kate's infrastructure

Formerly being an aspiring (and sometimes practicing) web designer, I should probably be disappointed by the existence of seemingly souless online services which will generate a logo and brand for you online for less that $100 and less than 24hrs.  I remember reading about it in disbelief a few years ago in WIRED and I’ve only just tracked down the article again.  Seems most of the services are still running, and as much as I hate to admit it, they look ok.  They certainly look better than anyone with a few IT skills trying to hack together a professional image without the requisite skills.

I know this ground has been well and truly covered, so a few links worth reading:

• Mike Davidson has a great summary on logo design, which covers the principles, and more importantly addresses the difference between simply having a logo and having a brand.
• A great blog BRAND NEW, which assesses new corporate identities.  It’s reassuring that sometimes the big kids don’t make all the right decisions.  More importantly, this blog identifies where they go right and wrong, so it can provide an interesting perspective.  Anything that can avoid the amateur looking Fosters’ group logo of a few years back is gold.

I’m not all tech all the time, but I do think the above is relevant to tech folks.  Know what you do well, if you’re not a designer, don’t dabble.  Your customer may be happy, but they may not realise you’re doing them a disservice.

So the three year warranty I purchased when I got my laptop turned out to be pretty pointless, as the manufacturer offers a year’s warranty that I’d completely overlooked.  This laptop wasn’t originally intended as a keeper, so I guess the extra warranty is a bit pointless, but my previous track record in snapping laptops in half suggests its still a tad worthwhile.

Warranty rants aside, I really only worked this out when I tried to call for assistance for my failing laptop.  I was redirected to Compaq/HP.  I felt a tad stupid that I had nothing in the way of diagnostic info to offer the helpdesk guy, just that it beeped and wouldn’t boot.  The only additional action he offered was to hold down the power button for a full 30 seconds before again attempting a boot.  No luck.

I had originally been reluctant to call because I didn’t want the hassle of sending my laptop away.  Turns out a local crew, NCSS rock, and would come to me.

The basic timeline that followed:

• Friday 12:30 – Called HP/Compaq helpdesk, logged call.
• Friday 13:30 – Received a called from NCSS, HP’s local support agent, advising that they’d ordered a new motherboard and would keep me posted.
• Monday 10:00 -Received an update from NCSS.  My new motherboard arrived.  Made arrangements to come and get it from my at my office.
• Tuesday 10:00 – NCSS support guy arrived and picked up the laptop
• Tuesday 16:00 – NCSS called to say re-seating the RAM appeared to resolve the issue.  They would leave the machine on overnight to confirm.
• Wednesday 10:00 – Received functional laptop.

I wasn’t in a hurry anyway, but I was pretty impressed with the time and attentiveness of NCSS.  A very professional interaction.

The only thing that stopped me writing a glowing letter of praise to NCSS and HP was the 24hrs that followed.  My laptop was very sluggish.  I went through the usual updates and basic checks.  I stopped everything imagineable, then I fell back to the basics and checked task manager.  When the machine was doing nothing, it was using 80% memory and ridiculous load on the page file.  A few more checks and I saw that it thought it only had 512mb of RAM, that’s half the minimum spec for Vista Basic and it really really sucked.

The choice now, was to roll through the same process again or consider a few alternatives.  A quick internet search, coupled with massive impatience, meant that I decided to trust the internet when it told me that replacing RAM wouldn’t impact my warranty.  I figured I may as well upgrade the memory at the same time. 

Checking the max spec for the laptop, I decided on 2 x 1GB SO DIMMs:

• Ebay were roughly $50 ea, plus postage.  But the whole caper seemed a little hit and miss and I was a bit concerned about buying something like this on ebay;
• DSE, Domayne etc all probably sold the stuff I needed, but they didn’t list online, so I couldn’t confirm and wasn’t into shopping around;
• Harris Technologies, which I normally find pretty uninspiring allowed me to search online for RAM compatibility (as long as it was Kingston RAM) and but it online for pickup in Fyshwick.  Only $80 ea. 
• Local Computer Markets were scheduled for the weekend, and I’d probably do better there than most places, but the effort was a bit too much of searching each stall;
• HP genuine parts cost $249 ea, plus postage. For 512mb DIMMs.  I may have ordinarily preferred to buy from the laptop vendor, but that was more than ridiculous;

HT was the winner, and I picked up the RAM on Saturday morning.  I’ve never played inside a laptop before, so again I looked online for reassurance.  I found my saviour: http://www.technibble.com/how-to-install-laptop-ram/

Now I have power and speed, there’s nothing I can’t do.  Joost might be the place I start.

Laptoptopia began for me back in Feb 07.  I was dismayed by a failed desktop pc that had promised much, and couldn’t face another similarly sensible choice.  I decided a laptop was my future.

I did very little research, but basically decided that I wasn’t in the market for an ultra portable, and I wasn’t in the market for a desktop replacement.  I needed to do ‘stuff’, but I didn’t need to pay extra to be able to run some high end apps and games.  Wouldn’t happen.  So for just over AUD$1000 I got myself a Compaq v3000 series.  The battery sucks, vista took some getting used to, but otherwise it did all I needed.  Unbelievably Domayne had the best deal and warranty, though the most offensive sales person.

So here I am 8 months later.  I’d gotten used to logging on and doing nothing in particular.  It was my only HDTV.  It was my study vessel. It was handy.  Then one day when I was reading about foldable kayaks it stopped.  Being the infrastructure IT professional I am, I gracefully rebooted it by popping the battery.  Being a Vista user made me pretty comfortable with doing some pretty odd things to maintain service*.  Unfortunately laptoptopia was never to return.

Now I boot and am met with a series of beeps.  My immediate reaction was that my computer may have been complaining in morse code.  I asked google, and was told a bit more about beep codes.  More info on HP laptop beep codes here and general beep codes here.  None of them look particularly reassuring right?

Lucky I purchased the warranty.  We’ll see how that goes.

* Not a subtle Vista dig, I thought it took some getting used to and was originally not particularly stable.  Now I like.