Posted on 03 September 2010. Tags: hard drive, Laptop, Newegg
So I started hearing a chirping noise on my laptop. Was a bit concerned. Then the thing froze! Was more concerned. Rebooted. It worked and then when I was trying to save some pictures, it went bonkers. The noise let me know that indeed the hard drive was about to die. Well I wanted to buy another one anyway so I got into researching it. Turns out what I now have is a 250G SATA 5400RPM drive. I saw that Newegg had a 320G 7200RPM drive for 59.99. Looked around and that turned out to be the best deal. The reviews were mixed but I didn’t see anything better for the other drives. I pulled the trigger and made the purchase.
Afterward, I decided to click the “continue shopping” button to see if there’s anything else that would interest me. Having already made a purchase would prohibit me a bit from buying again, my own safety methodology. Lo and behold on the front page, was an advertising for a Seagate 500GB 7200 drive for 69.99. Hmm, I thought. for 10 dollars more I get more capacity. So I clicked it. There again it said that there’s a coupon that would save me $10 making it $59.99, the same price as I just paid. Whoa! So I decided immediately that I got to get with this. I pulled the trigger again. I then proceeded to go back to my orders and cancelled the previous order. There was some kind of glitch with the new order that made it not go through but when I reapplied my information, it did go through. The cancellation also was confirmed. All of this with just the click of a mouse. My drive will be arriving in 3 business days which I got a confirm from their UPS tracking number in the email they sent. Now the drive may come battered, not working and whatever, but so far everything about this transaction has worked out very smoothly. Its too bad that it’s not coming out in time for the Labor Day holiday. I would love nothing else but to tinker with it. I have a lot of software to install and it would probably take a few weeks to get it back to where it was. One project I have is converting to Windows 7. I’ll blog on that when done.
I don’t normally do this but I got to give a shout out to Newegg. You guys are da bomb! (My kids are telling me that that’s old school now).
Posted in Build A PC, Laptop, PC Hardware, PC Issues, Technology
Posted on 30 November 2009.
So its Cyber Monday when folks are trying to buy stuff they’ve been looking at in stores. Its the day when you try to get all your electronics and other deals online with the hope of saving even more money than what you saw on Black Friday. Before you pull out the credit/debit card you should be aware of a few tips on shopping. I’m sure you must have heard some of them but hear me out. You might see something you might have missed and as the saying goes, you can’t be secure enough.
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Posted in PC Issues, Technology for Seniors
Posted on 10 September 2007. Tags: Computers, Video, Video Card, Video Card Kit
Probably one of the most frustrating things about computers is how they don’t communicate to you properly about their problems. I guess I am expecting more from this machine than I ought to but afterall its supposed to be smart. Software and hardware developers are trying to add functionality to this entity to make it smarter and responsive but all too often we get the same results.
For some time now, my machine was slowing to a crawl. Try as I may, I couldn’t find out what was wrong with it. In my house are 2 laptops and 2 desktops which are shared by 6 people. My wife, my four kids and myself. Fortunately one of the laptops is for work so its off limits. The others are left to fend for themselves with the others for homework, Facebooking, Myspacing etc. I thought about shelling out money for another computer but ruled out against that. Afterall, we have other things to deal with. This all started to change when pressure to use my job laptop started to rise. I started hearing things about how selfish I am and how useless I am that the main computer is broken and I can’t fix it. No need to say where that came from. Anyawy in trying to fix the computer, I downloaded the latest drivers, downloaded all the various combinations of anti-virus and anti-spyware software. The problem only kept getting worse.
I had began thinking that I would need to build a newer box and was going over in my mind what I’ll need when I thought of the video card. I had recalled that the video card made lots of noise because of the fan built in. It dawned on my that it had gone silent. Normally I would touch it and would feel the wind of it but this time there was none. I looked and could see its blades not moving so I turned them. There was much resistance and I soon realized that the fan was stuck. I felt the video board and it was hot. I felt the fan and it was very hot. Of course at this time everything was at a crawl so I initiated a shutdown of the machine and walked away.
Now what to do next was the question. Replacing the video card was the first thing that came to mind and I even went online and got one. But when I saw the problem I had the thought that maybe if I could actually buy a fan instead of the whole thing I can at least give it a try. Well I got down to the good old computer store and saw a fan kit which I promptly bought. It cost about 10 bucks and was pretty cool in that it had colored LEDs that made the fan glow in the dark. I was delighted since if it went bad I would know immediately. Replacing the fan was very easy. Unlike the older one, this required its own power supply which was readily available. The cool thing was that the position of the screws fit perfectly.
Posted in PC Issues
