For those of you who follow me in Plurk, many of you already know by now that my laptop, a Compaq Presario C714NR died on me last week. Now you know why I haven’t updated or published new posts during the past week. Anyways, I took my laptop to BestBuy and had the Geek Squad check it. After doing a series of tests, they determined that it was the motherboard. I wasn’t that convinced because the guy I talked to didn’t sound too confident with his answers. I thought about asking a second opinion from another computer repair shop but since the laptop is still under warranty, I’m sending it back to HP/Compaq so they can check and/or repair it. I’ve already contacted them and they’ll be sending a box for shipping. I’m hoping that the initial diagnosis is wrong and that it’s not the motherboard that’s broken but something minor that can be easily repaired and is covered by the warranty because it only has a 1 year limited warranty.

Since I initially thought that the laptop was no longer under warranty and that I couldn’t have it fixed/repaired, I went ahead and looked for a new one to replace it. I searched online for the best deal I could find and found one over at BestBuy. It was for a Toshiba Satellite A305-S6872 which was on sale for $599 (regular retail price $749). Because I used a BestBuy credit card to purchase it, I was able to avail of an 18-month no interest financing offer.

Specifications:

• Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T5800 with 800MHz frontside bus, 2MB L2 cache and 2.0 GHz processor speed
• 3 GB PC6400 DDR2 800 MHz SDRAM
• 250 GB SATA HDD (5400 rpm)
• DVD-SuperMulti± with Labelflash™ drive
• harman/kardon® stereo speakers
• 15.4″ WXGA high definition LCD widescreen display with TruBrite® Technology
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD with up to 128MB-1294MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory
• Built-in wireless LAN Intel® Wi-Fi Link 5100AGN (802.11a/g/n)

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The Toshiba Satellite A305-S6872 was only available online so it wasn’t available for store-pickup and I had no choice but to pay for shipping. I bought it Wednesday afternoon and got Monday afternoon. I’m glad that I was able to get it while it was on sale because a couple days after I bought it, it was back to its original retail price. I’ve only had this Toshiba Satellite A305-S6872 for a couple days now and I haven’t tried all of its features like the webcam, media card reader and other stuff so I can’t write a review right now, but for sure I’ll be able to write a review in about a couple weeks time so watch out for that.

On a side note, now that I have this to work with, I’ll be doing a lot of catching up in the next few days – publishing new posts, blog hopping, replying to comments and emails. I’m also working on a new blog design/layout which I hope I would be able to finish and implement soon.

Thank you for your time and have a good day!

2007 was a great year for me and my blog. I would call it the coming of age for JaypeeOnline. For what started out as my personal blog, has now turned into a more focused blog. I”ve never imagined my blog to reach this far but I’m very proud of it. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank my family, friends and loyal readers because without them, all of this won’t be possible. You guys are the driving force, my inspiration. Thank you so much!

Here’s a short list of the achievements, events and other stuff for JaypeeOnline in 2007:

• JaypeeOnline was featured in Manila Bulletin’s Blog-O-Rama segment. Thanks to Ms. Annalyn Jusay for the opportunity.
• Finalist in the 2007 Philippine Blog Awards – Technology Category. I still don’t know who nominated me, but whoever you are thank you very much!
• Finally got my own paid hosting and moved JaypeeOnline over to Dreamhost.
• This was also the year JaypeeOnline joined b5media. Gotcha! That was my April Fool’s post.
• Made my first paid review or sponsored post.
• Shifted focus from personal blog to Blogging News and Reviews.
• Accomplished my goal of reaching/exceeding 100 RSS feed readers and almost doubled it. If you haven’t subscribed to my RSS feed yet, now is the best time to do it. Subscribe now!
• Got my first officially “bought by blogging” gadget, the Canon Powershot S3 IS.
• I was finally able to create and start my weekly feature which I named the Weekend Roundup.
• Sponsored the Blogger’s Kapihan 2.0: BlogEd 101. My first time to sponsor such an event and most certainly won’t be my last.
• Got my second “bought by blogging” gadget, the Compaq Presario C714NR.
• Made it to Basapa’s list of 2007′s Top Pinoy ProBloggers.

Aside from all these stuff, what made this year a blast was getting to meet and make new friends from the blogosphere. And that folks, is the year that was 2007 for JaypeeOnline.

A prosperous and Happy New Year to everyone! God bless!

2 months ago, my old laptop a Compaq Presario 2200 started acting up. There were times when it won’t turn on and sometimes it won’t restart. Aside from that, it only had a 40 GB hard drive and 256 MB of RAM which limited me from performing some of my tasks. I couldn’t install some of the programs that I need like Adobe Photoshop. With all of those issues coming to play, it was time to replace it. I went online and looked for an affordable laptop with decent specs. I was on a tight budget so my options were little.

I knew that if I waited until Thanksgiving I would get a better deal or a better laptop with the same price but the thing is that I couldn’t wait and I needed it ASAP. I ended up buying the Compaq Presario C714NR from BestBuy which was on sale for $499. It was the best deal that I could get at that time.

Specifications:

• Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core processor T2310 with 533MHz frontside bus, 1MB L2 cache and 1.46GHz processor speed
• 1GB DDR2 memory
• Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support
• 15.4″ WXGA high-definition LCD widescreen display with BrightView technology and 1280 x 800 resolution
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with up to 251MB shared video memory; S-video output; built-in Altec Lansing audio
• Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g); built-in 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN (with RJ-45 connector); high speed 56 Kbps modem

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First thing I did with the laptop was to uninstall unnecessary programs and trialware that’s already installed. Then I got rid of startup programs from the system configuration. This proved to be very helpful as it cut the loading time by more than half and my laptop now loads much quicker. This is first time for me to have a computer running on Windows Vista and before that I was under the assumption that you really need atleast 2 GB of RAM but with my laptop, 1 GB of RAM seems to be enough to run Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Photoshop, Pidgin and other programs at the same time. But of course the more memory you have the better so I do plan to upgrade it to 2 GB soon. What I’ll do is buy the memory online and install it myself instead of bringing it to BestBuy and pay the GeekSquad to do it.

Overall, the Compaq C714NR is a good buy. It has a sleek design, the display is clear and bright and battery life is good. It has a dual core processor and SATA hard drive. The wireless LAN easily detects all available networks and connects without any problems.

The things that I don’t like about this laptop are: position of the USB ports because they are all in the side and near the front so it gets in the way sometimes. The sound quality is good but the problem is with the volume coz even at full volume, the sound isn’t that loud compared to other laptops. Another issue I have is that it gets a bit warm on the are where you rest your wrists. It’s not that bad but it can bother you if you’re using the laptop for long periods of time. If you have the money, you can get a cooling pad.

IMPORTANT:If you happen to have this laptop or decide to buy it, one thing you need to remember is to NEVER update the display or video/graphics driver. Doing so will bring the blue screen of death. If it happens to you, there are several ways to fix it. One way is to boot in Safe Mode and download the Mobile Intel 965/960 Express Chipset Family Video/Graphics driver from Compaq’s website. Then reboot the computer and boot again in Safe Mode, disable or uninstall the display drivers via the Device Manager and then reboot. Log back in and install the driver that you downloaded. This should work and restore the video/graphics driver. If you followed this steps and still encounter problems, leave a comment or contact me and I’ll do my best to help you fix it.