Sourabh’s blog

Things are happening at such a fast pace around me, I feel I’m missing a lot. I don’t want Aussies to win the World Cup again. That is just so dominating. Ban them till the next World Cup, I say. Let us bring some competition in the game.

The recent price cuts on the Intel Core 2 Duo processors is so tempting. The laptop, laptop/PC, PC, laptop… dilemma continues. Moreover, the sodding exams just don’t end. I don’t get any time to think anymore. My next exam is on Monday and it is really the moment of truth that I’ve been long waiting for. DSS is just not my cup of tea! I hope I just pass through it, barely works for me!

Laptoplogic.com now gets a dedicated shopping website in the form of LogicBuy.com I wish them good luck for the same.

This weekend would be very very dull for me. I will try to study as much as I can to get the Holy 4/10 in DSS! Design of Steel Structures, I will never forget what a PIA you’ve been.

Want some extra cash pronto? Sell your CPU cycles. This is really as insane as it gets.

An Italian programmer has launched a service that may eventually pay PC users who rent out their systems to supercomputer-like distributed computing projects.

CPUShare allows home users to profit from the significant power of their hardware that otherwise would be wasted every day.

In the CPUShare system, sellers will post asking bids on how much they want for their spare processor cycles, while buyers will put out bids on what they’ll pay.

Go here and see the real deal

Who wants to put their download rig up for grabs?

Alright, this is a blog post after ages. It is really tough to get out of the shell, once you are inside it. I hope you will agree, if you don’t - watch the Indian Cricket team in action tomorrow.

As for Acer being clean, rather the batteries in the laptops they sell. They have finally confirmed they do not need to recall any batteries they used in their laptops. From exploding batteries to laptops on fire due to them, they were all in news over the last couple of months. During all this time, I eagerly awaited for some word from Acer about their battery recall, if any. No, I am not an over cautious person. I only aspired to get the batteries replaced for free. Anything to replace the dying batteries which give a backup of max 15 minutes. Can’t blame me for thinking like that

So, what I hoped for isn’t coming. Feels great to own something which has no issues. As for Sony, they are just cursed as the battery recall number nears a 8 digit numeral. Great!

Read this

PS: Very few Acer’s used Sony batteries. Sanyo mostly. But then again I am just bitching. Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hitachi, IBM/Lenovo, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba all have had issues. Acer shouldn’t miss a trick in the trade and make a most of things going in their favor. Best of Luck!

L-Computers is a PC maker which had shut the company down in late 2004 due to lack of financing, but has reborn itself since then and become a public company listed.

They were in news today for their plans to manufacture a Quad SLI gaming laptop. Honestly, no comments over it. The company has a past history of announcing vaporware products.

Hell with their products, just take a look over their website. Looks familiar doesn’t it?

Apple would surely be proud of the fact that someone from the same business, actually has the guts to rip their layout from top to bottom and the left to the right.

Asus India had organized a laptop service camp for all brands of laptop in Mumbai for 2 days. I wanted to get some things sorted out in my laptop, so I decided to check out the Asus Service. I finally got some company at the last minute to make a trip all the way to Andheri on a lazy Sunday morning.

The Service Center was a well-furnished place with nice aesthetics, appealing environment and a polite staff. It was completely in contrast to that of Acer’s. The Receptionist was kind enough to ask me for some beverages, after I filled up the guest book. As luck may have it, not many people had turned up for the service. I had my ticket to a session with the engineer within no time. It didn’t take me long to explain him the issues with my laptop. Next up, I was handed over a small feedback form to be filled up while the issues were rectified.

The lobby had a sleek 19” widescreen LCD display powered by an ASUS Small Form Factor PC, which looked quite cool on the counter. When I made my way in there, I caught the last 15 minutes of the movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. Just when I was done with the feedback form, I was informed that my laptop had been taken care of. I was shocked to see everything done in less than 30 minutes:
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When you buy things that you do not really need, you need to have an ingenious brain. I was crazy enough in the first place to get a Notebook Cooler for my laptop. After being cool using it and making my laptop receive that extra cooling which it really did not need, I soon realized it was undiluted non-sense. I couldn’t just trash it and had it on my desk - just lying in there for days.

Out of nowhere, a thought clicked to have its outlet blow air on the AC adaptor of the laptop. Honestly speaking, the adaptor was the only component of the laptop that really used to heat up and I mean REALLY like bread straight out of the oven. The original Acer adaptor had blown up once in the past, I was extra careful with it. I had cut down my continuous laptop runtimes for the same. Hell, I even used to give the adaptor a 10 min rest by utilizing the last bit of the laptop batteries and then switching on the main supply.

Surprisingly, using the Notebook Cooler for cooling the Adaptor worked out well. Now even after 8-10 hours of continuous usage, it doesn’t turn too hot to raise any fears for me. So, the whole thing turned out to be actually working pretty well. Nice.

How does an AC Adapter Cooler sound? Yes, I think the same - Stupid. Well, who knows someone might have it patented too! I hope no ones listening

PS: Makes me wonderm what is right - adapter or adaptor?. I guess both must be right- have seen both of them being used. Too sleepy to do any google on this!

I had been working for a while with LaptopLogic in my spare time. A couple of months have passed since I first started, and I must admit it has been an interesting experience. I was completely unaware what online publishing was all about and how professional things could go.

One of my first works with them involved etching out a TV tuner guide for the laptops. I have always tweaked and fiddled with TV tuners from the day I got my first PC for my own use some years back. I couldn’t have thought of a better topic for my first guide at LaptopLogic. Pinnacle India was kind enough to provide the Pinnacle PCTV100e for the review and the guide in general. But as things turned out, due to some reasons the guide could only be published last night. You can have a look at it here.

However, it is not my first guide/review, but I really like how it really shaped up well, with inputs from Thai and Dan from the team. There is this immense satisfaction after going through with the different sections on the guide, which made me scribble this down

Finally gathered all my courage to go in for a BIOS update for my laptop. Stupid Acer’s default BIOS didnt have any options for allocating more than 64MB for video memory. This issue shouldnt have been there in the first place, because they marketed their laptop saying max 128MB of shared video memory.

The BIOS files were extinct on all the Acer websites worldwide. The one which had the BIOS, didnt have any mention whether it supports the different variants of the series. But almost after 2 months when I got hold of the BIOS, curiosity got the best of me and i was itching to flash the bios. Without fearing the consequences, went ahead with the BIOS upgrade and it went smoothly. No issues whatsoever.

Looking at the bright side, I can now try out Windows Vista Beta 2 minus the Aero on my laptop. Well, something is always better than nothing. I had been eyeing on the same for a long time, but now its time to actually do it.

While I hit the Publish button for this post, I am making a 15GB room for the next Windows edition install and persuading a friend to download the Beta 2 iso.

Just got the shock of my life. While I was just packing my things and getting all ready to dooz off, I tripped on the telephone wire (was connected on dialup) and the whole laptop came down -screen first on the marble flooring! Three feet almost. I was preparing myself mentally for the worst, as I cleaned the mess around the laptop including the likes of the notebook cooler, the mouse and the AC adaptor.

Broken LCD is the least I could expect from it. And when I turned it over and placed it on the desk, I could see the display working pretty fine. Yes, the laptop is working. Truth be told, the fibre panel which holds the LCD had ruffled and made its way out at several sections. Pressing hard making it to hold up the LCD as before, I was successful in bringint the laptop to the original state - well , almost.

There are apparently no physical defects on the laptop. Thank God! Just the lid mechanism which is required to pack the laptop down is twisted. After some efforts, tried the best I could to straighten it. And now it atleast closes down minus the spring effect.

If it wasn’t my day, I cant imagine myself without a broken laptop. Saved my ass, literally.

Two days back, the laptop adapter decided to call it a day. I thought and even now assume it was coz of the aging effect. Got myself a brand new original Acer AC adaptor of the same ratings (19V @ 3.42A). Things went fine for a day until I decided to use my laptop in the office. There was a short power cut, but I decided to work on the inverter like I always used to do before.Plugged in the AC adapter and dang! I saw the freakin new adapter burning again. Heard some scratching noise and the green light on the adapter wasnt to be lit up again. The inverter was charged completely and we had fixed a few loose cabling things in here a few weeks back. God knows what caused it, fully charged battery or lack of earthing at the point from the time I last used the laptop at that point.

I aint getting the replacement before I am sure what caused it. I just hope the seller gets it replaced or gets the thing fixed soon.

Things are really not going well for me. Everythind bad happens at the same time together at a time when I decided i could just rest and do what I want to after the exams. If it isnt the ISP, or the exams, its your damn PC going bizzare all thanks to whatever caused the same.