Tag: hardware

I finally got my laptop today. I had to drive to the local Shell gas station to get it, but I was happy to since UPS helped me out. I had called yesterday and complained and the local office called to let me know it was coming. At 6:40pm, I had to leave for karate, frustrated that it hadn’t arrived.

I know my local driver pretty well, and we’ve become friends. I’ve even been to his house for a party, so I had assumed he was off the last few days. Instead he called a little after 7. His route had run long and when he drove by, our gate was closed, so he left me a message that he wouldn’t send the package back (this was the third attempt), but to call him.

So I sent him a text this morning, worried that he might be driving and not wanting to call. He called back and said today was his day off, but he had called the other driver and she would be swinging by the local gas station on her way out to other deliveries. I said I could go by, so I drove up there and met her. She got me the package, and it was great to finally get the laptop back.

Kudos to UPS for the extra effort, and that’s where business is more than just work. It’s a relationship and I appreciate the help I got. I owe Kent a few beers.

I got it back, and had to spend 5 minutes walking around to find my AC adapter. I haven’t used it since Dec 2 when I sent this laptop back. I powered it up and got the wonderful Vista setup screen.

Thanks Toshiba, for wiping my drive. I had copied off the data, but now I have a project in front of me that I wasn’t wanting. I ran through and left it at the “Checking Windows performance” screen since it looked like it would take awhile and I wanted to run.

I’ll go check it now and see if it actually works. And if I still have my 320GB drive and extra 2GB of memory or if they’ve removed that as well.

It’s been almost 4 weeks without my laptop. I mailed it back to Toshiba and they received it on Dec 4. They then worked on it, and I got a few updates before they shipped it back on Dec 13, which was within their 7-10 business day window. I got a great lack of data about what was wrong in the package with a blank tech report. I did get some updates on the web, which listed a replacement system board and graphics board.

I had it for about 12 hours, having it blue screen while booting up on Dec 16th at night. I even pulled the memory chips out one at a time, replacing them back in to check on those being bad. I also tried to reload the OS, none of which worked. It constantly core dumped before loading Windows.

So I immediately took it back to the UPS store after calling Toshiba on Dec 17 and shipped it out. The Depot had it on 12/21, and since then I’ve had one note on 12/23 that says "diag – error code 0x0000009C""

No idea what that means, and I can see the tech having the 24th and 25th off, but today? Nothing?

Shoddy service, and it’s a huge pain. On the 12th I almost bought a new laptop from Amazon thinking that it would be good to have a spare. Then this past weekend, being unable to write upstairs, I started looking again.

I remember Glenn Barry talking about his PDC gift, and I checked out the specs. It’s a nice machine and has one thing I think is pretty cool: it will connect with broadband by inserting a SIM. That might be handy, and easier to use the tethering, which still seems immature. I found one for sale on Craigslist and I’m tempted to get it, but I want to be sure the keyboard isn’t too small.

I also tried out the 11” laptop I got my oldest and that seems like the keyboard might just work, so if I don’t get the Acer tablet, I think I will get a spare 13” or 14” laptop just in case.

My laptop died recently, actually died completely, unable to boot. The hard drive was fine, and I managed to stick it in my desktop and recover my files. The critical stuff (writing) was backed up with Live Mesh and had moved to the desktop already, but hadn’t been on the netbook as it hadn’t been powered on in about a week or two. So I fired it up to ensure that I had 2 copies of the critical stuff.

Once things had moved across, I was hoping to actually get some work done away from my desk. About two-thirds of more of my writing takes place away from my desk. I lie in bed, or work in a coffee shop, before karate, etc. It’s more inspirational to me, and I depend on it.

However the netbook really slowed me down. I’ve written before that I run many things on here, Office, SQL Server, I blog, write, etc. and it works well. It does work well once I’m doing something like writing, but switching applications, getting started, it’s slow. In fact so slow that I was frustrated getting the browser started and OneNote fired up.

I traced some of this to a full drive, with over 15.8GB of stuff on my 16GB drive, and had to clean that out.

Once that was done, things improved, but it was still slow to get started. When you try to switch applications, things take time and you have to be prepared for that. When I’m just writing, this is OK as I’m moving at a slower pace, I need to think, etc.

However when I’m doing other work, editing, checking on the site, moving between aplications, it’s very, very frustrating. So much so that I know that this netbook isn’t a possible full-time replacement for a laptop. I’d considered one for the kids, especially my oldest, but it’s not going to work. He’ll need a real laptop for college, not a netbook.

I still like the form factor, and times like this, where I’m catching up on blogging or writing while waiting for the kids at karate or tutoring it’s much nicer. The form factor works well. I can do email, browse, or write on it. But trying to really work, or get multiple things done doesn’t work so well.