Today I got a chance to troubleshoot a brand new Toshiba Qosmio laptop. The model is F60. I would say, this is definitely not a good choice.
It looks flashy and has all the bells ans whistles, but it has soft and flimsy plastic everywhere. Screen glares if I was looking into a mirror all time.
The worst thing is if you rebuild the system, you will have a very hard time to get all buttons to work. F60 is not listed in Toshiba Web site's support page in North America. If you search hard enough, you will find it in European Toshiba Web site, but it does not contain the build number. And there is nothing there helpful too.
Eventually Windows 7 helped me. This is how:
In Device Manager, you will find an unrecognized device under USB devices. Try auto-install driver for it. Windows 7 will say something like "nothing found", and provide an option to direct you to Toshiba Web site. I thought "no, I know there is nothing on Toshiba Support site". But to my surprise, the link starts downloading a 44MB Toshiba Value Added Package right away. Install it when download completes, reboot, buttons works now.
Years ago, my workhorse laptop was a Toshiba Tecra S2. It was solid-built, heavy as hell, super fast, but crashed randomly. Now Toshiba laptop appears no longer solid-built which had been the only bright point years ago.
There is no reason to consider Toshiba for laptop for sure now.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wireless Router Choice
While shopping for wireless router, I came across this article that explained many things that have been confusing me.
802.11n - The consequences of abandoning the 5 GHz frontier
It answered/confirmed following of my questions/understandings:
1. 802.11n is capable of running on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.
2. 802.11n is best to run on 5GHz.
3. Simultaneous dual-band routers have two radios which could be dedicated to one of frequencies.
4. Using dual-band within 2.4GHz is prone to congestions and interferences.
5. Corporate users are smart enough to be not fooled by bogus MIMO technology introduced in 2005 claiming to deliver dual bandwidth, therefore staying with 802.11b/g before true dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n routers are available. Consumers were fooled to purchase high priced MIMO router and single-band 802.11n router.
On a side note, Windows Vista vs Windows 7 is another example of wisdom of corporate users, i.e., only home users upgraded to Vista after its release while most of companies sticked with Windows XP until Windows 7 came out. The bottom line is, consumers are easy to fool. This is where Apple and Steve Jobs won.
802.11n - The consequences of abandoning the 5 GHz frontier
It answered/confirmed following of my questions/understandings:
1. 802.11n is capable of running on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.
2. 802.11n is best to run on 5GHz.
3. Simultaneous dual-band routers have two radios which could be dedicated to one of frequencies.
4. Using dual-band within 2.4GHz is prone to congestions and interferences.
5. Corporate users are smart enough to be not fooled by bogus MIMO technology introduced in 2005 claiming to deliver dual bandwidth, therefore staying with 802.11b/g before true dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n routers are available. Consumers were fooled to purchase high priced MIMO router and single-band 802.11n router.
On a side note, Windows Vista vs Windows 7 is another example of wisdom of corporate users, i.e., only home users upgraded to Vista after its release while most of companies sticked with Windows XP until Windows 7 came out. The bottom line is, consumers are easy to fool. This is where Apple and Steve Jobs won.
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