A further upgrade to my HP Mini-Note today. I got a 2GB RAM upgrade and installed it myself. I was really impressed at how sensible the internal plumbing is in the Mini-Note and the upgrade took less than 5 minutes. Behind the battery are three tiny Philips screws which hold the keyboard down. Take these out and the keyboard eases up, although the catch on the right side needed a gentle prompt to let go. The keyboard needs to be carefully lifted and placed upside down on the Mini-Note to ensure that the cabling doesn't come adrift. Then the old RAM pops up and the new one slips into the holder without fuss.
I have to say the Mini-Note is a pleasure to work with, even with only 1GB RAM fairly enormous Word documents filled with screen captures were no problem. I can't get over how pleasant the keyboard is to work with. I know the processor isn't state of the art, but then sometimes a gadget is so nicely put together that the technology is almost secondary.
Friday 20th June 2008
Yahoo released a new email address Ymail.com and freed up new Yahoo
login names for the first time in ages. Users can now log in with the
whole email address rather than their Yahoo name. I always rather liked
Yahoo email and was pleased to get a Ymail email address in my own name.
I know I always have a little dig at professional colleagues who use
hotmail or yahoo (or Gmail although that's slightly cooler) for their
work email address. Using them for personal email is quite a different
matter. I rather like the division of personal and professional email
addresses.
I've had a "Googlemail" account for a while, this being the version of Gmail available in Europe for some bizarre reason. I've been told it was because of some copyright infraction.., but I'm not sure that holds water. When Gurl Mail was sold on to Google the availability of the domain world wide makes any litigation plain silly. Still Ymail made me think about how to get around the problem in terms of IP address and I managed to snag a Gmail.com email address that's not too bad - my name with .phd at the end. Better than a number I suppose.
Wednesday 18th June 2008
I ordered the extended six cell battery for my HP Mini-Note all the
way from Hong Kong on Saturday and it arrived this morning! Now that's
service that makes a smile. The six cells battery is basically double
the standard three cells and pretty much double the life time. I'm
hoping to get around three hours from the new battery and having both
with me will give me around 4 and a half hours. A trick for extending
the battery life when in the office that I rather liked is to let the
battery drain entirely and then recharge to 100%... but then to remove
the battery and run the laptop from mains only. Anyone who has allowed
their laptop to run on mains power with the battery in for any length of
time knows what the battery life sinks to.
Saturday 14th June 2008
I've had my HP Mini-Note for a week now and I'm really enjoying the
EeePC sub-notebook phenomenon. The Mini-Note is really different from my
OQO E2 being a small laptop rather than a true UMPC. It's not touch
screen and has a pretty low spec for a laptop (1GB RAM and a 8.9 inch
screen) but it does have a certain charm and is much more usable. I've
been taking it into the office and on-site and it's really good for
browsing and the keyboard is a pleasure to use. The only downside is how
reflective the screen is... its high summer and I found myself looking
for shadows to read the screen properly.
The crocodile leather cover I got for the Mini-Note makes a really nice tactile experience... it's a touch of class and protects the brushed aluminium cover when the Mini-Note is in my satchel.
Saturday 7th June 2008
Deliveries! I got my new HP 2133 Mini-Note and my Office 2007 disks this
morning! The Mini-Note came in the biggest box... it was easily as large
as the box my desktop computer came in and was filled with bubble wrap
to keep the very small Mini-Note box from rattling around. Vista
runs surprisingly well on the Mini-Note and the finish quality seems to
be excellent on this little laptop. It can't really be called an Ultra
Mobile PC (no touch screen) but I can't see how else you could
categorise the current batch of Eee PC clones. I had a very pleasant
morning setting up Office 2007 and getting all my usual add-on programs
onto the Mini-Note.
Friday 6th June 2008
A tale of a kiwi with too many calendars... I have several copies of
MS Outlook running on different computers and without going to the
expense of using MS Exchange I have the problem of keeping them in Sync.
For a self confessed gadget addict I am somewhat behind on my version of
Microsoft Office - 2003 - having had compatibility problems with several
clients when I tried upgrading to Office 2007.My synchronisation
solution was to use Google's Calendar and the little sync tool they
provide.
Now all was good until an upgrade to Google Calendar Sync and a little bug stopped the Sync process. Now ok I freely admit that's not news worth but was I was moved to write about was the speed at which I could find out about the problem and the solution that a nice techy person had discovered. I downloaded the old version of Google Calendar Sync, clicked my heels together three times and I was happily Syncing again. The internet - and Google Search are wonderful things... my hat is off to them.
