Apologies for the double post, but... I booted up the laptop with the Operating System disc in, and all it did was give me the option to reinstall or repair Windows xp-no mention of any kind of system recovery or restore operation. Guess this means buying recovery discs straight from hp then?
It will be at a lower resolution more often than not. It's an easy fix though. Insert the drivers disk and install the display drivers.
I have 1200 CAD, and I want a good laptop with lots of processing power and ram. Graphics aren't a must, I don't play video games. What do you think of the Lenovos? Please no HP or Dell (other than the XPS) because I wanna boycott them.
So, my boss gave me a laptop with basically nothing on it. I just added a TP-LINK wireless card to it and can't get it to work. I'm going out of town Tuesday and need internet. PM me if you can help. Thanks.
Lenovo's Thinkpad line are some of the most reliable machines I've ever used. The construction materials used are very sturdy and can withstand a lot of abuse. I highly recommend them.
I'm looking at this laptop for purchase: toshiba A505-S6998 The most processor-intensive stuff I do is multi track audio recording (just for fun) and some statistical stuff (with SPSS if that matters) otherwise I'm just going to use for word processing, internet browsing, watching porn on airplanes next to babies. It has the same processor speed, dual 2.8s and more RAM than my desktop, I'm assuming/hoping that means I can do everything I do now on the desktop. The one negative (as far as I can see) is that it doesn't have Bluetooth, which I believe you can add via USB or express card. The price seems pretty good, Toshiba direct is having a sale on custom laptops and this beats that by far. I was hoping to maximize price (not getting total state of the art) and minimize obsolescence (DDR3 RAM, discrete video memory) as it's a personal purchase and I am hoping to hold on to it for at least a few years. I'm hoping that some of the more tech-savvy folk might give their thoughts on it. Gracias!
Anyone have any experience with Newegg open box? I'm considering this, but it seems too good to be true.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live ... ion-event/</a> The new Apple iPad tablet. It's pretty much an iPhone with a ten inch screen, but apparently it's going to give companies that make smartphones, tablets and ebook-readers that much more competition, and a real big headache on the open market. This thing does look fucking awesome though.
After reading about the iPad and looking at the live-blogging of the event, a few things stood out. 1. The first, from my wife. "I wish they had a better name, the iPad sounds like a tampon/pad" 2. It looked like a giant iPhone/iPod touch - which I think is a good thing, but not allowing users to install their own programs will hurt this product a lot in my opinion. 3. Something like this would be the perfect in-between option for a laptop/phone, but I don't think this is the product. I'm thinking about the everyday consumer, not a tech head, who would like to watch a show on Hulu or the network website and stream it to the device, while sitting on the couch. Not with the iPad, because of the lack of flash. It seems video is going more toward HTML 5, etc, but there are many flash video players still out there. 4. This ties to number 3. Using the apps to view commonly used websites, (WSJ, Facebook, etc.) limits the functionality of the device. Sure the apps are great when the screen is 3 inches big, but once you go to 9 inches, I want the full functionality of the website. Not allowing Facebook to play videos hurts the product. I am excited about it, but I think that there needs to be changes to hit the 3rd product line or whatever Jobs called it. I used to be a tech nerd until I didn't have the time to keep up with things -thanks tax season - but most of these comments came from my wife, who was initially ready to purchase this and after the event came away that it was just an ok product.
After it's jailbroken, I think this is going to be a really awesome portable media device. The biggest problem is the seeming inability to connect via USB to a hard drive. You can get portable hard drives for pretty cheap. It would be nice to be able to load it up with movies and not have to worry about filling the tablet itself. Also, for us Canadians, I'm skeptical that Bell or Rogers is going to think much off the idea of contract-free 3G service. The wifi-only version is supposed to land here in 90 days. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see the 3G version in 2010. All that said, I'm the exact kind of person this is marketed towards. I would get a ton of use out of the ereader and video capabilities, and occasionally the game apps. If the keyboard is better than the iPhone, I would probably use it for word processing and note-taking.
The iPad drew a giant "meh" from me. If I was a dedicated eBook reader, I'd say this is a killer device. Of an appropriate size for reading eBooks, but a tremendous amount more functionality. Other than that, it's too big to not think about when you carry it, too fragile to not protect in some way, and not different enough from a netbook to make the loss of functionality worth it for me. Plus, the typing ergonomics are horrible. A qwerty keyboard that big begs for putting your hands in a normal typing stance, but laying it flat on the table ruins the viewing position. Typing on a keyboard that big with your thumbs is almost silly.
My two cents...that link posted early on about laptop reliability is kind of bullshit. First off, they sampled 30,000 laptops, when HP alone ships over ten million a year. My guess is all the top brands combined sell over 200 million a year, and I don't think 30 thousand is a large enough sample. Second of all, they defined netbooks as laptops under 400 bucks. That's a pile of shit as well, since there have been hundreds of thousands of full sized laptops with celeron/sempron and even pentium dual cores sold between 250 and 400 in the past few years. Also, netbooks have barely even been around for 3 years. Usually, a new product with a new processor will have a higher fail rate (look at Toyota and their massive recall, for example. It's an extreme one, but historically, the first of anything has fucked up more times than it's later generations.) I have a samsung n120, which I just upped to 2 gigs of ram, and the thing flies. Shove the iPad up your ass, Jobs. My netbook has usb ports, vga out, a camera, flash, a tangible keyboard, cost me about 350 WITH the ram upgrade, and oh yeah, I CAN MULTITASK. Whoopee! Anyways, I've been slingin' laptops part-time for almost 5 years, as well as desktops, peripherals, and software. Feel free to PM me for any advice. Please include your intentions and uses for the computer/device, your price range, and I'll give you a good price range and specs to look out for. If anyone lives in the Chicagoland area and needs some in-home/business help as far as setup, basic networking, installation, etc. let me know, I'm cheap!
Re: Can someone help me with this? I'm in the process of upgrading the hard drive of an HP Mini 1000 netbook and I can't find the right ribbon to connect the new hard drive to the motherboard. I'm using a Toshiba MK3008GAL 30gb hard drive, which has a LIF connector. The old hard drive was a SSD, which I think is ZIF. The ribbon connecting the old hard drive to the motherboard has two labeled sides, HDD and MB, and the MB side fits into my new hard drive. This makes me think that all I need is a LIF-LIF cable, which I can't find anywhere. Am I wrong about this? All I can find is a ZIF-LIF cable, but I've checked Ebay, Amazon, and every computer store in the area and can't find a ribbon that has a LIF connector on both sides. A solid state drive that size is more than I'm willing to spend, but if the ribbon I need doesn't exist am I out of luck? This is the hard drive I'm attempting to install: <a class="postlink" href="http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=StorageSolutions/1.8-inchHardDiskDrives/MK3008GAL" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=S ... /MK3008GAL</a> Thanks.
I have an Acer Aspire One that won't turn on. I press the button, the lights light up for about 3-5 seconds and everything goes dead. Anyone have any idea? I'm trying to avoid paying to repair it as I didn't have to pay for it in the first place.
I am in the process of getting a new laptop. After reading this thread and doing some other research, I think I am going to get an Asus. Can anybody recommend a good model where I can spend $700-$800 (USD), but absolutely no more than $1000?
Is it possible to replace hard drives in laptops? Mine is 60gb and it's almost full. I have an external hard drive already for backup, just wondering if I can buy an internal one that's bigger and swap the old one out.