Traveling Light The Rest Of The Week: Mini 2140 & Win7
Last Friday my trusty HP 8510p laptop developed a serious problem. The connection between the LCD and the motherboard went bad rendering the display useless. The system is only about 16 months old so it’s not quite time to replace it, at least according to my employer.
Thankfully I bought a 3 year extended warranty so HP is going to take care of the trouble. Monday I spent half an hour on the phone with HP support getting the case logged and ordering a return shipping box. Initially they didn’t have the extended warranty on file, but I had the receipt to prove it. The system was ordered from their SMB Depot so all the records are email, which I could immediately produce as proof.
HP seems to have accepted that this is a warranty matter. They want the failed unit, including its hard drive, which means conducting a full backup. I can still use the system with an external monitor for the moment. That will let me make a backup to a portable hard drive before the system ships out for repair.
This whole situation means that I won’t have a laptop for possibly a week, perhaps longer. It’s not too bad since I finish out the end of this week in San Francisco, then I’m on vacation for two weeks. The laptop ships to HP today so the Mini 2140, with it’s newly installed Windows 7, will be my traveling companion in San Francisco.
I’m guessing that I’ll likely have the Mini at the HDComms Conference in NYC next week, unless HP acts faster than I expect. If I’m traveling with only the netbook I may be less inclined to live blog from the HDComms event.
I’ve always wondered if live bogging is a good idea. I often need some time to consider the matters at hand before writing. Further, if a person is occupied in the act of live blogging then they’re probably missing vast parts of the event. They’re certainly missing a lot of the networking opportunity.
Windows 7 has been a treat on the netbook. Thus far I’m liking it a lot. I don’t have too many apps loaded at present. I should probably load MS Office tonight. My sense is that 1GB of RAM is just enough to get by for now, and moving to 2 GB will be necessary before long. Even with only 1GB of RAM the Mini is zippy enough for writing, email and browsing. It does a decent job running Eyebeam and Skype.
True to their promise HP had a pre-addressed Fedex shipping box at my door the very next day. It went out to them Tuesday afternoon. The repair location is actually in Houston, so perhaps I’ll have the laptop back by the time that I too am back home Friday evening.
In the mean time, as I gather more experience with the netbook and Windows 7 I’ll be making further notes hereabouts.