Adrian Hayter’s Blog

It arrived! It finally arrived!

I’m currently typing this blog post whilst lying (sat up) on my bed, and it feels sooooo relaxing! I wonder if it is in fact too relaxing, because I have been using my laptop like this for the past 2 days (it arrived on Friday) and it was only this morning that I realised I hadn’t turned on my computer at all for the past 2 days either.

Now I did promise a picture of the laptop, so here is a photo I took whilst writing this blog post:

My Laptop

When I first got it out the box I was really shocked at the size of it. I knew it had a 17″ screen, but it looked so much bigger in real life than it did on the website. Having said that, the extra width means that I can reposition programs to to more things at once, and the keyboard has a numpad which I use a lot (I work in banking…it becomes a habit).

The mousepad has a great design as well. It’s metal (rather than plastic) plated so it feels smoother on your finger, and it has a special “scroller” on the right, which allows you to scroll up and down documents / websites by just flicking your finger in either direction. There is also a button at the top which can turn the pad off / on in case you don’t want to move the mouse by accident.

You can tell by looking at either side of the laptop that hp tried to pack as much into it as possible. All in all I count 15 slots / ports for different items, including CD / DVD Drive, 4 USB ports, a 5-in-1 card reader, and all manner of others. I found out after some research that PC World rated this laptop 14th out of their “20 Best Products of 2007″, the only actual personal computer system to get into the top 20…and after using it you can tell why.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Right about now I should be relaxing on the sofa, or maybe lying on my bed, writing this blog post from my new laptop. That was the plan anyway. A laptop would mean I could get out of my computer chair (which although comfy is not the best position to be in for a length of time) and still be able to do the things I can with a computer. I could surf the web, talk to friends, listen to music, do pretty much anything I want…

…if the couriers actually had half a brain cell between them, but no, they don’t. My laptop was meant to arrive last Thursday, and to tell you the truth, I was looking forward to getting back from work and playing around with it. However, no delivery had come that day at all, so I phoned up Comet and complained. Comet said they handle all “small” shipments with external couriers, and these couriers hadn’t been able to find my house, and therefore unable to make the delivery.

Well let me explain something to you. I live in a small hamlet which is really just a small series of tracks that come of a main road. I would say there were about 15 houses altogether, and on one of the large and longer tracks you find my house, about 200 yards down. It’s not like we are hard to find!

So the weekend passed by without delivery (seems they don’t do weekends either…jeez) and on Monday, to make absolutely sure they found us, we put our house name outside on a piece of card. Anyone driving past would see it…or at least you would assume, but no. The van in question (which we maintain was the delivery van) drove straight past, turned around, and drove back to the main road. Of course we couldn’t catch up with it in time so it escaped again.

Today (after many complaints) they agreed to deliver it in the morning, but of course we received a phone call saying they were stuck in Portsmouth, and would get it to us in the afternoon. Suffice to say, it’s now almost 10PM, and I am still sat at my computer *sigh*.

*Adrian wonders whether he will ever see his laptop…

Popularity: 2% [?]

After literally weeks of rain, we finally have some sun! Not just a small flicker in the clouds, but full on sunshine right through the day! While everyone is getting excited about a nice hot summer, it couldn’t have come at a worse time for me. The reason being that I was supposed to terminate my work contract yesterday, but I decided last week to extend it to the end of August. At the time of the decision it was chucking it down outside and I really couldn’t think of anything else I would be doing so i chose to get some more hard earned cash in my pocket. Of course now I am stuck in an office when I could have been outside in the sun all day long…grrr!

In other news, apparently the people caught in the recent flooding will have their water supplies back tonight which is good. Although I did find it ironic that being stuck in a flood meant that water supplies were low, especially when you are surrounded by the stuff.

In other more personal news, I have purchased a laptop to take to university in September after loads of searching around in shops and online. In the end I decided on the HP PAVILION DV9385. My previous desktop was a HP brand and served me well for about 5 years before eventually dying, and although my current desktop is a custom built Dell, I have had bad experience with Dell laptops.

I showed the laptop to a load of my friends and they all agreed that it was a very nice machine. The specifications included everything I wanted as well:

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz Processor
2GB RAM
240GB Hard drive
17″ Screen (Widescreen)
Wireless, Wired, and Bluetooth Networking
CD & DVD read/write drive
NVidia GF 7600 512MB Graphics Card

Not only that, but it has a built in (5 in 1) card reader and a built in webcam.

It has a few minor disadvantages, the first being the weight which means it will be annoying to carry around, and the second is the battery life of 2.5 hours. Luckily I will only have to carry it around campus which isn’t that far to walk, and since I am living on campus as well, recharging should be easy.

When I get it (9th August) I will upload some pics for you all to enjoy and feel envious about!

Popularity: 2% [?]