AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition & Gigabyte MA770-UD3

Western Digital Caviar Black Hard Disks

Damages? These 4 items = RM1600.

Current specifications:

• AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.20Ghz
• Gigabyte MA770-UD3
• Galaxy GeForce 8600GT OC
• 4GB DDR2 800MHz
  
• Currently using onboard audio – previously Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
• Vantec ION2+ 600W PSU
• 1TB Caviar Black Hard Disks are on RAID 1
• 500GB Seagate 7200.12 HDD as OS HDD
• Going to kaput 80GB Maxtor Sata HDD.
• Lousy Imation DVD-RW
• FLOPPY DISK DRIVE (I bet you don’t have these baby! Hahaha)
  
• Dell Ultrasharp U2410

Italics are new. Underlined are marked for changing.

Remember when my laptop’s motherboard was fried?

Then it came where my desktop’s OS hard disk was corrupted – just last week. I managed to fix the errors and it was back and running a day later. I decided to give it a soft run – running non intensive or critical applications as well as reducing read/write load on the hard disk, and it’s been running for nearly 5-6 days till today, it crashed again.

I roughly figured out what’s wrong, it happens when I’m multitasking with Google Chrome (my quick startup browser), Firefox (normal usage browser) and Lightroom (my photo management/editing software) and a few other small applications running.

Not related to this whole ordeal, my network storage is finally maxed out. 50GB remaining but insufficient for the next few months. The last wedding alone took up 50GB on each NAS, desktop and laptop hard disks.

So now it’s back to the drawing board on how to build up my work studio. I think I’ll be heading downtown this weekend to get fresh sets of hard disks. Two 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black for the desktop to be RAID 1, a normal hard disk for OS. Then will decide on whether to upgrade the desktop or to get 2 more 1TB hard disks for the NAS. Ugh decisions.

And uh I definitely need to get a FireWire card reader. And uh a small and efficient laptop cooler. And uh, CAT5 network cables. And DVD-Rs.

This upgrade will definitely cost more than RM2000. T_T

P/S: I think the wedding is jinxed towards me. All my hardware fails right after the Hen’s night and Wedding.

Baby got a boo boo

Back view

Though it doesn’t appear to be serious but it’s near the hinge that holds the screen and the main body together. I figured out where it got the crack as well.. My laptop bag is a sling type. Few days ago it snapped while I was taking it out of the car (wth right?!) and it fell right on that corner of the bag. My bag doesn’t have a zip to it and it’s the flip type. Sling and flip, bad combo I suppose.

I’ll give Dell a call and see whether it’s covered in the Complete Cover thingy. Sigh..

Everyone seems to be 'supportive'

My harddisk is officially gone case. Read part 1.

Blue Screen of Death

Hard disk failure makes all the other hard disk unusable

I removed the affected disk and it’s up and running again. But.. now.. the new hard disk I just bought 1 week ago is acting up. Sigh.. Re-backup everything, again. AND the latest episode of House is in there! -_- I’m running out of places to put my stuff! Anyone willing to spare me a (very good and reliable) hard disk for a while?

Hard disk info: Seagate 500GB 16MB Cache 7200.12 series ST3500410AS (Firmware CC31)

New series also KO so fast -__-

My freaking 500GB harddisk crashed on me. And this is the 2nd 500GB hard disk that failed. What’s in it? Life time’s worth of photos. 80GB worth of photos, and some backup and archived files. Not to mention the movies and tv series I’ve downloaded!

Thankfully I’ve learnt my previous lessen of not keeping my eggs in one basket. Same photos are in another two 750GB hard disk and a 500GB hard disk. (yeah that’s an overkill, but only because i was transferring them a week earlier and havent deleted them yet.)

Geek post:

This is the 2nd 500GB crashed on me. Word of caution, don’t buy Seagate hard disks 7200.11 series. I heard there may be a problem with the 7200.12 (newer) series as well but yet to be confirmed (and I just recently bought that one too -_-). I have 4 Seagate 7200.11 series hard disks, 2 which has failed – both 500GB, and 2 more 750GB in my NAS, RAID 1. I wonder when that would fail..

Update: 7200.11 harddisks has a 40% failure rate!

I’ve been using my Dell XPS for nearly 2 years and I have hardly any complaints although there are a few shortcomings with the laptop. Wear and tear stuff. Can’t really blame Dell if there are wear and tear problems, right?

Batteries tend to lose it’s charge with every use and I’ve been using it,*bimbo* like everyday, the battery life is decreasing rapidly. From 7 hours to 2-3 hours. So, I requested for a change of battery before the battery warranty ended 10 months ago.

Thing is, laptop batteries have a different warranty period from your laptop’s warranty. Even the charger that comes with it follows your laptop’s warranty. The battery doesn’t. Most likely is for Dell’s interest, but I’m not too sure either. So if the new battery encounters any problems, I’d have to pay for it.

Last time I could use the battery was my usual toilet business. *don’t ask.* Usually I’d bring it back to the room and go bathe, but this time, I left it there, pump up the tunes, and bathe. *again, don’t ask.* I got dried up and changed. When I got back to the laptop, it started to enter hibernate mode.

Quickly, I took it back to the room and plugged the charger in. Left it there to charge and went out for lunch.

Then the horror started.

It failed with.. no drama at all. The laptop has a battery light on it that states whether it’s in A/C, charging or dying (orange). This time I seen something I never seen before, not on my laptop at least. The battery indicator light was blinking.

*blink* *blink* *blink* *blink* *blink*

Orange, orange, orange, orange, green. A quick google says Temporary Battery Failure. Yeah, temporary my ass. More like permanent.

I tried charging overnight, and it still couldn’t charge and the flashing lights are pretty annoying. I took it out and gave it a rest. Hoping it would actually be a temporary problem. But it didn’t.

So I called Dell support. Twice. First one had me waiting 5 minutes with no one answering. 2nd time was better, but had quite a wait as well. The supporter *yes i know it’s wrong.* gave me tips on how to prolong the life of  your battery, etc. I pretty much had the same ‘lecture’ since my last replacement.

Then she told me my warranty for the battery is already expired because it follows the first battery’s warranty period, which was 12 months from the date of purchase. And I have to pay for the next replacement.

Dell XPS M1210 9-cell battery: RM390

Anyone willing to pay for me?

EDIT: My laptop’s warranty is expiring as well. April to be exact. They also sent me a quotation on extending my warranty but it costs RM700 for one year. Burning a very very very big hole here.

Usually the best price to specifications laptop is the XPS laptop’s 13 inch range. Of course it will cost around RM3500 but still it’s a pretty good deal if you ask me.

Think of it this way, you’re paying RM3000 for the XPS laptop, and RM500 for the 2-3 years after sales support. Believe me that RM500 is worth every penny. The CompleteCover accidental damage protection plan is even better if you could afford it.

Another thing about buying laptops from Dell, if you plan to customise, always customise from the lowest/basic configuration laptop. It’s cheaper, for some reason. And usually the best prices would be during PC fair week.

However, with WiMAX creating a big fuzz in the computing industry in Malaysia, it’s best NOT to buy a laptop now. Reason why is because of Intel’s latest processor, the Centrino 2. Centrino 2 is the 5th generation of the Centrino processor range where the predecessors supported WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, DDR2 RAMs, as well as support for HSDPA connectivity.

The new Centrino 2 supports the above and together with WiMAX as well, which should be your main consideration when buying a new laptop within this 2 years. Any laptops that you buy now without Centrino 2, will not be able to enjoy the comfort of having WiMAX connectivity.

Besides support for faster RAMs (DDR3 800MHz, 1066MHz) and wider support for external screens, I believe the main selling point of this processor is the WiMAX connectivity. It even uses lesser power than the previous Centrino processors.

Well of course you can buy a WiMAX modem separately but consider this; you’ll be using a USB port to connect your WiMAX modem, which will consume some of your battery life, or you may be grounded to use a power adapter for your WiMAX modem.

WiMAX is about mobility and being free from wires. That should be applied to laptops as well.

Okay it’s not the prettiest, but SideWinder gaming line is back! My first and only SideWinder gaming device was a joystick, batang gembira as they call it.

What so special about this rodent?

• Interchangeable feet, so you can use it on different surfaces and give you different glide surface
• Adjustable mouse weights, so you can have it lighter or heavier. I’d prefer a heavier mouse. My mouse tend to run away from my hands everytime I game.

But for RM200+ I don’t think it’s worth a buy, yet. Online purchases is about RM170, but shipping and all, I think it would be around the same price as well.

Shape wise, well I love using Microsoft rodents because it’s quite egronomic. This one, not too sure, but I think it’s pretty much following it’s family. The rodents have same genes I guess.

Currently I’m using the Microsoft Optical Wireless Mouse + Keyboard, which I used during ICCG ’08 and won a 2005 model Saitek mouse. (a post on that another time)

Come to think of it, Microsoft Habu Laser Gaming Mouse isn’t too bad after all. Maybe that will make its way home.