….so I just received my (new) HP 6930p back from repair which I had to send in to JABIL Poland where they were supposed to repair the display lock issue and check why the docking port connector had a problem.

the stuff you do when you receive repaired hardware:
open it up and double-check for any changes…
(both microphones weren’t inserted properly!!!)

HP Warranty Hotline was quite helpful, responded quickly and knew what I was talking about. My notebook comes with a 3yr warranty, so UPS came the other day, picked it up and returned it today. The whole process took 10 days to complete which is ok, I think.

JABIL replaced the motherboard (good!) and even tried to fix the display lock. The lock is still kinda sensitive to external pressure (opens up by itself as there’s too much mechanical tension on the springs), but at least it is better than before.

BUT!

Maybe I am too German to complain about such things, but the service technician with JABIL Poland actually removed the transparent business card holder which is on top of the licence stickers and service tags.

I had used this BC holder on both my notebooks in the past and am quite upset about this fault. You won’t even have to remove this plastic sheet in order to open up the notebook, so I can only assume that the technicians just didn’t care enough and/or removed it to have less reflections while reading those bar codes with a bar code scanner. And even if so, this is a 2cents piece that should easily be replacable, especially by service technicians.

So I once again called HP service hotline, informing them about this missing piece and the (very helpful) lady on the other end told me: “Yes, in such cases we normally dispatch a service technician who will come to your house and probably replace the whole bottom cover.” – “So what about these stickers?” – “The technician will use a hot air gun to remove these stickers and put them on the new bottom cover”.

3h work & someone else even spoiling the remaining stickers on my notebook just because HP is unable to provide such transpartent business card holders as spare parts? No way!

Case closed.

Besides, how will he apply those stickers if they are covered by a transparent business card holder sheet on the new bottom – the reason for an exchange? Ati?

Why can’t they ever handle these items with enough care and return it the way it came? The original plastic bag is also missing. I am really upset about these “technicians” and would like to hit them with the oversized UPS box. There’s nothing worse in the technical world than service technicians who just don’t care enough or hotline staff that’s just as dumb as the fee you’ll have to pay for calling special service hotlines. Fortunately, the ladies from the Hotline were nice and friendly, but their outsourced technicians still suck big times.

How does this moth know it is actually sitting on a beige surface (here: the inner side of the window blind) that somehow matches its camouflage?

I think it doesn’t actually know.

Some impressions from a recent trip to Hamburg – my brother-in-law managed to organise a tour on the Elbe (river) for the whole family with cousins and their spouses & kids. A nice and very exclusive event that once again reminded me how beautiful and interesting the port of Hamburg actually is.

view on parts of the Alte Speicherstadt

I’ve lived in Hamburg from 10/1975 till 01/1976 and 07/1983 till 10/1983 so I wouldn’t really call it “my home” even though my passport says something else. Lakini – if “home is where your heart is”, then maybe Hamburg qualifies for being one of those places.

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My new HP 6930p laptop unfortunately has an issue with the display latch (which is a “known issue” with this series) and also is very picky when it comes to accepting the docking station, which is why I called HP customer service last week and made use of the 3yr warranty it came with. Let’s see how HP performs – someone from UPS is supposed to come today and pick it up.

So…..since I actually need to have a working machine in my home office, I pulled out my Asus eeePC 1000HG netbook, removed the battery and connected it to my 22″ TFT and an external mouse & keyboard, a USB hub and a LAN cable.

Reason for blogging this is that I recently wrote about a netbook being a real AfriGadget as it could serve anyone who needs to have a light & flexible computer that’s good enough for most basic tasks. And it is.

Since I was in a hurry last week, I pulled out the WinXP recovery disc and installed WinXP on it – thereby killing my previous WinXP & Ubuntu dual boot setup. But then…I just need it to work out-of-the-box right now and it seemed to be the quickest solution, so I won’t mind about the 160GB harddisk being split into two partitions now – instead of five. Asus Recovery DVD is some piece of sh…..as it doesn’t provide clean installs of the shipped WinXP Home (I had previoulsy partioned the HDD with PartedMagic – resulting in a Grub error..ah, well..).

So, WindowsXP Home. It could be worse.

Is this Netbook strong enough for a 24/7 job, substituting my computing needs on a 90% desktop, 10% mobile basis? Yes!

The performance of this Intel N270 Atom CPU @ 1,6GHz with 2 GB of RAM and a simple Intel on-board graphics solution is said to be somewhere close to 5yr old Pentium-M processor notebooks. A geekbench I was once did scored something like 935 points (old HP nx8220 15,4″ 1,86 GHz single core laptop = ~ 1200 // new HP 6930p 14,1″ 2,26 Ghz Core2Duo = ~ 3060 points) and it sure isn’t the fastest machine, but it also hasn’t failed to deliver performance for most of my tasks so far.

It’s an interesting question, also since Erik of WhiteAfrican.com recently complained about his Acer AAO netbook he had to use while his MacBookPro was in for a repair. The tiny 10,1″ screen on the netbook itself is a joke if you seriously need / want to work on it. However, being connected to an external TFT (and supplying both screens at the same time) and an external keyboard, things are A LOT easier and turn this little toy into a serious machine. The integrated graphics solution is even strong enough for a quick session in UrbanTerror. Sweet! My eeePC 1000HG also comes with an integrated 2G/3G modem, so it is a really mobile machine (provided there is network coverage).

For as long as my new HP laptop is under repair, I will have to stick to this netbook and use it on a daily basis. It will be on and online every day (= about 18h per day), enabling me to see if a netbook is really strong enough to survive all of the given tasks. I will also go on a vacation soon and take the netbook with me. I am already very curious to see how it can perform on the road – I did my AfriGadget presentation on it as well, so I already know what it is capable of.

Another motivation for this experiment is to see how much computing power I actually need most of the time and to “make do with what is available“. I already like the almost inaudible integrated fan and the fact that it doesn’t become too hot (for some reasons which are probably related to battery charging, it is actually much colder now compared to when it runs on batteries or when the batteries are being recharged – interesting). As for the tiny screen size: most eeePCs come with a button to instantly adjust the screen resolution (a big plus for eee PCs, btw), and a screen resolution of 1024×600 pixels isn’t an issue, actually. What is problematic is the tiny size of the display – an 11″ screen would be much better, but then, again, with a 22″ TFT connected to it (via VGA only though) you can actually work on it without noting a difference.

Going home-home for an extended weekend actually means I can waste spend some time on my old computer and enjoy the following (Kenyan) sticker on the keyboard:

This computer urgently needs to be fixed (Ubuntu on a USB key is a wonderful life saviour), but I was actually much more interested in rummaging in those drawers under the table.

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It’s about time for another hardware review as it reflects what’s on my mind these days. I know that a lot of people just go for anything they are recommended, but if your income depends on the performance and reliability of your computer at home (= home office), you’ll maybe pay extra attention to this and I know a lot of geeks who are much more demanding when it comes to their computer.

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Searching for reviews on the HP 6930p – which is supposed to substitute my beloved HP nx8220 – I came across this video:

Would you try that with your MacBookPro? ….eh?

Dieser Tage habe ich mich gefragt, ob es noch einen besseren Anbieter für meine Mobilfunkbedürfnisse als Blau.de gibt. 9 cent in alle Netze, 9 cent für SMS, 0,24 € / MB versurftes Datenvolumen und dazu noch eine bequeme, automatische Aufladung, so dass der ursprüngliche Nachteil von Prepaid entfällt.

Alleine: das E+ Netz ist so dermaßen beschissen, dass ich mit meinem Telefon manchmal keinen Empfang habe. Ist das Handy (ein Nokia N95, letzte FW) im Dualmodus eingestellt (GSM oder UMTS, je nach Verfügbarkeit), bucht es sich als UMTS-Gerät ein , im Display wird 3G und ein deutlicher Antennenempfang angezeigt – aber Telefonate kommen einfach nicht durch. SMS kommen dann entsprechend auch mit Verzögerung an. Abhilfe schafft hier nur die Rückstellung auf GSM-only (und das ist auch nicht 100% verlässlich).

Ich habe auch noch eine Fonic SIM-Karte, die ich in Verbindung mit der Tagesflatrate für 2,50€/d und einem 3G Modem (im Netbook und als PCMICA Version fürs Notebook) verwende. Fonic bietet fast gleiche Konditionen wie Blau.de, allerdings im O2-Netz und ohne Kreditkarten-basierter automatischer Aufladung.

Das eigentliche Problem scheint also im Netz zu liegen – oder aber Prepaid-Kunden haben eine andere, geringere Priorität im Netz (kann das sein?). Beide Netze (E+ & O2) sind nicht so rosig, und das obwohl wir hier mitten in FFM in fast direkter Sichtweite zur nächsten Basisstation wohnen.

Im März 2007 schrieb ich schon mal über meine Erfahrungen mit Vodafone (DE), deren Arroganz bis heute anzuhalten scheint. Vodafone hat eine (vergleichsweise) super Netzabdeckung bzw. -verfügbarkeit, vermag mit dem Rest aber nicht zu überzeugen.

Ab dem 3. Quartal kommt das Nokia E72 auf den Markt, welches eine gute Mischung aus den beiden favorisierten Handytypen Nokia N95 und Nokia E71 darstellt (QWERTZ-Tastatur, Monoblock, 5mpx Kamera). Selbstverständlich liegt da die Überlegung nahe, dieses Gerät im Herbst über einen subventionierten Handyvertrag anzuschaffen und dabei einen modernen 24-Monatsvertrag abzuschließen, der preislich mit den Prepaidtarifen konkurrieren kannn.

Bisweilen verwende ich hauptsächlich die günstigen Internettarife der Prepaidanbieter sowie deren 9cent Einheitstarif(e). Bei T-Mobile muss man sogar teilweise noch eine Tagesnutzungsgebühr iHv 0,19 € bezahlen, dass man überhaupt surfen darf. Solche hohen Kosten sind natürlich auch ein Grund dafür, wieso mobile activism in Deutschland immer noch nicht richtig ernstgenommen wird. DSL ist vorherrschend und mobile Internet”flatrates” zumeist bis 5GB Inklusivvolumen gedeckelt (oder aber ab 1, 5 oder 10 GB in der Geschwindigkeit drastisch reduziert). Im E+ Netz (= Blau.de, Simyo, AldiTalk, etc.) ist sogar nur eine UMTS Geschwindigkeit bis 384kb/s möglich, was mich aber nicht wirklich stört.

Manche Entwicklungsländer sind hier bedeutend fortschrittlicher und günstiger! Und ja, dies hängt sicherlich von vielen Kostenfaktoren ab und lässt sich nicht 1:1 von Land zu Land übertragen. Fakt ist aber unbestreitbar, dass die Mobilfunknutzer in Deutschland unverhältnismäßig mehr zahlen als eigentlich nötig. Bestes Beispiel neben dem überteuerten mobilen Internetzugang sind die immer noch hohen SMS-Gebühren. Lese ich dann ein Angebot (z.B. T-Mobile iPhone Tarife), in dem mit 40 InklusivSMS geworben wird, kann ich nur traurig lächeln. Sind subventionierte Handys ein Grund für diese Mischkalkulation? Oder sind die deutschen Verbraucher einfach nur zu träge für eine Revolution?

Zurück zu meinem Empfangsproblem: gibt es einen Anbieter, der preislich mit den o.g. Angebot konkurrieren kann und dabei eine gute Netzverfügbarkeit anbietet? Welche Angebote / Verträge habt Ihr und könnt Ihr etwas empfehlen? Vielen Dank!