Been quiet for awhile over here. Colafish is feeling like a humpty dumpty. The little one inside has been rather naughty, either that or he has been busy exercising…
Meanwhile, I have destroyed my 5+ years old Toshiba laptop recently. The LCD screen is broken, so there is no cheap way to fix it. It still works — with a cracked screen!
Colafish is actually happy that I broke that old laptop, forcing me to purchase a new one… So, I picked up a really cheap one to replace it. It is the Acer Extensa 5220, for an unbelievable price of AUD399 after rebate! I paid an extra AUD50 to get a 2GB RAM added, giving a total of 2.5GB. It is actually a really good computer for the price! It includes nearly everything one can expect:
- High gloss 15.4″ wide-screen 1280×800
- Intel Celeron M550 2.0GHz with 533MHz FSB
- 2.5GB RAM (+AUD50)
- 80GB HDD
- Pioneer DVD Super-multi Drive
- 802.11b/g WLAN built-in
- Approx 2 hours battery life (haven’t tested, especially with power-saving mode)
- 4 USB2 ports, 1 firewire, 1 IrDA, 1 S-Video
- Intel’s integrated graphics adapter + Realtek HD Audio
- Vista Basic (yuck!)
I can also pay about AUD40-50 to get a built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. From one review online, it appears that the CPU is a slotted one which would accept a Phenom based processor if I wanted to change the processor (and claim that I have a Core 2 Duo, for example)… Anyway, the system works well… I only dislike Vista with a passion (crashed like nobody’s business), and I have already uninstalled it and I am using Windows XP SP3 at this moment… That was another reason why I chose this cheap system — it has full support for XP unlike some newer laptops with only official support/drivers for Vista. I also wished it came with all the cables, but well, I have ordered an S-Video cable for AUD3.50 on Ebay. No biggie.
