I finally got around to doing a review of my laptop, which I’ve been putting off for a while. I’ve been way too busy with business contracts of all sorts, but finally I’m writing a post that required some time and effort to process.

The HP Pavillion line of laptops were, in my opinion, not as reliable as the Japanese brands. But this time I decided to let the skepticism go. After all, my old laptop, which was a Toshiba, eventually had lines going across the entire screen, making it useless. Also another huge deciding factor was the price/specs factor. The Toshiba P100-MA1 which was comparable to the DV9205ca was another $100, and had less features. It did not have a built-in webcam (so I can give my nightly strip shows) nor a touch-pad media keyset (the play/mute/skip buttons). It also lacked an internal sensor for screen open/close sensor (the Toshiba still had the old white-nipple thingy that gets pressed down - old technology).

Here are the features I like about it :

• 4 USB ports - 3 wasn’t enough on my old Toshiba laptop.
• The built-in webcam - I don’t use it very often, and no, I don’t give nightly shows of my fine ass, but still, it’s a cool thing to have just in case. With some software, it can serve as a monitor for my room if I need to.

  

• The metal latches for the screen - Most laptops use finicky plastic for that stuff but HP put metal latches on there.
• The touchpad media keys - It’s just way cooler than the old-school plastic buttons. Also, the volume controller is a longer touch-button, and if you drag your finger across it, it will adjust your volume!

  

• A remote - The remote controller is used to control your media, mostly. It’s pretty handy when you play music, while lying on bed, and want to skip songs.

  

• The glossy finish - Unlike most laptops, this has a glossy shell-like finish that is, according to HP, more durable against scratches, cracks, and smudges.
• All of the cables/outlets are located on the side of the machine, with nothing on the rear - I often end up with documents underneath my laptop that I need to digout while I’m using it, and with the old Toshiba, I couldn’t simply lift up the front of the laptop without flexing the power cord in the back. This machine has no connections on the rear which means I can lift the front of it up and swivel the whole body up and back without damaging anything.
• The touchpad mouse has soft buttons. Most laptops have a stiff mouse button on the touchpad, but this one is softer with a deeper motion. It’s actually nice once you get used to it.
• A touchpad disabling button right above the touchpad - No more Function+F8 button or whatever to disable that touchpad when you have a mouse plugged into the USB port. The button is right there for easy access.

Things I dislike :

• It has Windows Vista on it, which isn’t the most reliable at the moment. Oh well, wait for the upgrades.
• The DVD RW Super-drive is a bit wonky at times. Sometimes the disk doesn’t sit well and makes clicking noises, and I need to take it out and put it in again.
• The memory card slot does not spring-load. My old Toshiba had a 14-in-1 memory stick reader, and it had a spring-load mechanism to it. That meant that I push it in, it locks, and then if I push again, it unlocks. This one doesn’t have it. Also, the depth of it is not enough that my memory stick adaptor sticks out too much, so I can’t just leave it in there. I need to store it separately when not in use, otherwise it’ll snap off one day.

  

So, overall, I am satisfied with this laptop. I tossed in some extra memory so now I’m running on 1.5G of RAM. It has an AMD 64 bit chip in it (so I can take advantage of it once I upgrade to 4G of RAM along with Windows Vista 64 bit version), and 288MB of shared video memory by NVidia, which isn’t bad at all. The Toshiba I was comparing it to, which cost another $100, had 128 MB by Intel.

Having moved 4 times in 2 years as well as sacrificing space for the location (downtown Vancouver rent is no joke), I’ve had to set up many home offices in different homes, and I’ve helped one of my clients set their home office up as well, and I’d like to share that expertise with you.

The KEY element to using space effectively in an home office (or for that matter, anything else) is to use the vertical space as well as the horizontal space. Think 3D more, and try to make the best of the vertical height and leverage it.

• A desk with a tall bookshelf attached to it as well as a drawer. The bottom drawer has a metal rail installed in it to convert it into a mini filing cabinet. I don’t have space for a whole filing cabinet nor the need for it so this works well.

  

  The tall shelf serves to store all my books, DVDs, CDs, etc. Beaneath the desk board, there are 2 shelves that hold some more documents/printer paper/sub-woofer/more books.

• To provide direct lighting to my desk, which I absolutely need at night, I use a shelf-clipping light fixture instead of a desk-top light, to save space on my desktop.

  

• To store my documents and letters as well as other items that I need to pay attention to sooner or later, I use a pinboard as well as 3 document sleeves attached to my wall. It’s better than having those inbox/outbox trays on my desk, because, once again, it saves space, and uses the surface of a vertical wall instead of a horizontal plane on my desk.

  

• My printer does not sit on my desk. It sits in a wall-mounted shelf, as do my speakers. My speakers came with metal stands for putting on the desk surface but I chose to install it on the walls with screws.

  

• To be able to run multiple equipments without running long wires, use multi-plug power bars. Most office equipment (laptop, printer, light, speakers, headphones, external hard-drive) does not consume too many amperes of electricity, so it won’t overload the circuit breaker or cause fire, which is contrary to what some people are afraid of. It’s the heaters, stoves, ovens as well as vacumm cleaners that take up a lot of amperes and should be used with caution when using with other items plugged in.

  

So with these little tricks, I’ve turned a corner of my bedroom into a very practical home office space, and I’m getting great use out of it. When I’m making more dough I’ll be able to move into a place with a spare den or a room for an office, but until then I need to be frugal with space.

It seems that somebody at the Apple Headquarters got a whiff about my article on iFags vs. Mac Users and their tendencies, and they decided to launch a lawsuit against me. Their claims, according to the papers I was served, is as follows :

“Your incident on your blog has damaging consequences to the reputation and revenues of Mac users and Apple Inc. Apple and its subsidiaries find the article to be very disturbing in its derrogatory nature, its obscenity, and the falasity of the accusations against Apple Inc. We have assessed the collateral damages caused by your blog entry … to a total of $500,000 US Dollars, and this letter officially serves you the civil lawsuit, filed in the Cupertino Superior Court, which is part of the State of California judicial circuitl”

Well, I do not have money for a lawyer, and the lawsuit amount is for $500,000 US. They figured, judging by the number of people who come each day, and the number of backlinks to that post on the internet, that’s about how much business they lost. I’ll spare you the detailed calculations the corporate lawyers at Apple included.

The jurisdiction of this lawsuit falls under the USA, not my own country Canada, based on the following factors -

• Apple Inc. is an American company.
• My blog has more readers from the US than from Canada. Well, considering the US has 10 times the population, and they too have the internet, it’s a given. I wonder if I can dispute this? My web hosting server is in Vancouver, and so is Jeff Kee Consulting!
• The “incident”, as they refer to it in the legal documents, happened over the cyber space, so the jurisdiction must be set based on the audience, not the physical location of the writer (myself).

What a pain in the ass. I have to fly to California JUST for a settlement conference in the civil courts!!! And they’re not even paying for the tickets!
Apple, however, hinted in a later article that they are offering to settle this - basically, they want the article removed, and replaced with a positive review about their Macbook products. And they are requesting that I make a purchase of a Macbook Pro 15.4 inch or higher, out of my own pocket, so that I can write credible reviews of it in a positive tone only.

I suppose I should be thankful this did not spread to a human rights lawsuit - the term “iFag” could be offensive in nature towards homosexual people, but thankfully, I had the disclaimer on my entry, so I think I dodged that bullet.

Well, since I don’t have cash for a lawyer, nor the $500,000, I guess I have no choice. I guess I’ll have to return my new Windows Vista laptop and convert again to a Mac. Oh well, to avoid bankruptcy, it’s worth it.

I also just realized that you are a fool if you took this seriously up until this point - it’s April 1st.

So, I finally moved onto Windows Vista. Actually, the word “finally” does not really fit here - it’s still very fresh, and if I had it my way, I wouldn’t be on it yet. But, after trying a Macbook Pro and giving it up, and realizing my laptop screen on my Toshiba laptop with Windows XP was a lost cauase, I finally had to move on.

Overall, I’d like to note that I am satisfied with Vista!

Pros :

• Cool design. It looks sharper and nicer than XP, or Mac OSX.
• Enhanced security - altho it’s no Mac when it comes to defeating viruses, it has a strict permission system on by default that prevents sketchy programs from running without your permission. I turned it off because I know what I’m doing - but for the everyday user, this is a much more reliable security gate than SP2 that was patched for XP a long time ago!
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I will write more about this later, but I purchased a brand new HP Pavillion laptop today that had Windows Vista on it. And as I was checking out the features, I started looking for more Gadgets (the same thing as the widgets on a Mac, except Windows shows it on the right hand side of the desktop), and I ran across some interesting stuff.

Windows offers a developers section for everybody to learn how to create new gadgets for the Windows sidebar, and many other things. I was pleasantly surprised. If these things existed for the longest time, please excuse my ignorance, but Microsoft certainly did not market it so well over the last few years. Everybody knew Firefox could be extended by countless add-ons made by developers all over the world, and the same thing applied to the Mac OSX’s widgets. And even Wordpress is famous for its ability to handle plug-ins. However. The only SDK (Software Development Kit) I’ve ever handled from Microsoft was the Microsoft Live Local Maps SDK (which, by the way, kicked Google Map API SDK’s ASS! This SDK was so much easier to understand and experiment with!).

Here is the API/SDK guide to Microsoft Gadgets and much more. 

If you are a developer who enjoys developing your own add-ons and what not, this might be a good opportunity.

Now that I think of it, the MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) has been around for a while, but I just did not feel that it got enough light as other API guides and SDKs, only because Microsoft did not market them very well, as I already mentioned. The coolest addons I saw on Windows XP were the Windows XP Powertoys (which were quite handy, by the way) but addons, gadgets and what not were pretty much non-existent, and people were unaware of it.

The new Windows Vista, however, has caught up with Mac and Firefox when it comes to the extendability of software and functionalities. Of course there are those who criticize Microsoft for copying from Macs, but hey, if it’s good, you follow it. I say Microsoft did a fine job with Vista, and if they had tried to go their own way again and try to make it too different, it may have ended up in a product with lower quality than what it is.

I will write further about my new laptop, and Windows Vista.