hp Compaq 6910p

Whenever a model has a p I have a good laugh, I am just juvenile. I upgraded this notebook to Windows 7 Professional, er, strictly speaking, I didn't actually do the upgrade, some Jack did it some time ago, and I am happy to report that he fixed the falling off blue nipple thingy in the middle and the stuck key. So he is the man.

Not too long ago, that's a about a few weeks ago, I noticed the hard drive was overheat most of the time and the fan was spinning like crazy. Loud and crazy. Yesterday I was thinking to upgrade the BIOS. I did a search and was able to locate and download the BIOS. It was surprisingly easy and painless. That is there is no floppy disk, no USB drive, you just did everything within Windows. The instruction could be a little better. It made no mention to Windows 7 at all, though, I went ahead anyway thinking Windows 7 is pretty much just marketing as much as it's an upgrade compared to Vista. I know there is some difference at least the Cisco VPN works so much better in Windows 7 than in Vista. Anyway, the new BIOS seem to have calmed down the harddrive, I can actually put my wrist on the wrist rest where the harddrive is and the fan, though spinning is no where near the decibels it cranked out before. So that's surprising in a very good way.  Let's see how long it can stay this way. Plus after the Win 7 upgrade, the SD drive is totally able to read my humble 8 gb sd card, which it failed to read when on Vista, that led me to believe it was really a driver issue not a hardware issue. I thought the overheat would lead me to dumping it but I guess I will have to keep it for longer now that it's cool and quiet, i.e. relative to the hot and loud before.

Mini Rant

My hp6910p continues to underperform or perform just as expected. There is no surprise on the upside only on the downside. I got myself a Kingston SDHC 8 GB card, and just as expected, it won't read it. So no surprise here as the reader only says SD. On another unrelated note, one of the keys on the keyboard just gone bonkers. So when I type, a letter just won't show up like it's supposed to be. I have to press it in a special way. It doesn't sound like a big deal but it actually is. It gets really annoying. On the other hand, my Linux cheapo hardware continues to surprise me on the upside. My super cheapo SOHOUSB reader/writer just reads the 8GB without any problem. And yes, the reader just says SD no HC there but it just swallows the card in whole and gives me an icon on the desktop that says 8.0 GB Media. It just works.

hp Compaq 6910p

The notebook is chugging along pretty nicely.  The pointing blue nipple thing fell off already even though I am not known as a rough nipple player ... but I can always put it back, though it isn't like secured anymore.  On the other hand, my century old Thinkpad's red nipple is still firmly, snugly and securely erected in between keys like the first day I got it.  Note, hp calls it a "pointing stick," how inappropriate to refer a thingy this length a stick?