It was my wife’s birthday and I decided to take her out to Total Mall @ Madiwala for some shopping. Also since there was a karaoke competition, I decided to enroll her and ask her to sing a song accompanied by lyrics to the public. I myself wanted to sing a song, but decided that I did not want to screw up other people’s pleasant evening shopping, so kept quiet.

Pic courtesy: www.bangalorebeats.com

The total mall as you would know in Madiwala is refurbished over the old madiwala shopping complex that was supposed to actually house all the grocery stalls out on that road. For whatever reasons such as maybe high rentals or otherwise, these grocery vendors did not occupy the complex, leaving it in tatters. Slowly but steadily the commerical value of this piece of real estate was well underestimated and the government had a high priced property which was not getting properly utilized. With the advent of low cost retailing such as Total (I say low cost as compared to malls such as Forum, which was of a high standard), they took up this space and transformed it into what you see above. Note the older building in the last four floors and you know how bad it was!

I was expecting a TOTAL surprise, and ended up with a TOTAL disaster. Before I bash up TOTAL on this blog, some good points about the shopping. My wife participated in the Karaoke contest with the song Tere Mere Pyaar Ke Charche har zaban par …. a beauty!

The lyrics were on the screen and all one had to do was get used to this and sing along! My wife did sing well enough, more better that what I thought she sung at home! And I did enjoy those moments with my son too. After that when the crowds started piling up, I decided to go shopping within the mall which gave away some of the ridiculous arrangements of this mall. Here I list a few of them:

• Right in the middle of the mall where people must have been walking is a CD store occupying all the space
• The only eateries include MacD, Serengeti and yet another restaurant (no food court or nothing of that sort)
• Rides for very young kids like the horse, car, etc (swing along) costs 20 bucks which I thought was meaningless!
• The mall is designed in such a way that once you enter the shopping area in a floor the only way out is to take a full round of all stalls, and go up another floor, hold your breath, take a full round all over again and then reach the billing counter. Damn, I wonder what these people were thinking when they built the mall this way. Absolutely ridiculous waste of time and energy.
• The AC was terrible or non existent making me sweat like hell all the time, its a pity such a big mall felt like a furnace (so much for pleasant shopping)
• The travelator (Total’s modified meaning of eslacator) is pure hell served to you. Twice the length of the normal elevator, and double the distance to reach the other end meant only longer walks and even more outrageous waste of time
• Just when you thought you could get things billed and get out, you had to remember your personal things kept at one floor below! Waste time again and over again.
• The staircase leading to the car park wont even accomodate one thin person around the corners (landing area) – guess only animals like cats and dogs can go through these. Absolute horror.
• My wife being in the architecture field puked at such a design that the government had come up with years ago.
• And just when you thought everything was over, the absolutely horribly designed car park strikes you in the face. Even a car such as my swift diesel brushed against something on its roof, one can only imagine what cars such as scorpios which are SUVs will undergo in this car park. Look for yourself

We did shop a few things in this mall, but vowed never to return again. If you were to heed my advice, take your family to the FORUM mall. Its like comparing well bred labradors or golden retreivers with rabid street mongrels. My two cents, have a good family outing, not a TOTAL DISASTER.

Technorati : AC, aaj kal tere mere pyaar ke sapne har zaban par, air conditioner, aircon, architect, architecture, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, car park, car rides, cd, dvd, escalator, golden retrievers, government, grocery, horse, karaoke, karnataka, koramangala, labradors, lyrics, mac donalds, macd, madivala, madiwala, mongrels, reviews, santhey, scorpio, security, serengeti, shopping, singalong, steps, suv, swift diesel vdi, total mall, travelator, vendor

The political parties are at their favorite game again. Dirtying Bengaluru. The other day I was driving near the Hebbal Flyover and I was thinking “well its been sometime now and there are no posters in Bengaluru dirtying the place all around”. And as though to grant my wish, I came across a rather unbelieveable sight.

This

and these

Suddenly there were pictures of all kinds of people from the Congress party crowding around DKS, who is now taking over as president of the regional congress party along with Deshpande. While the famous Times Of India editor HS Balram did point out that DKS did a good thing by organizing a rally at Doddaballapur,

PARTING SHOT Thanks Congress, for small mercies
Wisdom has at last dawned on the Congress. The swearing-in ceremony of R V Deshpande as president and D K Shiva Kumar as working president will not take place in Bangalore, but 50 km away in Doddaballapur. It’s Shiva Kumar’s idea, we are told. “We have earned the ire of Bangaloreans with rallies that cause traffic gridlock. So we decided to organize it outside the city,” he says. Good beginning, DKS. Now we know why you have been named ‘working’ president. Please ensure that the roads in Doddaballapur are not jammed.

little did he realize what mess that would create all the way to the BIAL. The mess is what you see above for many kilometers of drive.

On another side, while I was appreciating our BSY or Yeddy for maintaining a rather low profile, he started publishing posters all over south Bengaluru proclaiming that he was laying yet another foundation stone for yet another flyover – this time two of them at Agara and Iblur ensuring that a mess for another one year or more is created for the residents living in HSR layout making life hell for them.

Alright you people are doing the job, mustering support of citizens whatever. But please be responsible enough to atleast take off the posters once you’re done guys!

On a rather side note, Janata Dal Secular president unfortunately could not do any such thing in Bengaluru, since he died. He was perhaps the only person I appreciated for some reason. (I thought he looked cool :D) But at a young age of 51, he passed away breaking the JDS further into tatters.

Whats amusing about the poster above Yeddy has advertised is that the minorities minister is always invited for all his functions! and So is Sobha Karandlaje. Sangliana who spoke so much against the CM and Home minister is also seen!

This is politics!

Technorati : BJP, BSY, D K shivakumar, DKS, Doddaballapur, H T Sangliana, Shobha Karandlaje, bangalore, bengaluru, bharathiya janata party, bial, blog, christian, congress, deve gowda, dirty, editor, h s balram, hdk, hebbal flyover, jds, merajuddin patel, minority, muzrai, north, parting shot, politics, poster, road works, times of india, wakf, yeddyurappa, yelahanka

Have you ever realized that the fashion industry has grown by leaps and bounds in India over the past few years? the NIFT (National Institute of fasion technology) in HSR Layout is well known for being the nerve centre for fashion studies in India. In fact it was HSR Layout’s first known educational venture for fashion.

India is one of the oldest civilisations in the world, presenting itself as the converging point for a large number of cultural groups professing varied customs and traditions. Respective customs and traditions bind each of these groups to adopt their own way of dressing, thereby inspiring budding fashion designers to experiment with a huge plethora of options. What is noteworthy in this context is the fact that no matter how large the array of options there are for the designers, their final designs always portray an element of ethnicity that acts as a major crowd puller in the markets. As more and more fashion designers recognised the potential of the country to provide ample ground for their creations, they went on a designing spree and brought about a renaissance of sorts in the fashion industry. The generally adopted way of dressing up in the traditional clothing gave way to the adoption of a new cosmopolitan way of dressing that was highly fashionable and was the right cliché to woo the GenNext.

Very soon, magnified by the large-scale appeal of these contemporary creations among the trend aware population, which comprised of more than the up-scale urban crowd, a new wave of promotional campaign was ushered in. Tasting initial success with their abstract creations, designers sought to take the couture culture to the next level through road shows and fashion shows in major parts of the country. The gimmick, of course, worked perfectly as expected and made the designers pretty well known faces, owing to the media exposure of the events.

Having said that, if you have wondered if there is a website dedicated to understanding this industry more better and also to know about international careers in fashion design and how you can go about securing that all important knowledge and degree in fashion, it is indeed present. This is the fashion schools website. The site provides important stuff such as articles on fashion, emerging trends, details about schools and careers in fashion and also a blog on fashion.

I had written an article about South Indies, a south indian restaurant in Indiranagar where I had been to sometime last year. The occassion was a meeting with my best friend Kishore, on his visit to India from USA.

To just tell you more here, Kishore and I know each other for more than 15 years now, he is more than just a friend to me, he is part of my family and one of the key influencers of my life. Well, without digressing much, it was one year more of not seeing him, and this time he landed in Bengaluru once more. This time we decided to head straight to BonSouth yet another south indian restaurant in Koramangala, a stone’s throw away from my house.

BonSouth is a restaurant, which is situated bang on the 80′ Road Koramangala and it is built on a huge piece of land. As usual as one would expect, you cannot park anywhere closeby thanks to BTRAC and thousands of no parking boards everywhere (I think this BTRAC aims at inconveniencing people rather than helping them). So BonSouth currently has taken up the land next to their restaurant for parking purposes. These days I find this is being the norm of many people including MTP (More than Paranthas) another Delhi based restaurant in Koramangala adopting the same approach.

We had gone by two wheeler, and I didnt have a problem finding parking for myself. It was night and we landed up for dinner. Knowing and having seen South Indies before I must have realized the costs of going to Bonsouth, but I was not too surprised looking at the menu card. Firstly we were handed over the spirits menu, where it showed one bottle of champagne to be about 12,000 bucks (roughly 250$) which I thought was on the higher side. After some discussions, we decided no to spirits (especially understanding the fact that a brahmin iyer family would not allow me in if they smelt alcohol 🙂 ). We then wanted to go straight to that part of the menu which was synonymous with its name – BonSouth.

The ambience was just right with enough room to talk and catch up for a long while before the food was served and finished. The items on the menu were arranged according to the states in South India – Andhra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, each sporting its own famous cuisines. We settled down on cabbage vada for starters, and some lemon rice and curd rice, along with some andhra veg soup – now dont ask me the names, they were bizzaire! 🙂 A candle was lit for us, and we went ahead and started our meal.

What is of significance that I did not know then but later understood, is the fact that both South Indies and Bon South belonged to the same person and he was running this food chain promoting southern specialities in each area of Bengaluru. So much so also that, I came to know the whole place for both these restaurants were landscaped by a firm called Terra Firma, a company started off by Rohit Marol a well known landscapist today.

The indications were strikingly similar – well dressed waiters (perhaps there is a much more respectful term than this), with suits and coats, all having wireless PDAs to take orders and well mannered too. The landscaping of the place was also done up well with small water bodies here and there and the lighting to suit the mood. Overall for about one starter, two rice items, and one soup (without dessert) the bill was about Rs.800, more or less the same as what we paid at South Indies ealier. But I somehow felt that the food in BonSouth was much better than the one at South Indies given that I could not find any difference in the ambience.

There is also a buffet lunch and breakfast options available somewhere around the Rs.275 mark if you wish to take part in it. Overall, we had a nice dinner and our pockets were lighter by a grand at the end of it. However, given that the prime importance is for the time spent with friends, and a peaceful atmosphere, I would recommend this place as a must visit – atleast once, for the experience, if not again and again. So head straight to BonSouth, and get a taste of what south has always meant to you! 🙂

Technorati : Bon south, LA, ambience, andhra, b-trac, bangalore, bengaluru, bill, blog, bonsouth, breakfast, btrac, buffet, candle, champagne, chowchowbath, cmh road, cost, culinary, delhi, dining, dinner, experience, friends, indiranagar, karnataka, kerala, kishore, koramangala, lifestyle, los angeles, lunch, meal, meals, menu, menu book, more than paranthas, mtp, oasis, parking, pda, restaurant, rice, rohit marol, signal, sony world, soup, south, south indies, spar, spirits, stewards, subhiksha, tamil nadu, tamilnadu, terra firma, usa, waiters, wireless

It was sometime back that I noticed this service while driving to work, but I could not find time to blog about this. However its better late than never that I tell my readers about this. Manipal Hospitals have made an attempt for kidney patients in Benglauru, to bring Dialysis closer to their home by making the service mobile.

They also have a kidney helpline where you can dial 2520 4000 for any queries on kidney ailments, and also avail the dialysis on wheels if you require it urgently.

According the Hindu Business Line,

Manipal Institute of Nephrology and Urology has launched a “Dialysis On Wheels” programme that will bring renal care to the houses of patients, particularly to the aged and who are unable to travel to the hospitals. The fully equipped air-conditioned dialysis mobile unit will be available round the clock and can be called for on 520 4000. The dialysis can also be transported to smaller hospitals and nursing homes where such facilities are not available, allowing the patient to get treatment closer home rather than moving from one hospital to other.

Dr H. Sudarshan Ballal, Director, Manipal Institute of Nephrology and Urology said, “with this programme, we intend to make life easier for the unfortunate patients who have severe kidney failure and need dialysis.” The compact `dialysis on wheels’ would also have trained doctors, technicians and other support staff needed for smooth running of dialysis. The machine can be moved into the homes if required and patients can receive the treatment right along the bedside. This service is priced at Rs 2,200 and ambulance charges per visit.

If you found this post useful, click the share button below and send it by email to your near and dear requiring this service, do a good deed!

Technorati : , Director, Manipal Institute of Nephrology and Urology, Sudarshan Ballal, ambulance, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, charges, dialysis, emergency, fitness, health, kidney failure, kidney helpline, renal failure

If you have been going around Bangalore watching the billboards at major traffic junctions, you would not have missed out seeing this advertisement about the commune apartments from golden gate properties. Their unique selling proposition is apartments at 19 lacs onwards as the pricing. There are a few things that I wanted to voice about this project which I will do here for the benefit of those wanting to invest in it. Firstly it is close to the NICE Corridor done by Ashok Kheny and company. They go on to say on their website that there would be a road leading to their apartment from the clover leaf junction that NICE has constructed in Somapura Village halfway between Kanakapura Road and Mysore Road. More details about this so called road or roads are present in their own website.

What I like about this project is that the apartments look nice for that price range of 19 lakhs and up. Golden Gate properties have been consistently improving on their designs ever since their first few projects in Begur (near Bommanahalli) almost 7-8 yrs back. That is good news. The Commune does have its own share of issues as well which are evident from the above photo (again taken from their website, with due credits to them). The main cluster of apartments have a region on the inside which would have dimly lit areas thanks to minimum sunlight penetration. Elevationally the apartments look good at present, but the free areas surrounding them are surely going to be occupied slowly by all other apartment builders, making life hell around that area sooner than later. Already Kanakapura road is a good example of civilization improving day by day so much so that they had to do double laning of that road upto Konankunte junction.

As far as the plans are concerned, they offer three types of flats, two of 900+ dimension and one of 1100+ dimension. After checking out top views of each of these I found only the Plan 1 reasonably okay in terms of spacing of rooms and privacy. The rest were a bit unimpressive but hey then that is what low cost housing is all about! I did not like the fact that other than the hall, no other room had a balcony provided which is bad. Also the specifications are not so impressive as I have seen in certain other apartments of course at higher costs. Also to be noted is that only 50% of the car parks would be concealed while the rest would be open to the elements, and god save your vehicle in such a case.

According to their own costing sheet the prices for the starting at 19 lacs apartments would now end up to be either 25 lacs or 30 lacs for the bigger one. So is it affordable living? Think again, I sold my apartment at HSR layout for just a thirds more than this.

Two other things really bother me about the Commune. One is that in their walkthrough they show a road from the clover leaf junction all the way upto their apartment complex which in my opinion would never exist. NICE company is smart enough not to provide entry and exit at the clover leaf junction for every tom, dick and harry. Why for that matter I would be surprised if Banashankari 6th Stage BDA layout manages to secure one exit and one entry point into the clover leaf. And in the case that this entry and exit are not provided, the Communists if I may call them so 🙂 would then have to either reach Ravi Shankars ashram or Mysore Road to secure an entry into the NICE BMIC-Peripheral Ring Road linking Tumkur Road with Electronics City. So I would take this road approach statements and plans with a pinch of salt.

The second most irritating thing is that the compound wall of the Commune directly abuts or is adjancent to Vrishabavathi Valley or river. For those who do not know what this river is all about, dont have your hopes high, here is the wikipedia description of the river – The Vrishabhavathi River is a minor river that flows north of the Indian city of Bangalore. The Vrishabhavathi is a tributary of the Arkavathy River. The majority of the sewage emanating from Bangalore is carried by these two rivers. Click here for more information. If you want to see a map of how the river flows until it reaches a sewage treatment plant on Mysore Road, see the figure below. (note that the blue river flowing behind the apartments in the figure above is the one being spoken about)

So with this said, how would you like to live bang next to a sewage river? My guesses are as good as yours. There are positives with Commune in trying to provide low cost housing in these troubled times, and there are cons of living next to the NICE clover leaf and the VV Valley/River. Once the mysore bangalore corridor is operational the noise levels in the corridor are expected to go up manifold disturbing peace and harmony all around given the fact that we Indians are fond of honking our vehicles even when there is no necessity for doing it.

This review is not about deciding whether the Commune indeed is the next wave of low cost housing and whether it is the best project till date in town as far as low cost housing is concerned. But it does touch upon the projects highlights to meritoriously put forth a few points to note before investing into it.

Technorati : 3d floor plans, anjanapura, apartments, approval, art of living, ashok kheny, ashram, banashankari 6th stage, bannerghatta road, bda, begur, bmic, bommanahalli, commune, electronics city, family mart, ggproperties, golden gate properties, hsr layout, kanakapura road, konankunte, kumarans, low cost housing, magadi road, mantri, metro, mysore road, nice, peripheral road, ravi shankar, ring road, sewage treatment plant, singapore gardens, south bangalore, spencers, tumkur road, vakils, vrishabhavathi river

In my past ten years of my web designing, I have had the need to switch my web hosts for many different reasons. Either the web host would one day pack up and not exist the next day, or their webservers would go horribly wrong with errors each time and take a long time to get alright. Or maybe sometimes I’ve wanted to upgrade from paying just one dollar to maybe something more for more facilities. Whatever has been the reason, I’ve always wanted a single place on the internet which gave me a clear picture of the existing webhosts who were popular during that time, along with details of their pricing and how many facilities and what did they have to offer. Most of all, I wanted to have all this in one place.

One such website that provides me this concise information is web hosting rating. They have a very nice site, listing out the top 10 webhosts and predominantly display their traffic offering and price offering, enabling readers to have a birds eye glance of what they need to choose. Also a detailed review of each web host service is available when the user clicks from the front page, giving more than enough details of the intricacies of the facilities offered by them.

They also have an educational set of articles about the web hosting practices, the costing, and what it means to choose a good host. You can see this article for instance which talks about a review of a particular host.

So what are you waiting for? Check out the best web hosts of 2008 and sign up with the one you think is worth it in your opinion. Make an informed decision and get the best for your website!

Nowadays I have become a frequent traveler on Bellary road to my office and I cant help but ponder over the status of the CBI junction magic box work that is going on for almost months together now. Yesterday I happened to see a hoarding put up and I almost from its apperance thought that its ready for inaguration. But however upon looking closer I made out that without even tarring up the road, it was next to impossible to inagurate it.

Then upon looking even closer, I realized that its the Ganganagar BJP unit, which had put up the hoarding to welcome Rajnath Singh and Advani to Bangalore. I am sort of miffed with the way BJP is operating just because it has got a long term government in place. They dont seem to realize that roads are chaotic everywhere, and absolutely no progress has been made towards resolving these issues amongst other infrastructural ones pending so far.

With this said I do hope that they finish up CBI junction magic box on time and then we must have a smooth drive all the way from Raj Bhavan upto Hebbal Flyover and beyond!

Technorati : BBMP, BDA, CBI junction, bangalore, bengaluru, bjp, blog, central, ganganagar, hebbal flyover, high command, infrastructure, lk advani, magic box, rajnath singh, sanjaynagar

I had written about my experiences about the purchase of this laptop in two other parts, Part 1 and Part 2. Now that the hell has just blown over, I am left with upgrading this laptop to MS Vista, and to add another GB of RAM.

For now enjoy these snaps!(CLICK ON THEM FOR BIGGER IMAGES)

the laptop, the external headphone and microphone sockets and the optical dual layer DVD writer drive

power socket, and external monitor socket, modem, usb and laptop lock sockets, ethernet, HDMI, USB and memory card slots

the neatly laid out keyboard and touch pad

altec lansing speakers that surroung the keypad, and the inbuilt webcam and mic above monitor panel

keypad, speakers, touchpad and illuminated quick keys (power and wireless keys)

and finally! the laptop runs Windows Vista Home Basic displaying it on the brilliant 15.4″ widescreen.

Technorati : 1525, 16x, 32-bit, 4920, 64-bit, 8200, 8x, Acer, CQ50, CQ50-106AU, VAT, amd, aspire, asus, athlon, bangalore, bargains, bengaluru, blog, compaq, computer, core 2 duo, credit card, croma, deals, dell, dos, dual layer, dvd writer, eeepc, fujitsu, geforce, hdd, hp, hp pavilion, icici, india, inspiron, intel, koramangala, laptop, lenevo, nVIDIA, notebook, offers, one, pentium dual core, personal, presario, ram, service, shopping, sony vaio, staples, star bazaar, subnotebook, tata, toshiba, turion, vista, warranty, windows, xp

In my earlier post, I had specified my experiences on purchasing a Laptop. Let me take you through the second part of this hell, bringing up the laptop from being a FreeDOS system to be able to use one of our very one MS-OSes – Windows and more windows.

Expectations

My least expectation out of buying this laptop was to get atleast a driver CD for all versions of Windows and a spec sheet containing the chipset details and details about companies making the peripherals for this laptop. Having said that I was in for a complete shock, when all HP managed to give me was a CD containing the EULA for their product. User Guides, FCC regulations, materials used in the laptop – common HP, are you kidding me? “You could have been more personal with the computer.”

So now no driver CDs, but still I assumed, that’s ok with me and I went home and started installing Windows XP. Everything went well until I was asked to reboot the laptop.

Display and Sound Issues

The logon screen came up after ten seconds and during these ten seconds, each second saw one refresh of the screen in a different shade in blue. Every time I clicked my mouse there used to be one refresh and it was like layers and layers of blue coming up on the screen very slowly and irritatingly. Driver Issue, I thought, and tried to find the drivers for this laptop on the HP or other websites. Laptop Drivers website did have the drivers for XP.

So I went ahead and downloaded all these drivers and started installing them. The NVIDIA GE Force 6300 driver installation went fine and I was able to get rid of the refresh problem on the display. Things were pretty good looking on the screen after that. Thanks to my friend Amar, who also happens to be from my ex-company and an IT rep, for guiding me which NVIDIA driver to use among other information contributed by him.

Next was the sound. According to information I got, the driver to be used was the Conexant Smart Audio one. But this driver was not available on the same page as the other drivers. Also to be noted is the fact that the Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture drivers needed to be done first before the audio drivers were installed. Thanks to Amar, I was able to install the audio drivers and the volume panelsprang up after that. I thought the hell blew over but little did I realize that the problems were only worse.

Upon muting the master volume, the other volumes still were unmuted, and upon connecting an external headset, the sound still came through the onboard speakers. The inbuilt microphone on the laptop monitor panel, would not work, and its settings were unchangeable as well. So that presented two issues – I could not use the mute facility as well as the microphone. – Oh the computer is so personal again!

For a long time, I always wanted to make my home entirely wireless in all respects. So I beleived this laptop can change the way I work at home now that I have an inbuilt mic/speakers and wireless. How sadly mistaken I was after this disaster. So now I was left with one brand new laptop, with one unusable useless license of XP and the need to buy another license of Vista just to see if the drivers were fine. Oh the computer is so personal again!

Quick launch buttons and Touchpad drivers

There are a good number of quick launch buttons on the CQ50-106AU for volume, brightness, etc for which drivers were available for XP. Those did not present much problems, and I was able to install them, except that the quick launch buttons were finnicky to work properly consistently. The touchpad drivers were not directly available, and I had to figure out which company made the touchpad and got the answer as Synaptics. These are the guys who write drivers for most laptops and I installed the touchpad drivers to get it working.

Wireless and Modem drivers

I installed the drivers for Broadcom wireless chipset, from here and the modem driver from here again the modem being from Conexant. However, my wireless button on the laptop would not go Blue, and stayed Orange always and the modem was fine. Also to be noted was that the modem driver was to be installed first prior to the audio ones, else we would not get proper audio output. No matter how many times and how all I tried to install the driver, the wireless interface itself was not to be found in Device Manager properties. Dumbfounded, I then had burnt an entire night’s sleep trying to get Windows XP to work on this laptop. And still I had the wireless and sound not working! Oh the computer was so personal again!

Customer Service

Day one, I bought a new laptop, and Day two I was floundering about to get my hardware working. This was definitely mentally not soothing me in any way for the cost incurred on this exercise. Since I had only one facet of HP left to test out, I tried that too – Customer Service!!

Off I went at 5:15pm (deadline for accepting customers was 5:30pm) and sat along with many other customers in a Queue. First I had a feeling I entered HSBC Bank, as it felt similar with all front desk executives wearing coats and suits, looking extremely professional. I was allotted a token number for my turn and asked to sit there. Waited for about 15 minutes before my number was called. I must say the queue moves really fast, since the executives encounter similar problems with all laptops, I guess! So not only was the computer personal again, so was customer service. I went in, told them I had problems with audio and wireless drivers for my laptop, and they exclaimed – “Oh, XP!”, as though me buying and using Windows XP was a crime or something. But the feeling I did get was that I belonged to Stone age as Vista (eating 2GB RAM for breakfast, lunch and dinner) was the in-thing of today!

I told them, either support me to make my laptop work or tell me that they cannot do it. So my laptop went into a “manager’s room”, since the executive could not directly solve the problem, and it came out with the wireless issue fixed, without the blue light glowing though – reason is that I was using Stone Age XP. I was elated that I could solve my wireless issue. I was trying to install a Broadcom Wireless Adapter driver, whereas the chipset contained an Atheros Wireless Adapter. Specs HP, Specs – this is why giving details is important. If your notion is to waste money on customer service I would suggest you waste the same money on providing details in the first place for people buying the laptop. It would go a long way in avoiding heartburn for yourselves at the customer service center. You can read this thread for more information on drivers, and check the last posts in the thread for the drivers. No one mentions that the chip in there is an Atheros. Unfortunately its been assumed that Broadcom Wireless driver and Dell wireless driver would work on an Atheros based machine which might be completely absurd! You can find the atheros driver here for Windows XP (yet to be updated)

Inbuilt Webcam

I had no trouble downloading the YouCam software and installing it to get the Webcam working on the laptop. I had no much use of it until now though so I could not test it fully. The pictures were of acceptable quality.

Inbuilt microphone won’t work

So I ended up at home again trying to solve the in built microphone issue on the laptop. Without any success and cursing Conexant, I had to retire to bed since it was midnight and my efforts went in vain. So I decided to take the plunge to Windows Vista and tune into the new age computing! Oh the computer is really so personal again!

I am taking the liberty to post Part III of this thread, the more happier part where I am now using Vista with all hardware working properly. That post will also have some close up photos of the laptop in question!

Technorati : 1525, 16x, 32-bit, 4920, 64-bit, 8200, 8x, Acer, CQ50, CQ50-106AU, VAT, amd, aspire, asus, athlon, bangalore, bargains, bengaluru, blog, compaq, computer, core 2 duo, credit card, croma, deals, dell, dos, dual layer, dvd writer, eeepc, fujitsu, geforce, hdd, hp, hp pavilion, icici, india, inspiron, intel, koramangala, laptop, lenevo, nVIDIA, notebook, offers, one, pentium dual core, personal, presario, ram, service, shopping, sony vaio, staples, star bazaar, subnotebook, tata, toshiba, turion, vista, warranty, windows, xp