hardware hell
Well, I haven’t posted much lately, and there’s a reason. My trusty Compaq presario 2800 decided to freak out this last weekend.
Anytime you moved the LCD panel the video would go nuts and the machine would lock up (requiring a power cycle). So, first I tried to reseat all the connectors I could get at. That helped for a bit, then it came back with a vengeance. Luckily the laptop is still under warranty (I got it 2.5 years ago now, but got the 3 year with it), so I called up trusty outsourced to India HP tech support. The first guy I got was totally clueless. First he said my warranty was expired (I had the web page in front of me showing it was not), then he tried to get me to re-install XP on it (me: “But it does this in the BIOS screen with the Hard Drive totally removed” him: “can you re-install XP and see if it solves the problem?”). Calling back a bit later got me a much better guy, who admitted it was likely hardware and would send me a box to ship it back to them for repair.
So, I put the drive from the laptop on a spare machine and am connecting to it via VNC on my old old old p133 laptop. Man is it small and old and annoying.
I’m pretty sure the presairo is going to get fixed, but it’s only got 6months left on it’s warranty, and it’s my main machine. So, I decided to look for a new laptop, then sell the presario before it runs out of warranty. Looking around, the best choice I could find is the thinkpad t42p. Two other Linux folks have it and like it a lot. Reviews are good. It’s 5.x lbs and has a 1600×1200 screen (which no other one I can find has). Almost everything works under Linux with it. So, I went ahead and ordered one.