(This is me and my cat, Domino, facing the screen of the laptop and getting our picture taken!)I finally bought my first laptop; the
A8SC by Asus.
It's got Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T7100 (1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache), 2G DDR2 667 MHz SDRAM, 14" WXGA(1280x800), NVIDIA Geforce 8400M G, External 128MB GDDR2 VRAM, SATA 120GB (5400rpm), DVD Super Multi, SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO Card Reader, 0.3 Mega-Pixel web-cam, Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection or Intel® Wireless WiFi, Intel® High Definition Audio MDC Fax/Modem, 10/100 Base T, Built-in Bluetooth™V2.0+EDR, Built-in Intel® High Definition Audio compliant audio chip, Built-in speaker and microphone, 6 cell 4800mAh 53Whrs, and Windows XP Pro (SP2) already installed in the laptop. It also came with the
emould for the A8 series which covers the top, lcd and the full keyboard and palm rest. Got it all at P69.5K at
TipidPC.com, and I'd like to believe that I got a good deal out of it!
Not a very good start either...Interestingly enough I had to remove a virus on the very evening I got my
lappy. The distributor I bought this from was kind enough to deliver the unit to my home already equipped with utilities to keep my PC running smoothly. Unfortunately it also came with
Disk Knight, a supposedly helpful utility designed to protect PCs from infection launched from a USB memory stick, though it also installs itself on memory keys you plug in... Later when you plug that stick to other PCs, it'll automatically install itself there. Hence it is also labeled as an
undesirable program, and so far only
Kaspersky was able to detect it (
AVG was originally installed in my laptop, but it wasn't able to detect the virus so I uninstalled it). I went to the Kaspersky website right away and downloaded the trial software, and fortunately for me it did the job! It detected and successfully removed
Worm.Win32.AutoRun.ao by deleting C:\Windows\
Knight.exe and a restore file. (I bet
Nod32 would've been able to detect that also, but I didn't install that because it looked difficult to use. Kaspersky seemed a good in-between for user-friendly and sophisticated anti-virus software. Anyways...) After that was done, overall I think my 1-week old lappy is my favorite tech toy for the next two years! (More or less, depending on funds...)
Bringing it to the office...Finally, I live up to my handle (mobile monica) and I get to bring my light-weight lappy to work! Of course when I got there, the first thing my officemates noticed was my
hair (got that rebonded as well), and then they noticed the skin (emould) on my keyboard... the specs of my lappy became secondary =P I suppose it's not that common around here to have emoulds covering their laptops, but I think I'm doing a pretty good job at marketing this to my friends with laptops.
The best part for me was being able to bring my lappy to meetings and demonstrate my work without rushing to store my files in a USB Key just so that I could plug it in someone else's laptop! And of course I love being able to customize and install
whatever I want and not be restricted by
AD policies from our office network!
As for performance...Only time will tell if my lappy can take the imaging and web development software I use for work, especially if I use them simultaneously with large files at a time. But for certain, some of the activity I do here is faster than using my old PC at home, however, there is very little difference in speed when I open files here compared to my desktop PC at the office. Ultimately, what I really paid for is the mobility and convenience of having a laptop when I need to work in the strangest places (like a ballroom joint where my band plays =P Sometimes I work during breaks in between sets).
All I can say now is THANK YOU, LORD for caring enough to bless me with this laptop! I will take care of it and use it for your glory =) (...and some work and games of course!)
