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

Its been a while I blogged, and the reason was that I was very occupied with my work I will write about what was so important in a separate post, but in the meelee, I would want to describe my laptop purchase experience – nothing short of hell.

Brand choices

I had been to my favourite store Staples, and to Croma Electronics Megastore in Star Bazaar – both in Koramangala for scouting around for a laptop. I had a few choices:

Acer Aspire One:

This was a cheap notebook variety newly launched in India on that day with the famed Intel Atom processor (the latest in the market for low cost laptops) and this one sported 1G RAM, with windows XP, 80GIG HDD with NO optical drive. There was inbuilt wireless though. At a price of about 23,000 this was a steal and I would have directly purchased it that day. Barring for one annoying feature – they rather puny keyboard, bigger than ASUS EEEPC but smaller than regular laptop. Me having big hands this laptop was of no use for me straightaway when I tested typing on it at the Croma Store.

Acer 4920:

Looked pretty jazzy, I love the milky white keyboard with that odd spacebar, way too many buttons, and too many certifications and technical jargon. In the end it would have some variant of Pentium Dual Core or Core 2 Duo from Intel, or an AMD Athlon or Turion 32 or 64-bit processor, with 1 or 2GB RAM, and either Linux or Windows Vista. Though it was the usual weight any laptop would be, I felt it was too bulky. My budget was limited to about 30-32,000 and nothing more than that. Since I also had an original XP license with me, all I wanted is a linux laptop or a DOS laptop but with all other features.

My search went on for other brands.

HP and Sony Vaio were out of range for me, Apple was my dream, but it could wait, and Lenovo was looking like shit especially the lower end models. They were looking like bricks compared to other laptops around. This only left me with Compaq Presario and Dell.

Dell Inspiron 1520

I loved the feature set this laptop had to offer, with 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Vista Home Basic, Wireless, and all other usual stuff such as optical DVD dual layer writer, etc. But for the price it was too expensive – 39,500. After a discount on VAT of 4%, it would still cost me 37,500 bucks which was steep. And Dell’s low end Vostro laptops with Linux or DOS were too bulky and were bricks of the same feather like Lenovo. I had heard from everyone in Bengaluru (thanks to rumour mills) that HP had an edge over service these days compared to Dell. So I ditched the otherwise no compromise Inspiron for either a HP or a Compaq laptop.

HP/Compaq Presario

Ok, so the “Computer has become personal again“, I thought. Time to go to HP for some stuff. At Staples, Koramangala, just after my Croma visit, I checked out the CQ50-106AU DOS based laptop from Compaq and the looks impressed me a lot. I am not for jazzy stuff on my laptop, but I prefer the usual features to be good for extreme use. This means I expected my mouse/keyboard to be unmistakably usable to a large extent with no jazzy quick keys here and there. Having said that this laptop caught my attention for its clean build.

The same or similar versions with Pentium Dual Core and Vista with 2GB RAM was about 35,000 and with Core 2 Duo processor was about 37,000, more or less as costly as Dell which I had seen earlier. As I said, it was in my focus that I must be able to use the existing Windows XP license that I had, along with the laptop and at the same time spend as less as possible from my pocket. The salesman told me that the AMD Athlon would be suitable for multiprocessing and would handle many open applications as gracefully as an Intel machine.

He also told me that they may not be so great for gaming. My use was limited, blogging, occasional mails/chats and browsing. Period. This compaq machine came with an NVIDIA GE Force 8200 graphics processor and a relevant chipset. So this was a bonus at that price since I could game if I needed to. What really attracted me was the price, features and the ultra clean look of the laptop full with glossy screen, widescreen and extremely neatly laid out keyboard and black contours.

So after getting necessary permissions from my home minister (wife), I blew up 32,000 on my credit card and became a (proud?) owner of a CQ50-106AU. The laptop became personal again. In fact it got so personal, that I got personal with it and felt like shooting myself for the mistakes I made while buying this laptop. Read Part II of this article to know how I managed to get this laptop to a working state and the problems I faced in between while attempting this.

(will be continued in part II – all HELLs deserve two part posts! 🙂 )

Technorati : , 106AU, 1525, 16x, 32-bit, 4920, 64-bit, 8200, 8x, Acer, CQ50, 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

I had a unique reason to go the Lalbagh 4th annual flower show this time. The last time I had been there I had the opportunity perhaps for one last time to test my Olympus digital still camera (4.0MP) – C770 UZ with images of flowers there. This time the reason was even better – a 10.2MP Canon Rebel Xti DSLR (EOS 400D) with a Tamron 18-250mm lens giving the equivalent of 14x optical zoom.

There was yet another reason too – the elaborate Hampi styled theme at the flower show that caught everyone’s awe. The camera did its job well, though macro shots would have come better with the Tamron Macro Lens. But since that would have set me back by another 450$, I decided to stay put with the current lens and took some interesting snaps.

I liked many things in this flower show. Good floral arrangements not only in the glass house but two other separate enclosures outside including the hampi theme stuff. I also liked the fact that many medicinal plants and herbs, many vegetables, coconuts, etc were also showcased, there was a stall with an agriculture theme in it and finally the brilliantly styled hampi theme chariot, ganesha, ugra narasimha statues and miniature carvings of the chariot, and famous kannada poets such as kuvempu, da.ra.bendre, pu.thi.na, masti venkatesh iyengar, gandhi, and marigowda (in whose name this flower show bore significance this time) – all in watermelons and pumpkins, brilliantly crafted one after the other.

I also liked the cacti garden (which we were not allowed into for some reasons) which was a unique concept and had multi variety cacti which were unique and nice to see. The show also hosted atleast 50 stalls of various towns and cultures of karnataka which were selling products specific to those areas. Commendable by all standards.What I did not like though is the fact that there had to be bomb checking squads who were only half doing their work, and the fact that many people missed the hampi theme area simply because there was no signage that led them to it. Shame on you lalbagh for not organizing this properly. However thanks to newspapers, people could actually check it out without fail.

Finally before I end this post, I leave you with valuable pictures of the 4th Annual Lalbagh flower show. CLICK HERE TO SEE MY ENTIRE ALBUM NOW!

Technorati : 14x zoom, 18-250mm, 4th annual, MTR, agriculture, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, c770UZ, cacti garden, canon, chariot, da ra bendre, digital still camera, display, dslr, eos 400d, flower show, flowers, fruits, gandhi, ganesha, green, hampi, herbs, independence day, kuvempu, lalbagh, lens, lightings, macro, marigowda, masti venkatesha iyengar, medicinal, olympus, pink, plants, pu thi na, pumpkins, rebel xti, red, roses, stalls, tamron, ugra narasimha, vegetables, water melon carvings