Internal calendar
My internal calendar is very vague and fuzzy. But tonight is the Emilie Simon show; not last night. And today is pay day. And I have tomorrow off from work. Gah, so confusing. So yeah, today I picked up a new bag of cat food because he had finished the previous one. It seems that one small bag lasts him about a month.
I'm supposed to be getting a new PC at work. This one is such an underpowered PoS that sometimes a good 20% of my time here is spent waiting for things to open, close, unfreeze, etc. My PC at home is a big clunker but is in way better shape. Still, I've been thinking of getting one of those "netbook" thingies, like sort of a bare-bones laptop designed for simple stuff like internet use. The couple that I've been able to try out have worked just as well or even better/faster for most of the basic stuff that I use a computer for than my home PC (and definitely my work PC). So I've been looking at a couple of different models, most particularly the Samsung NC10, which has gotten good reviews and seems to be relatively easily upgradable, according to one reviewer:
The standard unit arrives with XP Home, 1 GB memory and a 160 GB 5400 rpm drive. The NC10 feels solid, build quality (inside and out) are excellent and out of the box the unit was responsive and fairly snappy. I have two WiFi access points in my home and the NC10's WiFi card picked both up with excellent reception and through-put; I also tried my Sprint USB broadband adapter with equally satisfactory results.
THE UPGRADES:
Like most engineering types; "If its not broke, take it apart and fix it anyway". I've read the reviews and knew the memory and hard disk could be easily be upgraded (given a little bit of prior experience and some hardware finesse). I went to my preferred parts supplier, Newegg, and purchased a 2GB stick of RAM for $32 and a 7200 rpm 320 GB disk drive for $100. I also picked-up a nice Netbook carrying case by Caselogic for $12 with my Amazon order. I used Apricon's EZ Upgrade Kit to image the units' standard 160 GB disk and then put it on the shelf as the failsafe backup. It took me about 10 minutes to take the unit apart and upgrade the components. I then prepared a Windows XP Pro DVD slipstreamed with SP3, repartitioned the disk, reinstalled the operating system and all the Samsung drivers and application software. Samsung did an excellent job of putting all the NC10's drivers and application software on their technical support web page. The overall result of these upgrades makes a noticeable improvement in overall performance.
And basically I would want to upgrade mine the same way. I like that it comes with Windows XP installed, rather than Windows Vista, which is what comes on almost all PC laptops nowadays. I wouldn't be using the machine for gaming or video production or anything intense like that. Just light stuff... internet, listening to music, etc. 95% of what I use my main home PC for. But this one would be portable, and probably faster in a lot of ways. I'd be able to upgrade the memory myself, but the hard drive upgrade would be something I'd seek help for, especially the partitioning thing (something I didn't do right on my internal hard drive on my home PC, so I am only able to use a fraction of its total capacity).
I'm supposed to be getting a new PC at work. This one is such an underpowered PoS that sometimes a good 20% of my time here is spent waiting for things to open, close, unfreeze, etc. My PC at home is a big clunker but is in way better shape. Still, I've been thinking of getting one of those "netbook" thingies, like sort of a bare-bones laptop designed for simple stuff like internet use. The couple that I've been able to try out have worked just as well or even better/faster for most of the basic stuff that I use a computer for than my home PC (and definitely my work PC). So I've been looking at a couple of different models, most particularly the Samsung NC10, which has gotten good reviews and seems to be relatively easily upgradable, according to one reviewer:
The standard unit arrives with XP Home, 1 GB memory and a 160 GB 5400 rpm drive. The NC10 feels solid, build quality (inside and out) are excellent and out of the box the unit was responsive and fairly snappy. I have two WiFi access points in my home and the NC10's WiFi card picked both up with excellent reception and through-put; I also tried my Sprint USB broadband adapter with equally satisfactory results.
THE UPGRADES:
Like most engineering types; "If its not broke, take it apart and fix it anyway". I've read the reviews and knew the memory and hard disk could be easily be upgraded (given a little bit of prior experience and some hardware finesse). I went to my preferred parts supplier, Newegg, and purchased a 2GB stick of RAM for $32 and a 7200 rpm 320 GB disk drive for $100. I also picked-up a nice Netbook carrying case by Caselogic for $12 with my Amazon order. I used Apricon's EZ Upgrade Kit to image the units' standard 160 GB disk and then put it on the shelf as the failsafe backup. It took me about 10 minutes to take the unit apart and upgrade the components. I then prepared a Windows XP Pro DVD slipstreamed with SP3, repartitioned the disk, reinstalled the operating system and all the Samsung drivers and application software. Samsung did an excellent job of putting all the NC10's drivers and application software on their technical support web page. The overall result of these upgrades makes a noticeable improvement in overall performance.
And basically I would want to upgrade mine the same way. I like that it comes with Windows XP installed, rather than Windows Vista, which is what comes on almost all PC laptops nowadays. I wouldn't be using the machine for gaming or video production or anything intense like that. Just light stuff... internet, listening to music, etc. 95% of what I use my main home PC for. But this one would be portable, and probably faster in a lot of ways. I'd be able to upgrade the memory myself, but the hard drive upgrade would be something I'd seek help for, especially the partitioning thing (something I didn't do right on my internal hard drive on my home PC, so I am only able to use a fraction of its total capacity).