Computers and Internet - Victor M. Font Jr.

One of the side effects of losing my job is that I also lost the use of a laptop. I’ve been in IT for 25 years and have never owned my own laptop. My daughter has one. It’s a small ASUS EEE PC that she uses for school work. But I‘ve I never had my own personal laptop until yesterday. As a writer and public speaker, I need the flexibility of a laptop so that I can capture my thoughts as soon as possible. It’s difficult going to events and making speeches and presentations without one. Two weeks ago, I ordered a DV8T from Hewlett Packard. It isn’t top of the line, but it is spec’d out pretty nicely. The computer shipped last Friday. It made its way from Shanghai China to Raleigh North Carolina by way of Anchorage Alaska, Newark New Jersey, and Memphis Tennessee. It arrived at my home yesterday afternoon, no worse for the wear. When I first saw the box, I did have some concern for it’s health. The corner of the box was crushed pretty badly. It looked like it had taken a pretty good jolt. I began filming an unboxing video to document its condition. I wanted to make sure that if there was anything wrong with the computer, I had a record of it. I may post the unboxing video on YouTube later this week.

The computer has an Intel Core i7-820QM processor operating at 1.73GHz with TurboBoost capability up to 3.06GHz. It has 8Gb of memory and 1Tb of disk space. The video processor is a little lightweight. That’s a Nvidia GT 230M with 48 Cuda cores. I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit as the operating system. For those of you who think I just spoke in Latin, let me translate. It’s pretty fast and can store a lot of data.

The screen is huge. It’s an 18.4” 1920 x 1080p high definition display. It comes with a blu-ray drive and two earphone receptacles. I am so looking forward to watching videos with my wife or daughter. Before I forget, it has a built-in high-def digital TV tuner. It is really a nice computer. I even have it lo-jacked in case someone decides to walk off with it when I’m not looking. In the unlikely event that it does get stolen, the first time the thief attempts to turn it on and connect to the net, law enforcement will be notified of their location. Lo-jack is built into the BIOS and cannot be circumvented.

I was up until 2am last night setting it up the way I want it. Like most companies, HP loads their laptop with bloat-ware, partner sales information and software that you never wanted or will never buy. I took all of that garbage off. When I was finished, I made the recovery disk set. I’m blogging from the laptop right now.

As nice as it is, it does have some quirks, but what PC doesn’t? Prior to making my decision for this machine, I spent a lot of time reading the posts from other DV8T owners on http://forum.notebookreview.com in the Official HP DV8 Owner’s Lounge. The forum has over 2,100 posts. I read a lot of complaints about the video drivers. The video drivers that come native on the laptop are buggy. They frequently stop working. The screen goes black for a moment as they reload into memory. It happened to me within 10 minutes of opening the box. If you go to the Nvidia site and download the latest drivers, they won’t install on the computer. This is because HP modified the original Nvidia drivers to work with their sleep button. The owners forum describes a little hack on page 161 that allows you to work around the Nvidia install issues. I performed that hack last night and the newest drivers installed without consequence. I have had no problem since. You will have problems if you use sleep mode, which I don’t. The real Nvidia drivers don’t have HP’s customization.

HP’s tech support denies there’s a problem with the video drivers even though the issue has been reported since the computer first came out last October. It’s hard to understand how a company of the size and reputation of HP can deploy a machine with faulty drivers. Maybe it’s going to take someone filing a class action law suit to drive a better quality assurance process.

Catching Up On the Week — Image Courtesy of Nate Brelsford.

It sure has been a demanding week. I am busier now since I lost my job than when I was working. I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to keep up with my posting. It didn’t help any either that earlier in the week my sinuses seriously troubled me. I’ve been living on Zyrtec since moving to North Carolina almost 3 years ago. I’ve decided to write all of my blog posts over the weekend and then edit and post one each day during the week. I’m taking Sundays off for family and worship time.

Monday the Colonial JobSeekers was time well spent and richly rewarding. Dr. David Marsh, a psychologist with the Wake County Human Health Services, gave a very enlightening speech on “Keeping It Real.” It’s a message about sustaining a realistically optimistic outlook during the transitional period. You are more likely to get hired if you maintain a positive attitude. He discussed self-efficacy which has been described as the belief that we are capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals. It is a belief that we have the capabilities to accomplish the courses of actions required to manage prospective situations. I’ve always believed this.

Tuesday I heard from my editor. She loves my concise proposal. She said it is “excellent,” and that’s a quote. She asked for additional bullet points highlighting the business benefit of my book. In her email she said she’d be out of the office for the balance of the week and wouldn’t be able to respond right away. I sent her the business benefits later in the day. I also had to work on my wife’s computer. It crashed during an upgrade to Windows 7 and I had to restore it back to Windows XP. Even though the Windows 7 upgrade advisor said everything was fine and I could move forward, I suppose at 8 years old, the computer’s too old to learn new tricks. I hate blue screens!

Wednesday I helped my friend Rick Trollinger. Rick is the owner of Agape Cruise Travels. He is one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet and he does one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen at providing customer service to his client base. He came over to our house and I spent the morning with him helping to jumpstart his network on Linkedin. By Thursday morning, he already had 645 contacts, 5 leads from individuals wanting to book a cruise and 1 lead from a sales organization in Pensacola that wants to book their group for a sales seminar at sea.

Rick specializes in group cruises and meetings at sea. Have you ever thought about having a sales meeting or training class on a cruise ship? If not, you haven’t “missed the boat.” Cruise ship meetings are very convenient and affordable. If you travel to a land destination for multi-day meetings or training sessions, you could be spending way too much money. In these days of scarce funds and fiscal conservatism, a meeting at sea can save you up to 33%. And cruise ships offer amenities that land based meeting venues don’t. There are free meeting spaces and receptions, all inclusive food, free entertainment, and much, much more. Give Rick a shout if you’ve ever thought about this. Now is the time to act. Rick’s email is rick@agapecruisetravel.com.

Thursday I worked on my book. It was the first time I’ve worked on it in about a week. I read through the introductory chapter, didn’t like what I had written and trashed most of it and started over. It flows much better now and I’m almost happy with it.

Thursday evening I attended the Raleigh Chapter meeting of the Association of Information Technology Professionals. I’m booked to speak there on March 18th. My topic is Authentic Leadership. I am so pleased with what I experienced, I joined the association and will be a regular participant in their monthly meetings. My next blog post will be all about the AITP.

Yesterday was all about social networking and building relationships. Oh yes, I finally opened a facebook account. I’ve done my best to resist facebook but caved earlier this week. It reminds me of the Borg on Star Trek, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” In less than one full week I have 349 friends. Won’t you please by my friend, too?