Swordie Bloggie

A friend has been playing FoRex… or currency trading… online for sometimes.

Recently he withdrew his profit of about USD$1000… which comes to RM3,500 after converting it to the ringgit.

With that amount of profit, he bought a Sony VIAO P notebook… so that he can do his forex trading anytime on the road. I do like the Sony VAIO P coz its screen is only 8 inch… very small and lightweight.

But the only drawback is it doesn’t have a built-in cellular mini card so that SIM card can be inserted directly onto it instead of using the external cellular modem through the USB port.

If it comes with the build-in cellular mini card, it will definitely defeat the rest of the super portable notebook in the market… hopefully Sony and the other notebook manufacturers will integrate the cellular mini card into their notebook as soon as possible… the demand is there… then soon everyone will ask for a WiMax mini card!!!

What is the maximum amount of memory your notebook can take? How many memory slots does it have?

Last Friday, in the morning of 15th May 2009, my Dell XPS M1330 notebook went berserk… when I switch it on, some colorful vertical lines appears on the screen. Sometimes it switches on without the lines but once the windows fully loaded, sometimes it just freezes, and I have to forcefully witch it off.

I was so mad and sad… the whole Friday I was trying to figure out what is going on with the notebook. I did not read my email the whole day. I used the BIOS diagnostic and it took ages… made worse when I have to attend discussion and meeting that day… while I was away, the diagnostic found a problem on the hard disk and it has to wait for my next instruction! Imagine, the diagnostic have to wait for me like one or two hours… and it happened two times… and it repeats the process all over again after I click continue.

I continue using the notebook with the problem but on Sunday night, it went completely dead. When switched on, the bios not even loaded. The next morning I send it back to the shop and they called Dell support. I got back the notebook on Friday and according to the report, the notebook fan encounters some problem causing the display controller overheating.

I’m forced to use back my old Dell XPS M1210 for a week, but it only has 1GB of RAM coz I’ve moved its memory to other places. I need full 4GB for my work… sometimes I need to load a few Virtual PCs to do my work…

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My journey from KK to Lahad Datu to Kunak to Semporna to Tawau and back to KK from Monday to Friday was great… well it’s more like this… KK – LDU – KNK – LDU – KNK – SPN – TWU – SPN – TWU – KK

Stayed 2 nights at Lahad Datu and another 2 nights at Tawau.

I wanted to update my blog every night… at least, but I can’t until today. It’s all because of my notebook.

On Thursday, after returning from Semporna, at King Park Hotel, Tawau around 4.00pm, when I switch on my notebook, it went berserk…

The mouse pointer has some kind of square shadows… I refresh it by pressing F5, the shadow gone… then it appears again… then I press the F5 again… nothing happen… then press once more… the screen went blank… I can’t shut it down… I end up forcing it to shutdown.

When I switch it on back, the screen is still blank. Then force shut down it again. When I switch it on again, the LEDs lights up but nothing happen… hard disk is not spinning… the hard disk LED just flicker for a while and gone.

Crap… I realize something very bad struck my notebook…

I called my colleague in another room to send me the tools… I want to open up the notebook. I took out the hard disk and shake it… damm… click click click click…

I have not backup my hard disk for the past one year… yes one year… and now my hard disk… click click click click…

I wanted to throw the notebook through the 3rd floor window.

I just pack it back and went to sleep, waiting for my colleague to call me for their ‘buka puasa’… or ‘sungkai’. I did not even bother to go down to take my lunch… my last meal was my breakfast.

Back to KK on Friday… non-stop from Tawau around 10am and reach KK around 5.30pm.

On Saturday, I went to my friend’s workshop… to see if I can recover my data. Before that, I went to buy some tools to open the hard disk screws… although my friend said he has all the tools. It cost me $25 I think… can’t even remember how much it was…

I told my friend I want to open up the hard disk… he advice me not to do it. I said it got click click click click… Well, he said most of the notebook hard disk is like that… but my Hitachi click click click click… is very loud.

To be positive, I trusted him, I did not open it… thinking the click click click click… must be the hard disk’s crash protection mechanism…

I connect the hard disk using a powered USB cable. Switch on the borrowed notebook and connect the USB cable. After ‘some’ time, the notebook detected the hard disk.

I open my most important folder first… My Documents… it warns me I have no authorization to open it… I just proceed… After a very ‘long’ time, it shows all my files… to make sure my files are not encrypted, I open one of the text file… phew… it opened.

Lucky I did not enable Bit Locker on my notebook… else I will face more major serious problem.

I slowly backup all my data…

Now, I’m crawling without my notebook… next week our destination is Keningau areas… without the notebook, it will be hard for me to do my work… just like a mechanic without screw driver.

 
While waiting for my stuff to be back-up, I read the Stuff magazine.