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Today I got a bargain netbook in the Carphone Warehouse clearance sale – I’d ordered one yesterday online within minutes of the sale starting to be told they were out of stock and were cancelling my order a few hours later. Gutted. So I trapsed round their shops today and eventually picked up a brand new Toshiba NB250 “half-price” for just £120! Bargain!

But it seems Toshiba netbooks have a disgustingly garish OEM/branded background screen that’s displayed during startup and logon (though Win 7 starter still has the standard Windows 7 desktop background).  Turns out this isn’t too tricky to get rid of (and yes, it works on Windows 7 Starter).

Just head on into the registry and find the key called: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background - change the value from 1 to 0 and you’re back to the default Windows background.

You can apparently also change the background to any picture you want if you’re so inclined, but I just want something slightly less distasteful than Toshiba’s background so I’m done there.  Hope this helps someone.

I recently bought a netbook on eBay that had come with Windows 7 starter but the owner had wiped this and replaced it with Linux.  I needed a new netbook and figured the fact this one came without Windows would keep the price down.  I was right and I purchased a netbook for £68, now all I had to do was get a copy of Windows 7 to install using the product-key which was still stuck underneath.

In the mean time I installed the new Ubuntu 11.04 and set up a number of partitions to get it ready. I set up a /boot partition of about 500MB (for Grub etc.?), a / partition for Ubuntu and a /home partition for my documents.  I also set up a “Win” partition to leave a space for Windows and a final NTFS partition to use for documents etc. when I was booted into Windows or to share across to Linux.  Linux seemed to be working fine and I got on the internet etc.  It was all very smooth, much more so than when I installed Ubuntu 9.10 or whatever it was back in the day.

I got hold of a copy of Windows and began trying to install it from SD card.  When it came to selecting a partition for Windows to live on, I picked my 40GB Win partition but Windows started throwing a strop and told me something it seems to have told a few others before me:

Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information.

Not impressed, I booted into Linux and tried to set a boot flag on this partition.  That took it off my original boot partition though, as a hard drive can only have one boot partition.

In the end I gave up and wiped all the partitions using the Windows installer.  I then created a 40GB partition for Windows, which proceeded to also create a 100MB “system” partition at the start of the drive.  I’m wondering if I’d left my room for Windows at the start of the drive in the first place if maybe I would have avoided this, but as it is – I now have to install Ubuntu all over again.  Fail!!  Thanks Micro$oft!

This is just a random puzzling issue. I recently went to work without my iPod headphones which I’ve been using with my HTC Desire to listen to music during work, so I tried some others I’d picked up over the summer courtesy of Continental Airlines.

For some reason when I put the headphones in the sound went all echoy and when I tried to fix it the tracks would randomly skip forwards, skip backwards and skip through tracks. I also noticed the headphones icon at the top included what looks to be a headset microphone.

Turns out I’m not the only one… users on Android Forums have been reporting the same issue. Very disappointing from a top-of-the-range Smartphone.

I really like my HTC Desire (purchased from Mobiles.co.uk about 2 months ago) and intend to blog a proper review soon.  There are niggles that I have with it but overall I’m very satisfied with it. One major pain in the backside though, is the micro-USB port used both for data transfer and for charging. In a word, it’s shit!

When I first got the phone it didn’t take more than a few days to notice that the connection was loose and it would shut off mid-charge etc. Not good. After leaving my charger in a hotel I bought a replacement from Argos. This was better but still has issues.

It was after this that I realised that the data cable for my work phone, a Nokia 5230, also had a micro-usb connector on the end. Guess what: it seems to fit perfectly!

So are HTC just cutting corners by supplying shit peripherals?

I’ve posted twice recently about my problems following an upgrade of Ubuntu Netbook Remix to Lucid Lynx (10.04).  In short, I upgraded both the BIOS of the netbook (an Asus Eee PC 1008HA) and upgraded Ubuntu from 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).  Once I did this the sound would disappear after the first time I logged in following each boot, and only work properly if I logged out and in again.

One kind commenter (thank you “ThrasherC”) suggested a solution to a similar problem.  I haven’t followed the story of the bug report and probably don’t know enough about Linux to understand it so I’m not taking responsibility for anyone else doing this. This is a statement of what I did, not advice

1. Open a new terminal
2. Issue command “sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa”
3. Find the line that says “load-module module-device-restore” and comment it out by adding a hash at the start so it reads “#load-module module-device-restore”
4. Restart

Hope this helps someone – be that you, or me in the future.

Right, at the weekend I upgraded my Asus Eee PC (1008HA for those of you interested) to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS – Lucid Lynx from the previous version, 9.10.  Everything seemed fine (I think).

Update: The problem described in this post has subsequently been investigated and solved.

On Monday or Tuesday night I then upgraded the BIOS to see if it would fix the fact that the wireless was shite when I was using Ubuntu.  (Incidentially either the BIOS or OS upgrade seems to have fixed the probelms I had connecting to one specific router)

I didn’t notice a problem at the time because I’m dual booting Windows XP and was using that, but when I booted into Ubuntu again on Thursday night, the audio didn’t seem to be working.  I quickly discovered that the sound did indeed work at the login screen, but once I logged in there was nothing (including no welcome sound).  The audio/volume functions on the Fn keys also now do nothing (though brightness ones still work!)

I think the sound was fine following the Ubuntu upgrade, but I’m not sure, so I think the BIOS upgrade has ballsed it up.  Which is a pain.  It looks like I’ll have to try reverting the BIOS and/or Ubuntu to a previous version.  Watch this space…

I realise I haven’t written anything here in a while but I thought recent developments warranted a post.  Basically my mobile phone contract with Vodafone is up for renewal.  My contract expires at the end of May and I’m already into my "eligible for upgrade" period.

I have decided on a phone. I want an Android phone. I simply MUST have an HTC Desire. So much that I already want to start writing apps for it!

Things looked good at the start of April when it was available on T-Mobile for £15/month and £129 up front for 24 months.  This came with 300 minutes, unlimited texts (they say 300 but you get a choice of flexible booster free and mine would go on unlimited texts)  and "unlimited" (1GB) data.  This is much better than what I’m currently paying Vodafone £30 a month for!!

Unfortunately while the plan is still available on T-Mobile the price of the phone was hiked to £191 fairly quickly.  It’s still a very competitive contract, and still better than what Vodafone were offering, but I was already nervous about taking out a contract on a network known (to me) mostly for shit signal, based partly on my experience with them about 6 years ago, so I went to do more research.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching the best deals from all networks (except O2 who don’t stock it yet, but I’ve found ways round that) from at least a dozen retailers.  Really it would be a waste if I kept this information to myself and didn’t share what I’d found out with the world (or the 3 random people who happen to stumble on this blog over the next year and probably don’t even speak English).

Anyway, to got a long story short(er), I’m going to post a summary of what I’ve found over the next couple of days. Keep your eyes peeled.

As I write this I’m on hold with Vodafone customer services (tech support) trying to find out when they’ll approve/build a version of the new v30 firmware for the N96.

For those not familiar, when Nokia update their firmware, the updates can only be downloaded by those with generic (unbranded) phones. If your phone comes from a network, it will have a different product code depending on the network. When you run Nokia’s Software Updater it reports back what code you have, and if your network haven’t approved an updated version of the firmware, you don’t get any upgrade.

Vodafone haven’t approved an update for the N96 firmware since v11.018 which was released in September 2008. The problem is that there have been several updates since this time to fix poor performance and other issues, including two major updates in May and July which I really want to get hold of.

So I’m trying to get a call centre to tell me when Vodafone are going to get their fingers out of their arses. What do you think of my odds?

(more…)

A while back I posted a request for help tracking down a cheap replacement battery for my Acer Aspire 5003 laptop (thanks for the overwhelming response on that!) and eventually ordered one from a site called PortableParts.co.uk. I’d never heard of them before and, in common with the other shops selling the battery I needed below the £45 mark, the site, while perfectly usable, didn’t look overly impressive.

I Googled about for a few reviews and found nothing so I’m recounting my experience here in the hope it helps someone else (this is not a recommendation for or against, just my experience. I accept no liability for anything whatsoever).

As I mentioned, I ordered the replacement battery from PortableParts.co.uk. They were among the cheapest and out of those selling for under £40 they had the best site (and a phone number, which I foolishly never checked out) which made them seem more legitimate (whether that’s true or not is not for me to say).  For those of you who haven’t been following my twitter tweets, I ordered the battery just before midnight on Thursday 7th August. To my delight, the postie delivered it on the Saturday morning – to Northern Ireland no less. Better still I fired it in, charged it up and it seems to hold a longer charge than the original battery ever did (though as the original struggled to make it through a 2 hour lecture, I suppose that’s not setting the bar very high).

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know that my experience with Portable Parts was very postive. Delivery was fast and to date the battery I have is working fine and I’m delighted to have a truly portable computer once again.  I didn’t try the phone number to make sure it was real or anything, but thankfully that’s because I never had cause to.  Might be worth giving them a ring to see how easy they are to get hold of before ordering anything, but I got what I ordered quickly and at a good price (£38.98 after a 10% discount).

I’m looking for anyone with tips about cheap laptop battery retailers.

My laptop (an Acer Aspire 5003 wlmi) battery packed in ages ago and it’s a pain in the arse having a laptop that has to be plugged in.  The laptop was only £400 so it would seem a bit of a waste to spend too much on a new battery.

I could get one for about £35-£40 from a few different places but most of them look a little bit shakey (and many are the same site with different names).

So does anyone have any experiences with any of the following:

• au-battery.com (£38.71)
  
• global-stores.co.uk (£38.99)
  
• newdigistore.com / laptopbatteryshop.org
  
• powertoolbattery.co.uk
• PortableParts.co.uk (£42.98)
• An Amazon Seller (£44.37)

or anywhere else where I can pick up a cheap battery for the aforementioned Acer Aspire 5003 wlmi laptop?

Update: I’ve ordered from PortableParts.co.uk after finding a voucher code for 10% off everything, so it was £38.98 delivered (hopefully). Will report back if/when it arrives.