It has been said that beggars cannot be choosers. It is the same with me I suppose. When my Dell Vostro conked out, I was searching high and low through my junkbox of old computers trying to find a replacement. I mean, I had already ordered a brand, spanking-new Dell Inspiron 15 but it is not going to arrive till a few weeks later. So I found my old HP nc6000 sitting forlornly in the cupboard. This computer certainly has seen better days. It only has 512Mb of RAM. In short, it came from the days when RAM that much was king!
So the first thing I did was to install Ubuntu Linux 11.10 on it. It worked ok but was really slow. So I decided, lets go with something a little easier on the RAM and processor. Enter Linux Mint 8.0 Helena. But then came a warning. It found that the hard drive was full of bad sectors. was I ever gonna get a break, I thought. Then it happened. When I shut down the laptop, I could not even start it up. Bloody hell
So what do I do? Rummage through the junkbox again (I never throw anything away and the usefulness of such hoarding shows up plainly here) and find an old PATA 80Gb hard drive. Put it in the computer but this time, break out the old Windows XP disc. It installs but blue-screens me a few time. What the hell, I thought. So I use a Blue Screen editor and check the memory dump. I find out that it is the wireless LAN software that causes the issue. S blwo me down. I can use a wired connection but not my freaking wireless LAN or Bluetooth on this ancient laptop. But, as I said, beggars certainly cannot be choosers so I will be using this for the time being, 512Mb of RAM and all, till my new Dell arrives
Sometimes, as the song goes, all you need is a little patience.
I saw this laptop at the PC show in Singapore a few days ago. All glass covered and retailing for a price of $2000. Nothing great about the specs though. I suppose the bulk of the price comes from the Gorilla Glass covering the screen, as well as the SSD hard drive. Specs wise:
- Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
- 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5-2467M Processor
(1.6 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.3 GHz)
- 14.0-inch diagonal HD+ BrightView LED-backlit Display
(1600 x 900)
- 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM (1 DIMM)
- 128GB SSD Hard Drive
- Intel® HD Graphics 3000
I would have expected something like Windows 7 Professional instead of Windows Home Premium. What this tells me is that this notebook is targeted at the home users rather than the enterprise users. I suppose the HP Elitebooks fulfil that category. Nothing envious about this notebook at all. I do not think it is worth getting in my opinion.
People would know by now that I am not always fond of Hewlett Packard and their products. But I must say that their Procurve series of network switches really stands out. The quality and the lifetime warranty on these babies are what makes it very attractive for SMBs and corporations to use as a departmental switch. To be honest, I have not yet explored what their core-switches have to offer but I do know what these Procurves, especially the 2626 model is capable of doing and handling. What you get for the money is basically a switch that is designed for mid-size enterprises that require a smaller, high performance with stackable, multi-layer, managed switches and auto-sensing 10/100 ports, dual-personality ports for 10/100/1000 or mini-GBIC connectivity. In short? I like these switches.
My ex-company had a global deal with HP. And let me tell you, as an IT manager, facing sub-standard HP products almost every other day, I can safely say, HP sucks. And that is not only my view of HP. Check out Captain Justice and Sam. They feel the same way!
Looks like HP are clearing their stock of TouchPads according to this article in Information Week. $99 for the 16Gb one and $149 for the 32Gb one looks like a steal to me. I bet they must be selling like hotcakes. The thing is, I wonder if HP are selling it at a loss or not. All I know is, it has become hot property.
I do not know if it was lackluster sales at Best Buy that caused HP to rethink its webOS strategy. One does not become a tablet computer superpower overnight. These things take time. But apparently, according to this article in The Register, it seems that “HP also confirmed that it is considering a spinoff of its PC business”. Seems that all the negative press on cyberspace is finally taking its toll, or it wants to follow IBM‘s example by spinning off its PC and laptop business, something IBM did years ago when they sold it to Lenovo. Looks like dark skies ahead at HP.
Sad isn’t it. According to this article in Information Week, the HP TouchPad has not been enjoying brisk sales. It seems that they have 270,000 TouchPads in stock and only managed to sell about 25,000 of them. Looks like people are just not used to some other brand making tablets, other than Apple. HP TouchPads are using the WebOS operating system, something they modified/developed when they bought Palm some time ago. The thing is, HP is asking Best Buy to give them a chance and apparently some big-shot from HP will be going to Best Buy’s HQ to try and do the gentle art of persuasion.
Maybe it is snob appeal. People would rather buy Apple iPad tablets because, well, its Apple after all. HP slashed the price of the TouchPads and maybe people are not buying it because they hope the price will fall further. Well, with the US economy in the literal doldrums, people are checking what they spend on very carefully, and this will hurt sales. But I must say that the TouchPad looks pretty good, for the money you pay for it.
I seem to remember a time in the not so distant past when Cisco dominated the network world with their routers and switches. The Juniper and Huawei started biting at their heels. If that was not enough, Dell has now acquired Force10, giving Cisco more headaches, along with HP and the 3COM acquisition. I suppose that when Cisco decided to go into the server business, Dell and HP decided to do a tit-for-tat
Force10 is not a big company and have limited offerings. But with Dell owning it now, who knows. It may become a force to be reckoned with. I can see HP and 3COM handling big enterprise networks along with Dell and Force10. Then there is Intel with their Fulcrum acquisition, making low-cost but high-end switches. If Cisco is not praying, they had better start praying now
Cisco’s future looks pretty challenging
And why not I ask? I am currently using one of these “unloved” machines as a DNS server. It was sitting in the server room, unused, unloved and unwanted. All it had inside was 128Mb of RAM and an old 20Gb hard disk drive. So, after installing Linux on it, I have not looked back. The thing just runs with no issues at all. At one time, at the peak of its use, it was running 4 domains, a MySQL server and was performing DNS duties as well as acting as the office intranet. Not bad for a machine that was relegated to be dumped. This thing is still running and there will be a lot more years left in it…yet. I can tell you one thing…HP does not make them like they used to and this machine is proof of that!
Intel 2nd Gen i5 2400 3.1Ghz
