Neowin Competition: Annual October Giveaway

By Daniel F.
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Grand Master

Scirwode

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I'm surprised a site such as Neowin has survived this long in fact, and much of the credit goes to the posters themselves as they made the community what it is. I remember myself being a lurker way back in 2003 and I didn't join in as at that time I had a serious distrust with the internet as a whole. Also, back then I was using dial up when the rest of the world were already enjoying broadband so loading images at the time were painstakingly slow. I've seen a few refreshed designs and for the most part nearly all of them have benefited the community as a whole and Neowin has grown since then. Sure, there was a hacker wannabe who crashed Neowin for a time because there were a few disagreements but on the whole everything turned out alright, much to the boy's discomfort :p .

2003 was also the year I received the first notebook I could call my own, a Compaq Presario X1000, which cost a cool RM6999 but I only paid RM5999 as I traded in my old notebook with them. Back then, people laughed at me as they told I was stupid to go with a notebook when everyone had a desktop and were gaming like anything with games such as Counter Strike: Condition Zero and WarCraft III. But I had done my research back then and despite the high price tag and the sacrificed my parents had to make, I received my notebook and to me it was the best notebook that I had ever owned. It was the first notebook with what started the notebooks attack on the dominance that is desktops, as it had the first Intel Centrino chip codename Banias, named after the place it was created. The speed of the chip was 1.5 Ghz, which also had 512MB of RAM, an ATi Mobility Radeon 9200 and a 60GB harddrive, but what really made the difference was the wireless chip, and its battery life, as it could last up to 4 hours on a single charge. While most students were frantically searching for cyber cafes to finish up their work, I was enjoying a cup of tea at the local "kopitiam" enjoying their free wireless :p . Plus, the notebook could run LightWave 3D just fine while most of the college computers at that time had trouble with even viewing their 3D models :laugh: ! Most who knew me at that time did say that my notebook was worthless at the time because it had no floppy drive. 5 years on, who made the right choice, I wonder :p ?

The second notebook, which was bought in 2006, was a HP Pavilion dv5000t, which was one of the first dual core notebooks around at the time. However, in this case, this notebook gave me nothing but trouble as when I wanted to buy it, it at first went out of stock and when it did came in, they only had one unit and it had scratches all over it. I should have known then that I should have just drop it right there but I didn't. I needed a new notebook for my studies and the programs that I were using, such as Maya 3D and Cortona were taking its toll on my old notebook. So when a new model came in that had no defects that were shown, I took it. Things were fine for a couple of months, however then came the first problem when black dots started appearing on the screen. These were just a precursor to some of the problems that I had with this notebook. Pretty soon, while I was doing my work, the notebook started shutting down for no apparent reason. The problem with these shut downs is that when it happens, all my work was lost and I had to start back from scratch. Now, normally in this kind of situation, you would save your progress before continuing but the problem with me is that I was working with complex 3D models so if I had save and found out there is something wrong with one facet, I cannot go back. I did send it in for repair, and for that I am thankful that HP service here is excellent, but the problem never seem to go away. They've changed the main board, fan, even check a number of internal mechanisms but the problem was still there. Maybe in the US, you would be able to change a defective unit for a much newer one but the concept here is still quite new in most parts of Asia as few customers know they have every right to question the manufacturer on the product.

I, however, was determined to make sure I had gotten my money's worth and started by making a complaint to the customer service. The woman who handled me was very polite about it and she made a report for me which escalated a few times. However, a few weeks after sending in my notebook, she sent me an email saying that my notebook shutting down was due to overheating, and this was caused because of dust, which she even sent me a picture to prove it. The problem I find with this statement is that though there were traces of dust along the fan vent, it was not enough to completely overheat and shut down the whole notebook. Also, my room and the place where I studied was not a construction site! She arranged a meeting with me, trying to explain why the dust is the cause of the trouble. The problem is that if my notebook was affected with dust, why aren't other notebooks similar as mine was affected by dust as well? We spent many hours discussing on what needs to be done, with me insisting that I should receive a new notebook as mine was defective while she stood her ground with her assessment. In the end, I had a partial victory as they were willing to give me a unit they have that was used for display and was rarely turned on. It was slightly better than my old one and though the people at HP felt I had gotten the better deal, I felt differently. Because of the problems with my notebook, my studies suffered and I became depressed when I lost a lot of work that I felt was certainly brilliant. It didn't help when I mistakenly formatted my hard drive, which was my fault as I wasn't paying attention but it only piled up the pressure. Long story short, I had to delay my studies for a while as I cleaned up the mess that wasn't even created by me.

The notebook that they have given me is now being used to type out this message and is what should have been in the first place when I bought it. But the time has come where I have to start searching for a new notebook, and this time it is for my work. I've now gone on to using programs that are more based on animation and videos such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. This time, I'm determined to make sure that I chose the right notebook for my every day needs and surprisingly enough, the dv7 is one of the notebooks on my list :p . Sure, you could say I'm trying to win the notebook which is true, but who isn't :laugh: ? But the reason for my post was in a way to ensure that buying a notebook isn't as easy as looking at the design but also how is the build quality like and will it serve your purpose. Because at the end of the day, the notebook you buy will be stuck with you for the next three years and considering the economy as it is, you might have to stretch it to four make full use of your investment :p . Now with me working, I have to start paying for everything that I wish to buy and my wish list is separated into two parts - what I want and what I need. You could generally say my "Need" list is longer than the other one, but I need to set my priorities straight, or I'll starve during lunch time :p .

I know you only were supposed to post a short reply, but I thought I share a little bit of experience with some of you. Anyway, even if I don't win the notebook, could I at least get a mug for the extra long post I made :D ?

Happy Birthday, Neowin :cake: ! You deserve it.

PS: I know the winner is chosen by random but I thought I make a long post of my entry just for the fun of it :p .

Scirwode

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