It’s sad to hear yet another one of the web’s early days legend, Geocities being closed. Back in its glorious days, Geocities had quite a huge “community” of neighbourhood websites hosted on its servers with websites being grouped by their common interest (E.g. technology related at geocities.com/siliconvalley/mywebsite).
Geocities Closure
It was one of the best free webhosting providers for individuals to express themselves on the internet with their own (static) websites. Geocities has given the opportunity for many netizens to try out building their own websites, and build hits (readership) for free before heading towards their own dot-com and paid webhosting for their website. I am one of them… and I believe many too (if my memory serve me right, even one of my favourite computer review website,
Anandtech.com also has its early beginning at Geocities)
There’s isn’t such a thing called blog nor a nice web publishing platform such as WordPress that I’m using to type this post back then. Having your own personal website back then was really rocket science for many back then. Fortunately, things has improved for the better since then. Having a personal website, or more popularly known as blogs nowadays is relatively easy for an average Joe. Thus, the era of blogs mushrooming all over the web.
With more and more social networking websites such as facebook to help us express ourselves on the internet easily, the end of Geocities became inevitable. Many of Geocities “clone” (free webhosting provider) has closed their doors much earlier or barely surviving. Anyway, thanks Geocities for the experience you’ve given to all of us “homesteaders”. It was a nice home, but we’re moving on…
April 27th, 2009 in
General,
Internet |
1 Comment
A new generation of HP Enviro laptops Li-Ion Batteries powered by Boston-Power’s Sonata technology has just been released (Press Release). HP has made this new batteries available for most of the existing HP/Compaq laptops in the market today, including the CQ45, as an add-on sold separately (sadly, not included as part of your new laptop battery).
Unlike most laptop batteries included with new laptops that comes with a 1-year warranty (or less), these new batteries comes with 3-years warranty. In fact, Boston-Power claims it’s propreitary Li-Ion battery technology to provide the same rated capacity (as a new battery) for approximated 3-years without any aging effects of conventional Li-Ion batteries on our laptops today. Basically, its a battery that could last for as long as the age of a laptop.
Besides the longer lifespan, the new HP Enviro battery could also be recharged up much faster. It will take just 30 minutes to recharge up to 80% of its capacity. This will be good for road-warriors who could only recharge their battery for a short while before they’re on the move again.
Lastly, this battery has been Nordic Ecolabel-certified with practically zero heavy metal. Given it’s longer lifespan, there’s less battery to be disposed off after it’s useful lifespan too. This environmental side of the battery is perhaps the reason behind the name Enviro.
Well, perhaps when my bundle-with-new-laptop HP battery starts to fade, I’ll might get one. As of time of posting, it’s only available in the HP Online shop (US) for US$149.99 (Approx. RM560)
Happy Chinese New Year!!
May the year of the Ox (Niu) be an Ox-pecious year for everyone.
The current global economy seems rather gloomy, but that doesn’t stop the Chinese and everyone else here in Malaysia to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year (albiet in a less grandeour manner). Hopefully the year of the Ox (Chinese Zodiac) will bring some bullish-ness back into the world economy. Have a prosperous new year!
January 26th, 2009 in
General |
1 Comment
Credit should be given where its due, and HP Malaysia’s customer service deserve some from my recent encounter with them. The personnels at HP Malaysia’s main office (HP Tower, Damansara) were well-mannered, friendly and helpful, but more importantly my laptop was repaired (under warranty) in 2 working days.
My recently purchased CQ45 laptop (Reviewed Here) had some problem with the LAN network port, and was found to be faulty or not functioning at optimum level. It’s supposed to be a GigaLAN network, but only manage to operate at 10mbps even on a 100mbps (or 1Gbps) network. The HP personnel at the service centre verified the problem, and eventually replaced a the laptop’s motherboard for free (under warranty). Althought they’ve quoted 3 working days to get it done, it was ready for collection in 2 working days.
I’ve had good encounter with Dell’s customer service previously too, it’s good and fixed at my doorstep within 3 working days from the day the problem was identified via a phone call to Dell customer service. Although HP does not offer such doorstep services, dropping by their service centre to get it fixed in a timely manner deserved to be given some credit as well.
Perhaps HP can further improve their customer service to on-the-spot repair in the future instead of having their customers to make 2 trips to the service centre (since they do not offer repair services at my doorstep)… Anyway, thumbs up to HP Malaysia’s Customer Service 
January 7th, 2009 in
General,
Hardware |
11 Comments
It feels like I’ve just welcomed the dawn of 2008, but a year has past and 2008 is coming to an end. Many things have occurred in my life over this one year period which I didn’t quite have the time to blog about. So perhaps I shall sum it all up in my year-end reflection for 2008.
Well, what’s reflection without looking back at my 2008 resolutions which I’ve made early in the year?
- Climb Mount Kinabalu
Checked! I’ve successfully conquered Mount Kinabalu this year as part of my “Cuti-cuti Malaysia” destination which I’ve always wanted to achieve before I turn 30. Glad I’ve made the trip, it was a fantastic climb
- Get A New/Better Job
Checked! Well things has been going down hill in my previously job, it became just my job instead of my career. In this time of economy downturn, it was a tough decision to quit my job without securing a new offer. Anyway, I’m glad that I did manage to secure a job shortly after taking a break from work
- Freelance Work
Checked! Freelance work is one of my resolutions as a stepping stone towards establishing my own company some day hopefully (fingers crossed). I’m glad there were a few freelance work that came knocking on my door this year, and it gave me some very valuable experience and an opportunity to build my reputation from here (besides the side income)
- Blog More
Did I? In terms of blog post count, I have definitely not been blogging more. However, I believe my post are now better in terms of the content. Several post has made it into Google’s Top 10 search result for certain keywords, and has been generating good traffic. With many other commitments in life, perhaps occasional post of things that matters is better than simply blogging for the sake of blogging
Wow! 3 out of 4 resolutions… looks like it’s been quite a good 2008. I’ll keep 2009 resolutions for another post later when I’ve made some up.
Last but not least, (although it isn’t exactly a resolution) 2008 leads me to my other half. My first girlfriend and hopefully the one that I could share the rest of my life with. It’s been an exciting and interesting first-time experience into a relationship. May our love takes us through the ups and downs in life…
Goodbye 2008…
December 31st, 2008 in
General |
No Comments
Compaq has always been the value segment brand of HP’s product line. The new stylish Compaq Presario CQ45 series shares many similarity (in a good way) with the higher-end HP Pavillion dv4 series but with a smaller price tag. The Compaq CQ45-127TX is based upon Intel’s latest Montevina Centrino 2 platform.
Specifications (out-of-the-box)
- Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor (2.26GHz/1066MHz FSB/3MB L2 Cache)
- 1GB DDR2-667 RAM
- 160GB (5400rpm) HDD
- Intel Wireless Link 5100 (802.11 a/b/g/n) + Bluetooth
- 14.1″ WXGA Brightview widescreen display
- nVidia GeForce 9200M GS 256MB DDR2
- 8x Multi-DVDRW with Lightscribe
- Fingerprint reader
- 6-cell Li-ion battery
- Freedos (Compaq CQ45-128TX comes preloaded with Windows Vista)
Specifications (test unit)
The basic out-of-the-box specifications is rather under powered to run Windows Vista smoothly despite having one of the latest Intel processor and platform (1GB of RAM will sufficate Vista). Thus, I added more juice (RAM) to it to be able to run Windows Vista smoothly.
Similar to the above (obviously), the test unit has the following specifications
- Additional 2GB DDR2-667 RAM making it 3GB of RAM in total.
- Windows Vista Home Premiun – SP1
Design & Build Quality
The new Compaq CQ45 now spots a black glossy finnishing on the lid with Compaq’s ‘Q’ trademark at the center of it. It looks sleek and modern but it’s also a magnet for finger prints and stains. The palmrest and touch pad surface share a metallic silver (HP call’s it “liquid metallic”?) finishing with some circle patterns imprints to give it a touch of class like the HP Pavillion dv series laptop. Althought it looks nice, I’m not too keen of having the touch pad surface being as polished as this, it can be rather sticky to scroll when our fingers are not very dry.
The touch sensitive media buttons (launch media, wifi/bluetooth, mute, increase/decrease volume) has a nice combination of LED colors. E.g. wireless on – blue, wireless off – orange, volume on – white, volume off – orange. The status indicators (power, charging, hard disk activity) uses a nice cool white LED at the lower left corner of the palmrest which is visible even with the lid closed.
As one would expect from a value segment laptop, the Compaq CQ45 is made up of mostly plastic. It is of good quality plastic that is rigid and barely flexes which does give it a fairly durable feel. Overall, the build quality of the laptop is good and at an acceptable weight for a laptop of this class, 2.4kg.
Screen
The 14.1″ WXGA (1280×800) HP Brightview LCD screen delivers bright and vivid colors with a rather wide horizontal viewing angle. However, depending on the lighting condition of the surroundings, the glossy screen surface might be a little too reflective at times.
Keyboard & Touchpad
I’ve always enjoyed typing on HP’s (and also Dell’s) laptop keyboard, and I’m glad that this Compaq laptop inherits all the characteristic that makes a good keyboard. It’s well spaced, well sized keys, good tactile feel, and doesn’t flex. In fact, this review was typed entirely on it.
However, the touchpad didn’t quite excel as well as the keyboard. As mentioned earlier, I’m not too keen of having the touch pad surface being glossy metallic. It’s nice from the design perspective, but not very practical in usability as it can be rather sticky to scroll when our fingers are not very dry (sweaty hands nightmare?).
Speakers
The built-in Altec Lansing speakers seems pretty good (above average) for a laptop. It produce crisp mid to high range sounds at about half the maximum volume. Raising the volume will reduce the crisp and shows the limitation of the speakers. Like most laptop speakers, the low base sounds are of poor quality due to the lack of a subwoofer. For audio enthusiast, the included headphone output would provide better sounds when connected to a quality headphone or speakers.
I/O Ports
The Compaq CQ45 is equiped with quite an array of input and output ports. It is currently one of the very few laptops in this price range that offers a HDMI output port to connect it to a LCD TV for a bigger viewing experience, but lacks a more traditional S-Video output for connecting to older video devices.
It also feature an Expansion Port 3 for ease of connecting with HP’s QuickDock or Docking Station. The other I/O ports are rather standard for a laptop like a VGA output, RJ-11, RJ-45, headphone, microphone, 3x USB ports (3rd port shared with eSATA port), eSATA (faster data transfer than USB 2.0), IR, ExpressCard/54, 5-in-1 card reader (SD,MMC, MS, MSPro, xD), Fingerprint reader, 1.3MP webcam.
On the wireless front, this Compaq CQ45 comes with the latest intel WiFi Link 5100 that supports 802.11a/b/g/(draft)n WLAN. I do not have any wireless-n router to test if it does offer any advancement of up to 300Mbps data rate or better range from the newly supported 802.11n standard, but it does perform pretty well operating on 802.11g in a nearby cafe with wifi hotspot, receiving strong signal from about 5 meters away from the access point.
Performance
The performance of the Compaq CQ45 is quite good considering it is quite well beefed up (specs-wise) for a laptop. The dedicated graphic card does lend a hand to give it a better overall score in some benchmark compared to the integrated intel graphics.
PCMark: 4840
wPrime (32M): 34.729s
Windows Experience Index: 3.5
Heat & Noise
The Compaq CQ45 did get a little warmer than I would appreciate, especially on the left palm rest area where it can get rather warm at about 48 degrees Celcius (the hard drive is beneath here). The underside also do gets quite warm after about 30 minutes of browsing the web and some word processing, playing 3D games would heat it up even faster.
The processor is well cooled at about 34 degrees Celcius while idle and up to 56 degrees Celcius during load. However, the left and center underside could easily reach 51 degrees Celcius during idle and up to 75 degrees Celcius when under heavy load such as playing a movie or a game (the dedicated graphic card do contribute a lot to the heat). It is therefore not recommended to use this on your lap. Elevating the rear of the laptop a little could help the laptop to cool better or perhaps investing in a good notebook cooler would help ease a few degrees from the underside of the laptop.
All the heat buildup does gets the fan spinning rather fast to disperse the heat out, as well as some noise from it. But its not as loud as to the point of being annoying unless its in a very quiet room. Even my ceiling fan seems to drown the laptop fan noise. By the way, the room temperature here in Malaysia is approximately 30 degrees Celcius on a sunny afternoon.
* Temperature measurement based on CPUID HWMonitor reading *
Battery Life
The 6-cell battery included with the Compaq CQ45 performs rather mediocre and might disappoint some road warriors. The Compaq CQ45 only manage to get about 2 hours and 20 minutes of battery life while browsing the web via wifi connectivity before it reaches critical 6% level. During testing, the screen brightness was set to 50% with all the power savings settings enabled.
Conclusion
The Compaq CQ45-127TX is well positioned as a value for money laptop with a good price to performance (and features) ratio, with a nice design and build-quality to top it off. However, the battery life might be a little disappointing for a road warrior, and the heat might be a bit too warm for comfort on the palm rest.
Pros:
- Good performance and graphics
- Good build quality
- Sleek design
- Value for money
Cons:
- Heat at left palm rest and underside rather warm
- Glossy finishing (and touchpad) attracts fingerprints and stains like magnet
- Mediocre battery life
October 16th, 2008 in
Hardware,
Reviews |
9 Comments
