Back in November I got my hands on my very first laptop. A Sony VAIO Core2Duo 2.o Ghz with 2 GB RAM and an Nvidia 7400 graphics chip which was unfortunately loaded with Windows Vista Business. It wasnt exactly new, as it had been purchased by my Dad 6 months ago and handed over to me but I thought it was perfect. With a carbon fibre body it weighed under 1.7kg and 13.1" screen with 1280x800 was exactly the size and resolution I was looking for. Enough to play a 720p movie and type comfortably like a desktop keyboard.
So off I went with it loading it up with my favorite apps which was bound to include a lot of games. I was very eager to test its graphics performance so I installed Most Wanted which was my standard for graphics benchmarking from the day its been released. I know purists would disagree but that is all what mattered to me.
So I am completely blown away by the graphics this computer is offering me and suddenly I find myself staring at a blank screen and hear a small whizzing motor come to a sudden halt. What was that? Did windows crash?
Time to do the thing which most software engineers do when they first encounter a bug. Try and replicate it. This time it went down even faster. 5 min instead of 15. My worst fears were confirmed. This was an overheating issue.
Frantically I searched the web for every blog entry or review which could help me eliminate this issue. After hours of research I concluded this was a design issue and that 13.1" was perhaps too small a frame to fit a graphics chip and take care of airflow. Saddened by the fact that this machine could not fulfill my gaming requirements I started hating it.
2 months later I was back in Ahmedabad having done my last semester in the campus. My Dad recommended I approach a Sony service center with the issue but I was apprehensive. Still I made one long trip and reported my problem.
For an obvious hardware issue the chaps there asked me to backup my stuff since they were going to default back to factory settings. My skepticism grew further and I gave up any hope.
Still my Dad pushed me to atleast try it once and I relented.
So now the task was to backup everything. Pretty simple right? Yes normally but I didnt want to spend time re-installing everything. So I wanted a complete backup and restore. For the first time in my life I discovered such a utility was buried somewhere inside Vista (Surprise!). Further investigation revealed it wouldnt work with an external harddrive (Sigh of relief: I am dealing with Microsoft afterall).
So I found the best thing on the market. And its called Norton Ghost and it works flawlessly. It has was more features like system restore built in which work better than MS's which can leave you halfway sometimes.
With all my data and installed programs safe, I handed over my laptop to the service center guys.
Within 2 days I was contacted by them and told my laptop was fixed!. Fixed really have you tested it? How did you do it without installing a game?
Still a skeptic I collected my machine and instantly installed a game in a bid to prove them wrong. But how wrong was I? Hours on the end the machine delivered excellent graphics and refused to go down. I could hear the fan working very hard to dispose the heat. The problem it turned out was far simpler than I had imagined.Too much dust was impending the working of the fan and trapping excess heat.
I sat in bewilderment realising the guys had Sony Ahmedbad had proved me wrong!
So off I went with it loading it up with my favorite apps which was bound to include a lot of games. I was very eager to test its graphics performance so I installed Most Wanted which was my standard for graphics benchmarking from the day its been released. I know purists would disagree but that is all what mattered to me.
So I am completely blown away by the graphics this computer is offering me and suddenly I find myself staring at a blank screen and hear a small whizzing motor come to a sudden halt. What was that? Did windows crash?
Time to do the thing which most software engineers do when they first encounter a bug. Try and replicate it. This time it went down even faster. 5 min instead of 15. My worst fears were confirmed. This was an overheating issue.
Frantically I searched the web for every blog entry or review which could help me eliminate this issue. After hours of research I concluded this was a design issue and that 13.1" was perhaps too small a frame to fit a graphics chip and take care of airflow. Saddened by the fact that this machine could not fulfill my gaming requirements I started hating it.
2 months later I was back in Ahmedabad having done my last semester in the campus. My Dad recommended I approach a Sony service center with the issue but I was apprehensive. Still I made one long trip and reported my problem.
For an obvious hardware issue the chaps there asked me to backup my stuff since they were going to default back to factory settings. My skepticism grew further and I gave up any hope.
Still my Dad pushed me to atleast try it once and I relented.
So now the task was to backup everything. Pretty simple right? Yes normally but I didnt want to spend time re-installing everything. So I wanted a complete backup and restore. For the first time in my life I discovered such a utility was buried somewhere inside Vista (Surprise!). Further investigation revealed it wouldnt work with an external harddrive (Sigh of relief: I am dealing with Microsoft afterall).
So I found the best thing on the market. And its called Norton Ghost and it works flawlessly. It has was more features like system restore built in which work better than MS's which can leave you halfway sometimes.
With all my data and installed programs safe, I handed over my laptop to the service center guys.
Within 2 days I was contacted by them and told my laptop was fixed!. Fixed really have you tested it? How did you do it without installing a game?
Still a skeptic I collected my machine and instantly installed a game in a bid to prove them wrong. But how wrong was I? Hours on the end the machine delivered excellent graphics and refused to go down. I could hear the fan working very hard to dispose the heat. The problem it turned out was far simpler than I had imagined.Too much dust was impending the working of the fan and trapping excess heat.
I sat in bewilderment realising the guys had Sony Ahmedbad had proved me wrong!
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