My first laptop

Owning a laptop has been on my wish list for a long time, but the high prices prevailing in the past have been a big deterrent. However, I kept reading about new and used laptops and their going prices which were in six digits for so many years. But currently these machines are available at affordable prices.



I was thinking of getting a laptop from Karachi, because prices in Islamabad were around 5,000 rupees more as I figured out from online shops and classified ads.

Late December, I had a surprise opportunity to visit Karachi for work which had been shut for about five days due to unrest following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

After reading reviews of HP 530, I had decided to buy it, but when I went to market with a friend, did not find it at several shops. Instead, a shopkeeper in Karachi's Clifton market showed me Toshiba L-45 Satellite S7409 and it clicked me instantly.

After I saw its specifications and build quality, I just fell in love with it. I pressed for discount and grabbed it at 45,000 rupees, which is quite a steal as a comparable L-40 is sold by official Toshiba dealer without any OS for 49,900 rupees.

It was my first laptop purchase and it came with dual core 1.6Ghz Intel processor, 80 GB SATA HDD, 1GB Ram, Wi-Fi, DVD writer, memory card and express card slots, network interface and dial-up modem with pre-installed Vista Home Basic.

The silver and black casing with a 15.4 inches wide screen True Bright display looked sensational. I downloaded nearly 300 megabytes of Vista and McAfee antivirus updates via hotel Wi-Fi lan seamlessly.

However a big disappoint struck me when my D-link DBT-122 USB bluetooth dongle and WDC 80 GB pocket hard disk drive did not work under Vista. I use it for connecting to Internet through my Nokia N72 GPRS connection, which worked fine with the Nokia cable.

I Googled for weeks but did not find any solution and then decided to downgrade to Windows XP Professional which was a greater disappointment because windows installation would not recognise Toshiba's SATA hard disk.

Again started Googling to find out solutions for XP installation and tried everything from slipstreaming SATA drivers into XP installation CD burnt with nLlie which made the installation on harddisk possible and installed the OS, but the XP kept on rebooting just after start up. At this point I even decided to sell the laptop and buy one without Vista and in fact advertised on three online forums.

Also learnt it from Toshiba website that they ship the laptop with different BIOS versions for running XP on it and this particular BIOS version is also loaded in the line-up which comes with just DOS (Disc Operating System).

I was not afraid of messing my laptop during various experiments as I had to format the harddisk, delete or make partitions to try XP installation several times because I had two original Toshiba restore DVDs which can bring the system and OS to original factory settings in just under one hour.

A few days ago I attached my external hard disk with the USB and tried to install WinXP over it. This attempt surprisingly detected the external hard drive and loaded the OS on it, but it did not boot and when Vista took over and loaded from laptop's hard disk, for the first time I found the external hard disk for the first time. Hurrah I could use my HDD and saw the XP files from the failed installations lying on it.

I continued Googling solutions for my Bluetooth and even a Vista-compliant driver on D-Link website failed to detect the dongle and run it. In addition I also bought another generic "Vista-compliant" Bluesoleil bluetooth dongle, it transferred files and photos but did not connect the GPRS giving PPP link errors, so I returned it.

But one day I found a page which had information about Vista compliant hardware and there I found link to Broadcom.com which had a working driver and software. I downloaded it and when went for installation Vista raised objections that it was not digitally signed, but I forced installation and the bluetooth dongle started working.

I was jumping with joy when it created a wireless GPRS connection and said goodbye to Nokia connectivity cable. I am now equipped with totally wireless Internet connectivity.

Now I begin to like Visa and have explored a few features in it. I like it's Disk management tool which works just like the famous partition magic. I have created another partition and re-assigned the drive letters smoothly.

The Windows update utility is awesome, it keeps a track of the problems encountered by the user and when updates are downloaded one sees problem-specific patches and software in them which is quite amazing.

The laptop comes with a 3-day trial version of Microsoft Office 2007 Student Edition and I intend to use Open Office 2.0 which is Visa complaint and does not require a paid licence.

I have been using Open Office for the last four years on a Dell Optiplex PIV desktop and it does all the work of an MS Office and has PDF support built in.

Here are detailed specs: Toshiba Satellite L45-S7409 Notebook, 15.4" WXGA, Pentium Dual-Core T2310 1.46GHz, 1GB DDR2, 80GB HDD, w/ DVD-SuperMulti Drive, WLAN, Windows Vista Home Basic

Meet your everyday demands and stay within budget with the Satellite L45 laptop that's packed with design enhancements and features that go beyond viewing. The Satellite L45 laptop delivers the performance you need with the basic technology you value the most for communication, personal projects, and entertainment. This model features an Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor T2310 with 80GB hard drive and a DVD SuperMulti Drive.

Specifications: Processor: Processor Type: Pentium Dual-Core processor. Processor Number: T2310. Processor Speed: 1.46GHz. FSB: 533MHz. Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic (32-bit). Memory: 1024MB PC2-5300 DDR2 667MHz SDRAM. Display Size: 15.4" widescreen. Display Type: WXGA TruBrite Technology. Display Resolution: 1280x800. Graphics: Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 128MB. Hard Drive Size: 80GB (5400RPM) Optical Drives: DVD-SuperMulti drive. Wireless LAN: Atheros Wireless LAN (802.11b/g). 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN port, 56K V.92 software modem. 3 USB 2.0 ports, ExpressCard/54 slot, compatible with ExpressCard/34 format.

�