Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

The original Asus Eee PC was spectacular hit. Most people, however, wanted more power, longer battery life and a larger solid state storage drive. Many wanted to install Windows besides.

Now it’s here! The ultimate in an ultra portable PC.

The new Asus Eee 901 PC, which comes in white or ebony, has all of that. The Asus Eee 901 is based on the new Intel Atom CPU, has 1GB RAM, 802.11n wireless, bluetooth, 10/100 lan, webcam, 12GB SSD drive, 8.9″ (1024 x 600) WSVGA display, hi-def speakers and mic, MMC/SD slot and it only weighs 2.4 pounds.

This machine is packed full of features and has Windows XP Home preinstalled. Thanks to the new Intel Atom architecture it can boast a battery life of 4 - 8 hours instead of the typical 3 hours of the original Eee PC.

When the first Eee PC debuted I thought it was just a bunch of hype and that it would die down. It never did. In fact, entire online communities sprung up around the Eee PC and what you could do with it.

Now with the 901 version of the Eee, Asus has added about every feature that users hungered for in the first edition.

You won’t find much competition on the price, it’s pretty set at $599. What you will be looking for is availability.

One of my favorite vendor’s is Buy.com, they are offering the Eee PC 901 with free shipping - when in stock! You can place your order and they will ship it as soon as it’s in.

Asus Eee 901 PC - ebony

I just setup a new Dell D630 laptop (see full config at my laptop buying guide) for a client with the built in Verizon Wireless Broadband service.

I must say I’m very impressed. The option only cost about $100, and is completely built in. If you get the card from Verizon (or any other provider), you have to stick the card in the PC slot with an antenna sticking up.

On the traditional cards, the antenna typically gets in the way of your wrist when typing. Not so with the Dell built in Verizon option.

Setup was a snap (so simple the client did it himself). When you want to go online, just click the connect button on the software from the system tray and you are online immediately.

Speed is pretty impressive as well. I was getting 1200 down and 200 up. I’d like to see a bit more on the upload side, but I had been told to expect more like 500 - 700 on the download, so I was pretty happy overall.

The key thing to remember with an wireless broadband service like Verizon’s is security. You are wide open on the internet without the protection of a hardware firewall! Therefore, a good quality - no, a great quality software firewall.

I have recently been installing ZoneAlarm’s highly touted Internet Security Suite and been very happy with it. ZoneAlarm was one of the first companies to release a software firewall in the early days of the web (shortly after Al Gore invented it…)

The ergonomics, convenience, price and performance of this Dell laptop built in option make me give the Verizon Wireless Broadband a big thumbs up.

Just don’t forget the firewall.

I had reader contact me with this question:

I am buying a laptop for the first time and have been looking at the Dell XPS M1330. The only thing is once you start getting the specs up it starts getting quite expensive. I was hoping that maybe you could tell me if this is one of those systems that you can upgrade yourself easily without voiding warranty and for a cheaper price like my friends MacBook.

Here is my response:

You are absolutely correct, adding the good stuff drives the price up.

I can’t think of too many ways to scrimp on price and upgrade later. Upgrading processors in laptops never seems to be economical; RAM is about the only thing you can add later.

If you can live in the Mac world, I have never heard of an unhappy macbook buyer. I live in the PC world because the applications that my clients have always needed are spec’d on PC’s and Windows.

It truly is frustrating to see those cheap prices on Dell ads, but when you actually go to buy the product and make a few changes the price zooms upward.

All I can say is that if you buy right the first time, a laptop can serve you well for 3 - 4 years before you really become unhappy with it. My laptop is going on 3 1/2 years and still going strong.

I can’t say the same for an el cheapo unit that looks better in the glossy ad than it performs in person. I have seen too many of them go by the wayside after little more than a year of frustrating usage.

Please buy accordingly.

If you own Dell stock and are less than pleased with the performance, I’m afraid that it’s partly my fault.

You see, it’s almost daily that someone asks me whether the remedy to their slow pc is to buy a new one.

“How old is it?”, I ask. If the answer is 4 years or less, then I can presume that:

• They probably have a Pentium 4
• They probably don’t have Windows ME
• They probably can add RAM real cheap (Rambus excepted)

Case in point over the weekend.  Pentium 4 1.7, 512MB RAM, decent 7200rpm hard drive. Windows 2000 Pro was installed, along with all kinds of picture and photo printer garbage. Ran like a hog with no legs.

I backed up all of the data, twice, and did a clean install of Windows XP Pro. Be innovative and you can pick up a copy of XP cheap, if not free. Possibly even legally

Ok, just kidding. I don’t recommend pirating software, but between extra open license copies, cheap OEM licenses, legitimate educational copies - you get the idea.

At 512 RAM, this machine didn’t even need any money spent on it.

After the clean install of Windows XP Pro and just the needed software, no extra garbage, and this PC came to life.

Unless you are running the latest and greatest high intensity software, chances are that a clean install (after 2 backups!) will give you back that new PC performance you haven’t had in years.

If you have a large monitor, perhaps 20″ or larger; or if you have a super high resolution laptop screen, then perhaps you have encountered the small text that a high resolution screen can leave you with.

The Tip of the Week from Bill Myers Online offered a solution.

Bill’s idea is this:

You can right click on your computer desktop, select properties, select ‘appearance’, and change the ‘text size’ from ‘normal’ to ‘large fonts’. Then click ‘apply’.

Doing this will instantly increase the size of text in Windows displays - and you’ll finally be able to realize how great your large screen monitor really is.

While this probably works fine for Bill with the applications he uses, let me warn you of what you are likely to encounter. Applications that are not 100% Windows aware & compatible, which is about 99.9% of the applications out there, will have trouble rendering the larger text properly in menus, dialog boxes and button text. In fact, you may find the buttons now have inadequate text on them to know what they do.

If you use strictly Microsoft applications and other high end graphics applications, this may not be a problem. But with my clients I have seen this problem in spades.

My solution? Simple. Set the resolution to something you can work with. With older or cheap laptops, this isn’t as easy. Or with el cheapo flat panels, either. Flat panels and laptop screens sometimes have limited resolutions that look good enough to use; or that work out with their widescreen format.

For instance; I use a pair of Samsung 204B 20″ monitors. I could set the resolution to 1600 x 1200 and put all kinds of stuff on the screen. I couldn’t read any of it without squinting or using binoculars, but I could sure get a bunch of stuff on the screen.

Instead, I set the resolution to 1280 x 1024; a nice compromise that lets me utilize the larger screen real estate, yet renders text large enough to read.

I stopped in at my local Batteries Plus store yesterday to recycle a laptop battery and buy some alkaline AAA batteries for YAEG (Yet Another Electronic Gadget). I was fully expecting to be unhappy with the price of the batteries, so I was comparing price on the different brands.

The Duracell really seem to last better, but the house brand “Neon” is usually cheaper. I get a reseller discount which helps, and no sales tax if I’m reselling, so many times the Duracell are about the same.

One of the store employees asked if I would consider Rayovac which had a 6 pack on sale for $.99 - which is $3.99 less a $3 in store coupon. Now, when I was a kid - yes, we did have electricity then - Rayovac were considered inferior to Eveready, so the brand suffers a bit with me. I asked if it was a rebate I had to send in and he shook his head “no”. For $.99, why not?

I needed 8 batteries so I bought 2 - 6 packs, expecting to pay about $2.00. I didn’t think my reseller discount would help much, but the clerk told me I owed him 28 cents ($0.28). I told him I don’t ordinarily ask twice when surprised by a low amount, but I do dislike handcuffs.

There was a supervisor watching over this apparent trainee so I looked at him. He explained that my discount knocked the price down to $3.14 each (from $3.99), Rayovac provided a $3.00 coupon, and there was no tax since I was reselling these.

My next question, of course, was “what other batteries are on sale, and for how long?”. He pointed to a rack of different battery sizes and said that all of these multi-packs had the coupon and it was good until then end of July.

“I’ll check my inventory and be back”.

A client asked me to look at his son-in-law’s new Dell Laptop. It is an Inspiron E1505 that isn’t very old, and they never could get the wireless to work.

My first challenge was to determine whether the laptop was equipped with Dell’s WiFi card or the Intel WiFi option. Since the Intel WiFi option cost more, though not much and well worth it to me, I presumed it had the Dell.

Why didn’t I look at the order info, the packing slip or the receipt? Good question. Problem is that all of that paperwork was conveniently missing. Am I the only one who keeps and even makes copies of that stuff?

Turns out that drivers and software for both WiFi options were installed. And why not? A trip to Dell’s website support where I had input the service tag actually brought up a screen of possible drivers with “recommended” next to the Intel driver and “optional” next to the Dell driver. Why doesn’t Dell’s computer system know for sure? The son-in-law had already tried to fix it himself and had installed both.

The device manager showed 3 entries of “other device” with the description for all 3 as “base system device”. No driver worked.

Reboot and into the bios. WiFi device shows as “not present”. Time to call support and hope I get someone whose English I can understand.

Turns out that the gal was fairly knowledgeable AND understandable - although I’m pretty sure she was not from the USA. She had me open up the laptop to make sure that the WiFi card was actually present and seated properly in the laptop.

I will be quite honest with you; taking apart laptops gives me the jitters. Plastic (read breakable) pieces snapped together that you are told to “carefully lift and remove” are not my favorite hardware to mess with. Getting at the WiFi card under the keyboard turned out not too bad this time. Bending the plastic hinge cover, which wouldn’t budge at the half way point, caused my brain to hear a snapping noise that fortunately was only in my head.

A short prayer and a slight twist later and it came off. 2 more small screws and the keyboard was out of the way as well. While the Dell technician was trying to explain what she wanted me to check for, I tried to interrupt her to tell her that I think I had the problem spotted.

The WiFi card was laying there, not loose in the socket, but instead completely OUT of the socket. I plugged it in, put it back together, and the Dell WiFi drivers installed themselves.

Keep in mind that Dell support will try to get you to fix it yourself over the phone rather than pay for a contract technician to come out to fix it. If you aren’t comfortable taking your PC or laptop apart and don’t want to pay me to do it, be firm in insisting you want a technician dispatched (if your warranty coverage provides that - you did get CompleteCare, right?). In this case, expediency called for me to try the fix myself.

When we were done, the WiFi did work, but the 3 “base system device” entries were still in the “other device” category of device manager with the yellow exclamation point. The Dell tech cared not a whimper. As long as everything worked, she was done.

Well, Ok, I guess; but I would really rather a clean looking device configuration. I get a much warmer and fuzzier feeling that everything will be alright going forward that way. So that’s a mark or two off of A+ in my mind.

The other mark off is the website support that implies I should install the Intel WiFi driver when Dell’s database knows I have the Dell WiFi option in the unit I’m working on.

It’s easy to see how people get frustrated with computer systems and tech support. At least this laptop is working fine now.

A friend of mine just setup a nice computer desk and hutch. The laptop placed on the desk, the printer on a shelf above it.

Who knows, cheap computer furniture or possibly improper assembly. Either way, the shelf with the printer came down on the laptop and wrecked the screen.

The laptop is old enough that, even if he had Dell’s CompleteCare, it wouldn’t do him any good. He asked me what to do.

Parts alone are probably around $800; out of the question for an old laptop. My suggestion is to take the screen all the way off and plug in a nice flat panel display.

If you wanted, you could even put the laptop off to the side or underneath and plug in (or use wireless) nice keyboard and mouse. Then you can still use the computing power of the laptop, and when it dies, the money you spent on keyboard, mouse and flat panel display can still be put to good use with a new PC.

Laptop repair is an expensive option; chances are, there is a better solution when something like this happens.

That Gateway laptop with Windows Vista that I had so much trouble with was back under my typing fingers again today. I finally had it working perfectly with the new NetGear router, so it was time to see if it would connect to the older Dell WiFi router.

Drum roll, please…. No. Same garbage. Connect up, no DHCP address. Set an alternate IP address. Still cannot even ping the router, even though Vista is saying that the WiFi is connected with “local” connectivity (but no internet).

So I hooked up the NetGear and deleted all reference to the Dell. It worked perfectly.

Solution? Any skeet shooters among you? Pull! There goes the old Dell WiFi router into the trash. Let’s tidy up the cabling for the new NetGear. I love to save people money as much as the next guy, but there’s a time when you just have say enoughs enough.

The Dell WiFi router works just fine with XP laptops, just not Vista apparently.

For many laptop users, USB 2.0 or Firewire offer fast enough speeds for external storage. For others, though, 400mbps just isn’t fast enough.

My work with the MBox and ProTools is one example. ProTools recommends recording music to a non system hard drive - tough to do on a laptop unless you’re talking external. Yet tech support specifically states that USB is NOT fast enough.

Welcome eSATA. I love eSATA external hard drive enclosures, the one from Vantec I’ve written about in the past. But how do you connect eSATA to your laptop?

Easy, now anyway. SIIG makes an expresscard adapter that sells for less than $70. The card slides right in to a slim ExpressCard/34 slot and features two eSATA ports stacked on top of each other. The controller housed inside supports a standard second-gen feature set, including 3 Gbps transfer speeds, Native Command Queuing, hot plugging, and support for drives that exceed 137GB.

If you want the latest and the fastest, go eSATA. You can pick up the adapter here -
SIIG eSATA II 2-Port ExpressCard - 2 x 7-pin Serial ATA/300 External SATA - ExpressCard/34