sony Tablet S. :)