While there are blizzards going on in some parts of the country, it is 70 degrees and sunny here in South Carolina. I have the back door open, the windows opened, and I was in the kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee at about 1:34pm when this occurred…
Knock Knock…
Who’s there?
UPS.
UPS who?
UPS is at your door with a Chrome OS notebook, come get it or I’m taking it home!
This is how my afternoon started…
December 7th 2010 I caught this post over at ZDNet…
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/google-debuts-first-chrome-os-based-laptop-the-cr-48/20552
I followed the link and signed up as an individual, not a business. I have not heard a think since I submitted the application (nothing new, I’ve never won anything in my life, except contests where everyone wins…) So let me say the first thing that came out of my mouth when I started opening the package was “Damn, I think I just shit my pants.”
Below are pictures I have taken of the packaging and contents, and some videos of turning the notebook on (which by the way I did not have to hit the power button like the instructions said).
I have noticed so far that if you let it sit after 1-3 minutes the display dims, then after 1 or 2 more minutes it goes to sleep., but about the time when the screen dims, but has not yet done so, if you try to move the mouse there is a second or two before it responds, as if it is setup to allow the touchpad to be shut down to conserve power.
A quick overview of the startup, which you can watch on the videos…
I took it out of the box, popped the battery in, flipped it open and the Chrome logo was on the screen by the time I had it open all the way. The first message was to connect to my network, then it checked for updates, spent a good 10 minutes updating (wifi N (if it used it) and a 15MB down 4MB up internet connection). After the update it rebooted and I went to log in again, but it had forgotten my network passkey… which is when it displayed a popup that offline mode failed. I re-entered my passkey and it was back online right away (there was an option for verizon wireless, but I did not want to activate that yet, as it is only 100MB per month for free, for 24 months though! With an option for $9.99 unlimited per day…).
videos are now available, I’ll apologize in advance for the quality, I am not a video editor, nor do I have video equipment, but there are just somethings that pictures and words can not adequately portray.
I apparently have forgotten how to embed the videos, will resolve this shortly.
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
VIDEO 3
VIDEO 4
VIDEO 5
VIDEO 6
VIDEO 7
VIDEO 8
Right, moving on to the conclusion of this little episode, I’m sure I have more things to talk about from the last 6-9 months, but I’ll conclude this part now.
Now jumping back a little to August, after going through multiple conversations (via email) with ECS about my motherboard, I was informed I had to replace my power supply to continue the process, as having a bad power supply can cause all of the listed issues. so November 6th I was finally able to buy a new power supply, I think it is linked previously… if not….
in short it is an 80 plus certified modular 600w power supply, in short this means it guarantees an efficiency level of greater than 80% (I think a standard PS runs 40%-60% efficiency) and I went from pulling 145-186 peak watts (I’ve apparently forgotten how much it was pulling before, I know my old P4 pulled 185-235 watts) to only using 128 peak watts, so that was way cool, but did not really fix the problem. then they released a new Bios update and wanted me to try that. I did not see any reason for this, as the update only said it fixed issue with
Release Reason:
1.support new cpu:Athlon 64×2 5000+ (C2), Phenom II 945/925 (C3) (95W)
2.update C&Q rule
but I did it anyway, and I was able to load the Catalyst Control Center on the 3D page!! sweet, so I quickly started up DDO, and my PC shut off within 5 seconds. DOH!
I got everything started back up and emailed ECS again with the results. a couple days later I was informed my issue had been sent on to the RMA dept. a week after that I got my RMA acceptance, mailed my MB in about 10 days ago (USPS priority flat rate, in the original box with the static bag, and the squishy sheet that it sits on), the new-ish one came back in the mail UPS express a day earlier than UPS projected in the same box!! with my same static bag and squishy thing (yes I marked them) although the box was smooshed a little I was very impressed I got it back as I had been using it to hold some small parts in my PC parts bin. Those small parts (and internal PC cables) had been stuffed in a grocery bag in the interim.
Also during this time (obviously before I shipped the MB out…) I had a total HDD drive failure on a 200gig I was using to store my games and VHD’s – not cool, but I did had the VHD’s backed up. and it apparently is out of warenty as I could not get Seagate‘s website to accept an RMA on it. Well that drive now is proudly displayed as 2 Drive platters, one hanging on my office cube wall so I can see people sneaking up on me, and the other is on a co-workers cube wall for the same reason. (not me, but so he can see people sneaking up on him….)
Alright, I think that is most of what happened in a nutshell. If I think of anything else, you can be sure I’ll post it up here.
