Tech Diversions

I was 3 months away from my “new every 2” date and my HTC touch died out of the blue.  Of course now Verizon is trying to clear them out for $9.99, but the service center had none and wanted to charge me $50, even though I had the “special” insurance.  I know the Diamond 2 and Omnia HD are around the corner but there was no way I was paying it, so I picked up the Omnia i910 for $99 and then they screwed me on my anniversary date.  There’s no way I’d pay more than $99 anyways and I’m sure they’ll gouge us for an unreasonable $200 – $300 when the new phones are released. 

Anyways, I got the phone and it feels and looks pretty darn good.  Then the test, once sync’d with Exchange I tried dialing a number, one handed.  It was horrible!  The “TouchWiz” interface sucked, it’s a phone for heavens sake.  You should be able to find a contact and dial, easy.  Not the case, in the short few minutes I had the phone.  I’m sure others may have different experiences but my expectations are my own.

I had done some research before on cooked (hacked) 6.5 ROMs and I new some people were having success with them on the Omnia.  So I did some digging and there is a ton of stuff out there and it’s not for the “faint of heart”.  WARNING – you can brick your phone doing this.

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Here might be a use for that old Asus 701, lying around the office.  This step by step guide leads you through the process of converting the original netbook to a digital picture frame.

Awooga!!! » The Eee PC Digital Picture Frame

I have an older HP Pavilion DV2000 that is limited to 2 GB.  It’s a nice laptop with 2GB and 14.1” screen, but I’ve moved to 64 bit for most my day to day work and it just wasn’t cutting it.  It’s not bad to take out for trips and around the house, but it seemed pretty slow, loud fan noise, and would get pretty hot.

I had been reading a lot of good things about SSD SATA II drives and when I caught a 60GB OCZ drive on Amazon for $100 (after rebate), I thought it would be a good opportunity to breath new life into the old laptop.  Currently it had a 100 GB drive in it, but I was going to use it as a beefy netbook with Windows 7 on it.

The drive came in nice packaging.  There were no cables or CDs.

Removing the drive was pretty straight forward, there were a few screws on the back to remove the cover, and then a few more screws holding down the drive cage.

With the drive cage removed from the laptop, the drive then needed to be removed from the cage.  A special connector was on the drive that allowed the SATA connector to seat properly in the laptop.  That also had to be removed from the original drive.

Placing the special connector and installing the SSD drive in the cage went without a hitch.  All the screw holes and connectors on the SSD drive were the same as a standard 2.5” SATA drive.  The cage fit back in the laptop as expected and everything got “buttoned” up.

I grabbed my Windows 7 beta DVD, put it in the DVD drive and booted the machine.  At this point the BIOS recognized the new drive with no problems and the Windows 7 installation began.  I formatted the drive as part of the install and noticed that it zipped along.

Once the Windows 7 installation was complete (after a reboot) the system started up in seconds.  You can find benchmarks on this stuff at other sites, suffice to say this old laptop was screaming now.

I’ve used it quit a bit and noticed that it is much quieter, cooler, and really a joy to use.  I’m looking forward to the RC of Windows 7 to see if there are more speed improvements.

Overall I would have to say that this is an excellent way to upgrade a laptop that’s a few years old and give it the shot of adrenalin it needs.  Check your favorite sites for deals, but I see them pop up on Newegg, Dealigg, and Amazon every few weeks.  For surfing and light work, the 60GB should be plenty.

Now go save some laptops.