After a long wait, ordering on 8/27/08 and finally receiving it 9/25/08 (wow, almost as bad as the Dell XPS M1330!), I finally have the wonderful machine that is the Lenovo IdeaPad U330.  Preliminary thoughts after using it for about 2 hours?  Neat features, very responsive, I hate the placement of the Fn key, and awesome screen. 1 day? Great screen, very cool facial recognition webcam, awesome screen, bad battery life, nice keyboard, quite responsive, quiet, and I don’t like vista.  Seeing as how I just received this laptop, this will be a somewhat simple, initial review.  It will take a few days to do full battery testing, performance metrics, etc etc, but I will post updates to this page as I go along, and post a final review in a new post once it’s complete!

Continue reading ‘Lenovo IdeaPad U330 Initial Hands On Review’ »

So no sooner had I bought and brought home my Acer Aspire One,  I was able to get in on an order for some Dell Inspiron Mini 9’s!  Well, the other night they finally arrived and here I am to give you my review!  What do I think in a one liner?  Compared to the other netbooks currently available, it’s about the same as the rest except it gets a BIT better battery life, I don’t like the keyboard, but love the easy access for upgrades. 

Lets start off with the specs of the system reviewed:

• Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6GHz, 533Mhz512K L2 Cache
• 512MB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM
• 8.9 inch Wide Screen WSVGA (1024×600) LED Backlit - Glossy
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
• 16GB Solid State Drive (mini-card Module/PATA)
• Windows XP Home Edition
• Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
• 32WHr 4-cell Battery
• Bluetooth 2.1 module
• Memory card slot (SD, MS/Pro, MMC)
• 3 x USB
• Weight:  2lbs 5oz (with 4 cell)

Continue reading ‘Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Usage Review’ »

I recently moved to the Baltimore/Washington area and have opted to use the trains to get to and from work, so I was looking for a ultra portable laptop to take with me on my commute.  At the time, I had a Dell Latitude D630 and though it’s weighs about 5 pounds, I wanted something much lighter - which is when I came across the Acer Aspire One.   I just started a new job, so money was tight, and this was the cheapest ‘netbook’ available that had the new Atom processor and XP (plus it was carried locally by Best Buy, so not having to wait for shipping), so I decided to give it a go:

Here are the specs of the machine reviewed:

• Intel Atom N270 1.6Ghz 533mhz fsb 512mb cache
• 1gb ddr2-667 (512mb soldiered, 512mb removable/upgradeable, though difficult)
• 8.9" WSVGA (1024×600), CrystalBrite (glossy), LED Backlit screen
• 120GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive (1.8")
• Intel integrated 950 graphics
• Built in 0.3mp (vga) webcam with mic
• 2 Memory card slots
  • 1 SDHC
  • 1 5-in-1 (SD, MMC, Reduced Size MMC, MS/MS Pro, & xD)
• 3 usb 2.0 ports
• Built in 802.11b/g wifi (atheros invilink)
• 2.2 pounds, 1.1" thick
• Windows XP Home

Continue reading ‘Acer Aspire One - Actual Usage Review (XP, 120gb, 3 cell)’ »

Ever since I read the first posting about the Eee PC, I’ve been wanting to get one and try it out, and today, mine finally came in the mail.  I read a few reviews about how small it was, but I can never appreciate the size of a device through most people’s pictures, so I figured I’d write a little about it here with some of my initial thoughts while including some size comparisons and unboxing pictures! 

My initial thoughts after using it for a few minutes?  — It would be GREAT for traveling with, even though it doesn’t have a very long battery life, at 2.5 (or upto 3.5 w/the more expensive model), it would be good enough for basic travel usage.  It’s small and light enough to not really notice it in a backpack or simply just carrying it around in any kind of bag. And with enough software and power to do your basic web browsing, music listening, word processing, etc you’re set for basically anything you’d probably do while not at home (in other words, not playing games, video editing, or doing hard core document handling/manipulating).  Yes, the screen size is small, but it’s still large enough to do such basic tasks - however, with the most common screen resolution recently being bumped up to 1024×768 (up from 800×600), many websites will have horizontal scroll bars on this size screen (see pictures below).  If that doesn’t bother you too much, then you are golden (and if it does, perhaps you could try seeing if those sites have a mobile version made for pda’s).  

Continue reading ‘Review - ASUS Eee PC’ »

The Fujitsu p7120 is a tiny laptop that sticks with a removable optical drive and great battery life.   Weighing in at only 3.2 pounds (with the extended battery) and a 10.6″ screen, this is a very comfortable laptop to carry around throughout the day, while providing enough battery life to leave the charger at home.   I realize this laptop has been out for quite some time (I’ve actually owned this laptop once before), but I figured now that vista has come out, it may be useful to know if it’s still usable (in other words, make sure it’s not painfully slow). 

Continue reading ‘Review - Fujitsu P7120 Ultraportable Laptop (with Vista)’ »

check out my review of the dell m1330

there are videos, pictures, and more!

read the review –>

how to fix m1210 flexing / bulging keyboard!!!

UPDATE 3/21/08 — found the pictures thanks for www.archive.org! (though, only the thumbnails)

due to an issue caused by me not thinking when switching webhosts, I have lost all the pictures of this guide :( — I will continue to look for them, and re-upload if found!!

aight, so I just got my brand new dell xps m1210 and was so excited as I opened the box. I read some reviews (mainly from notebookreview.com, GREAT site!!) and they mentioned that there was some pretty significant keyboard flex, mainly on the bottom right. Well turns out, that’s VERY true! I opened the laptop and instantly noticed a bulge in the keyboard, as if there was a bubble under the right hand side of the keyboard! this really bothered me as I spent like $1200 on this thing and I wanted it to be like it *should* be perfect (at least in my mind, haha)

So I decided to see if I could figure out why it was bulging and I found why and fixed it (or at least made it MUCH better)!! I assume it’ll be the same reason for other m1210’s?….

 
So here’s the general view of the chassis under the keyboard, and from here, you can’t really tell what’s causing it.

 
Here, you can see where the chassis is protruding a bit, which causes the keyboard to bulge, and most likely is also why there’s such flex in the keyboard

 
this is another view of what’s causing the chassis to rise up like it is — seems that it was a bad design / flaw as it seems that the plastic part shouldn’t be as thick as it is..or there’s something pushing up on it… perhaps this can be shaved down, cut out,etc?

 
yet another view from the otherside showing the chassis sticking up

so….is this a design flaw? are all the m1210’s like this and this bad? I was thinking about cutting that section of the plastic part with my dremmel but was worried that it would throw plastic shavings all over the place and that would suck….so then, before I called dell for a return (!!!) I tried to see if I could figure out what the problem was…..

 
turns out, the cable from the touch pad was wedged between the a plastic part of the chassis and the bottom!

this takes patience, some long flat-head screw drivers, and a flashlight helps. What you basically have to do is pry the top part of the chassis up so you can move the cable free and up to where it seems like it was supposed to go…..

 
you gotta start out by pulling out the cable from the motherboard — be gentle, and kinda wiggle the cable left and right while pulling out slowly and carefully until it comes out.

 
when done, the cable will actually run though this little…’path way’ in between these (where arrow points) plastic things and come out at the other side (green circle)

 
so this is where I put the screwdriver to pry that part of the chassis up (it seemed a safe place) — just be VERY careful not to let the screw driver slide into the memory!!! — you can just kinda shove the screw driver in there, with the screen all the way back, and leave it there — (and of course if it’s not lifting the chassis up enough later, you’ll just have to hold the screw driver down to hold the chassis up more, it may help to have someone else hold it)

 
after removing the dvd drive — using a 2nd screwdriver in the bay, kinda push the cable to the left (while having the chassis lifted up by the first screwdriver with someone else helping if the wire is still wedged too tight) while pulling the end of the cable from the keyboard area and try to get it in that ‘path’ pictured above (arrow/dotted lines/green circle..) — it may take a while cause you don’t want to pull/push to hard because you don’t want the screw driver to slip and then scrape the motherboard or something else important! 

 
once you get the cable up and around/behind that vertical plastic piece that was squishing the cable, it’ll probably look like this in the keyboard area..

just simply push the cable under/behind the plastic thing and then out at the end, plug it back in, put the keyboard back on, and the dvd drive, and you’re done! No more horrible bulge/keyboard flex!!