Blue Chi’s

I ordered my Macbook on Friday as you guys know cause my HP laptop started tripping.

Hours ago at WWDC, Apple announced new 13″ Macbook Pros to replace the aluminum 13″ Macbooks with better specs and at a lower price!!!

The ironic thing is that a friend of mine was thinking of buying an iPod touch and I told him to wait for WWDC because Apple might introduce a new iPhone (and consequently maybe a new iPod touch, but the former happened and not the latter), but for some reason I didn’t think about WWDC when I purchased my own laptop.

While WWDC was running, the Apple Store was down for the update, so I couldn’t check the status of my order and I knew if it went out I won’t be able to return it or replace it because it was a custom configuration. It was nerve wrecking. 

I instantly checked the store right after WWDC finished and found that I still had the option to cancel my order, so I instantly did! AND IT GOT CANCELED.

I guess just I got lucky.

It will take about a week for them to refund me my money back, but I already ordered my new Macbook Pro this time. My original order was now at a lower price and had more features, so I thought I’ll upgrade the harddisk with a bit more space as well.

It will still take about ten days for it to be delivered to me. I think I will be able to survive.

I updated my HP’s BIOS firmware today, and my laptop somehow seems a bit better, but the problem is still there. The feedback I received from HP suggests that it is a problem that will require servicing the laptop. I will deal with that once I get my new one.

(Pic Credits: Niklas)

Something weird has happened to my HP laptop, out of the blue the screen flickered, got some pixel noise and then it froze. I tried restarting, into Windows Vista, the pixel noise is everywhere and it freezes before even showing the login screen. I booted into Windows 7 and the same exact thing happened. Somehow though Safe Mode works, and occassionaly the noise would be gone from the boot menu and I can login to Windows before the screen randomly freaks out and it freezes. It feels like a hardware error because of the randomness of it and the fact that it affects both of my operating systems.

I’m happy this thing didn’t happen last week during my exam period, I don’t know what would’ve done. Luckily I’m taking this week off and just not doing anything, but I need to start working on my dissertation soon.

Heard from Diablo that the same thing happened to his HP machine and his only solution was to replace the motherboard of his computer. I emailed HP and their instructions indicate that I need to ‘service’ my system because the problem seem to effect everything even the BIOS menu.

I am going to email HP again to see how the “service” process takes place and how much it will cost me to replace a part such as the motherboard. I can’t believe this happened just two months after the warranty expired. Well, at least it didn’t happen exactly the day after it expired.

I think fixing this is going to take a while, and I’m not sure I can trust it with my work now that I have to start writing my dissertation. I thought I’ll just buy a new computer. I thought I’ll go for a Macbook this time, I have some Windows applications which I paid for, but I can install Windows 7 on the Mac as well, so I guess I can still have Windows as my primary OS and try the Mac OS X from there.

I just ordered the aluminum Macbook online, got a student discount for it as well, but they expect to have it delivered in ten days or so. I might send my HP laptop for service once I get that one so that I don’t remain stuck without a computer during the transition.