Tuesday 27 October 2009

I hate my Sony Ericsson K850i...

15 months ago I have bought a k850i from Three UK. I loved the phone's appearance and functions, and everything was OK. After approximately half a year of use, my mobile started to run slowly and was annoyingly lagging. It suddenly turned off in my pocket on the other day, and when I tried to turn it on, the keypad backlit and the blue ring around the camera lens lighted. And nothing else... I gave it to repair, 3 days, and my phone was back. It worked perfectly, and again, after three months began to lag, and suddenly turned off and same. And again, warranty, 3 days and mobile is back. Guess what? After 3 months this happened again. Warranty service wasn't that quick that time. 22 days (!) and they gave me a new phone. Ohhh finally - I thought. The phone worked well until the last week. The same thing happened to the other mobile of the same kind. I realized that k850i is a piece of crap. Even though it has amazing features, it still sucks. I mean, the quality and software sucks. Fortunately, tomorrow is the time for an upgrade from 3, so stay tuned for a review of Samsung i8510 Innov8 which I am going to buy. This is going to be the first Samsung of mine, and I hope I won't be that disappointed as it happened with sony ericsson... I will never buy a Sony Ericsson again... I thought of Satio, yeah maybe it looks cool and has cool features, but it's still a Sony Ericsson. Actually, why do I need a camera phone while I have a camera? Mobiles are mobiles, cameras are cameras. I have a separate camera. You may think I'm a hypocrite as I am going to buy a Samsung that has 8 megapixels, 120fps recording etc. but I am going buy this phone because it has a large screen - perfect to watch videos, mp3 player, Symbian OS... and looks good. Also, it's a value for money. I would buy a nokia n86 which has the same features, but why i should pay £30 a month when I can get a samsung for £20? But overall I am going to buy it because it seems to be good. Am I right? We'll see ;)

Sunday 11 October 2009

Toshiba L300 heatsink FIXED

As I said before, the heatsink in my Toshiba L300 was clogged and the computer was overheating. The day after writing my last post, the computer was getting even 97C! So I said to myself that it cannot be ignored and that I HAVE TO unclog the heatsink. I know I promised the photo report, but unfortunately, there was nothing special to take pictures of. I have only taken the keyboard off so I could see the fan and tried to suck the dust out with the hoover, but with no success. Then I got an idea to try to suck the dust through the heatsink's side, not fan's. It didn't work as well. I decided to blow the dust with the air, but 'huh where is the compressed air can? I think I don't have one' so I blew it with my own mouth, and here I would for the first time in my blog, ladies and gentlemen, use a popular LOL acronim. But really, it DID work out. The dust has come through the fan and I only had to take it out with the screwdriver. Then it was time to place the keyboard on, and to turn the computer on. You don't even know how was I surprised by the work of my computer. I got used to listen to the fan's noise on high RPM's and the temperature of the palmrest, but after my repair, I like came back to times where my computer was new ;)

ps. To the professional computer servicers: I know what consequences would be, but nothing bad happened. I am lucky, ain't I?

ps2. Don't try this at home, better give your computer to specialist.

I think I don't have to say anything about the warranty? So don't do it on your own, unless your warrranty period has finished.

Thursday 8 October 2009

Toshiba L300-1CU after half a year of using...

Hello everyone, I am back after a 2 month break, I know it's been long, but now I am going to write my blog like more systematically.
So, today I am going to tell you about my Toshiba L300-1Cu which I have bought about half a year ago.
Firstly, I was amazed by the laptop's performance. It has 2Gb memory, Dual-Core Intel Pentium T3200 processor working at 2ghz, GMA X4500m GPU which is not the best graphics but quite good for me; and glossy, colorful, high-def 15.4'' LCD screen. Microsoft Windows Vista, not bad I thought, actually I thought of downgrading to XP, but when I turned on the computer first and for the first time I saw Windows Vista Ultimate, I like fell in love with Vista and began to like Microsoft again. OK, after configuration of the Windows, I decided to test the computer's performance. I have installed NFS Carbon which worked very fluently on high performance. All the other games I played also worked great (GTA San Andreas, Max Payne II, Postal II)
I thought: What an idiot said Vista is not good for games? Of course it is good, but perhaps they used Vista Basic which I used for a few days on my older laptop, ACER 3680, but downgraded it to XP because even old-ass GTA Vice City graphics were crashing... let's come back to Toshiba.
So I've been using it for half a year, and everything was alright, apart from overheating, but that's what I am going to talk about now. Well, after 5 months use, my computer started to overheat. When it was new, it was getting around 40c, when I played games it had 50-55, with some games it had even 65... but now, at the moment when type this, I am getting 57c. Oh crap, probably the heatsink is clogged and I am going to have to disassemble my laptop and clean it... I'm a do it soon, so stay tuned for my photo report.
Now, about the cosmetic issues. After half a year of use, the some of the keys have become shiny, the dirt has come under them, but I don't mind, it would have happen anyway. When I moved on from Acer to Toshiba, it seemed like Toshiba had better quality finish, but in reality, it didn't. The thing suffered the most after my use, is the palmrest. The paint comes off now at the corners and begins to come off near the touchpad, touchpad buttons, and on the bottom of the palmrest.

Conclusion
My computer is used for about 16 hours a day (including 5-8 by me) so the clogged heatsink has to be the effect of this use. The same about the palmrest. Some people use laptop for like 3 hours a day, so if my computer is used 5 times more a day, it means that mine is 5 times more likely to break, it wears 5 times more, and probably has 5 times shorter lifespan. Normally used L300 would have the same problems after 2-3 years.