September 28 marked the birth of my new baby, whom I have christened Risk. I was toying with that name in my mind for a while now, but never imagined how apt it would be for my new notebook.
Yes, the 28th. Aside from the September 28 being a somewhat extraordinary date to me (again, Happy Birthday, Egay!, but no, it has nothing to do with her birthday!), we set out to Gilmore Ave., mecca of all things computers, to buy a laptop just as typhoon Milenyo hit the city. The lack of electricity made it no easier but we waited for the owner of PC Corner to arrive and explain the deal.
A few days ago, my plan was straightforward: consolidate my funds then proceed to PC Corner to snap up that Acer Aspire 5583 WXMI. A few months ago I had been eyeing a similar model, the Acer TravelMate 3282 WXMI, but the newer one already had Core 2 Duo. It was rare to find that in a laptop with a host of other great specs and a very competitive price.
But the last Acer Aspire was sold on the night of the 27th. We scrambled to look for an alternative dealer but the model wasn’t going to be shipped to the country for another few days. (I later found out PC Corner got their supply from Hong Kong.) We returned to PC Corner to see the owner’s other options for me.
When he finally arrived, he wasted no time and lined the notebooks up in front of me. He scribbled down a side-by-side comparison of the options I had: an Asus S96J, a Blue M636, and a Dell E1405. He picked them based on the specs I was keen about: a Core 2 Duo processor, video memory to speak of, and a reasonable price.
If you know me and you’ve listened to me get stressed over laptops the past few months, you’d know which one I eliminated first. Yep, the one with shared video memory (Dell). So it was a toss-up the one oozing with machismo (fifteen inches is, uh, too big and uncomfortable), and the runaway winner with respect to specs. Yeah, I’m an under-the-hood person too. If I weren’t so picky I would have bought the much cheaper MacBook and enjoyed the fact that I finally own a Mac. It’s on my life’s to-do list, after all. Right now, however, it’s about being updated with the latest with the most reasonable amount of cash I can muster, especially with Vista already winking at us. (No, the M$-Sux0r thing does not apply here. It’s about how that drastically higher set of system requirements will influence everything else in the future, just like what XP did.)
Specs
Blue M636/A737 Platform
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16 Ghz 4MB 667Mhz FSB
1 GB DDR2 Dual-Channel RAM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 256 MB Video RAM
Intel® 945PM Express Chipset
Intel® Pro-Wireless 3945 a/b/g Card
14″ WXGA TFT LCD
80 GB Hard Disk Drive
DVD Writer DVD-RW and DVD-R Dual Layer
10/100/1000 Mbps LAN
Firewire Port
3 USB Ports
Card Reader
Fingerprint Scanner
Windows XP Professional COANote: I believe this is definitely a custom set of specifications for the Blue line since I have not seen a Blue notebook advertised as such. It’s very new, I think.
To make matters more complicated, the “more” ideal setup cost five thousand more than my projected budget, which paid for the dual-channel memory. The shop owner made things even more “attractive” when he threw in a bundle of freebies (flash drive, webcam, mouse, speakers, headset, Bluetooth dongle, etc.).
I thought I’d finally become a branded laptop owner with the Acer, but I knew that the Blue notebook was worth the risk. I’m still crossing my fingers and hoping it’ll work as smoothly as possible.
More Risks
Taking a chance with an unknown notebook brand had risk written all over it, but that was only part of the story of the name. The storm had gotten worse along Gilmore while the technicians were struggling to install WinXP on the notebook with close-to-nil power. When the battery finally gave up, we remained stranded in Gilmore IT Center; we could literally see an ipo-ipo forming and reforming in front of us; most of us could only watch in awe behind the thin glass doors how it whipped objects around, including motorcycles. We let the winds weaken a bit by having lunch at a small Japanese restaurant slash grocery (I’ve never tasted oriental cuisine that strong but maybe I wasn’t in the mood to experiment). Even in that warm place we could still see how the winds rattled the walls of the shop and battered the poor plants outside.
After a quick nap there (I couldn’t help it; I had no sleep for more than 24 hours) we left Gilmore with difficulty. If the roads weren’t flooded half a car deep, they were blocked by fallen, uprooted trees. The car even stalled when we almost ran out of gasoline and it took a while to find a station that had electricity to fuel the vehicles.
It would take days before the electricity, telephone, and DSL would come back, and because Risk had lost all power after the installation, I might as well have waited a week for that Acer Aspire. But we were all crazy enough to go out during the biggest storm to hit Manila in over a decade. Crazy enough to go mall-hopping despite low power and high heat there. (Just outside the Mall of Asia compound, cars were lining up to get their tanks filled up at a gasoline station. The staggering number of vehicles scrambling to finally get gas overflowed into the streets was like some surreal scene from Cars.)
Moving House
If Risk were a house, the right term would be “I’m still moving in” despite the days that have passed. I’ve finished moving my 12 gig file folder via local Ethernet but I’m still fixing the wireless router to share the internet to this notebook so we won’t have to fight over the desktop PC anymore. I hope I get comfortable with Risk quickly.
Congrats on the new PC ;D Ah, and stellify.net is lovely. I really like what you’ve done with it.
Thanks! It’s still a work in progress. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with it, though. I’m struggling to balance the personal-blog look and the, uh, non-personal-blog look. ^^;
Congrats! Congrats!
Thanks! Thanks! :P
congrats :D
kelan binyag? hehe.
ok racket nyo ah. no wonder your hush-hush ’bout it. :P
^ you’re
Raket? Alin? At kanino? :P
yeeha! may laptop na sya! :P corsarify, meet risk; risk, meet corsarify. so, when’s our first LAN party? yey!
next item on the list for both of us: a mac.
(now you’re going to remember the 28th for more than just one thang, hehe.)
More than just two things, you mean. :D Happy birthday Egay! Haha. LAN party? Weren’t the flash disks enough? Kidding. I’ll probably shoot myself in the foot when I hear of a MacBook (or some low-end Mac) with discrete video. Grr.
shoot yourself in the foot? nah, prolly not. by then you’d have the money to buy a macbook, hehe.
racket, job, career, scam, whatever you call it. quote ko lang si Geo:
“…Coz I believe you and Phillip are not available at nights?…”
0_0!
you know how my mind works >:D don’t even get me started on that “LAN party”
“weren’t the flash disks… enough?”
hahahaha!
Ugh. You’re crazy. Don’t you start tainting Geo’s words!
Sigh.
[...] entry * » [...]
“I’ll probably shoot myself in the foot when I hear of a MacBook (or some low-end Mac) with discrete video. Grr.”
:P
I hear they’re coming out with a Core 2 Duo MacBook. :P
Oh, my old PowerBook does have discrete video. How discrete do you want it to be? :P
jangelo said:
Core 2 Duo MacBook? You just said the magic words. Now I’ll have to stop myself from bleeding in the foot.
Discrete? You know what I mean! 256 MB is quickly becoming obsolete!
[...] This is one of those posts where you just want to talk about other people and their gadgets. Congrats to my dear friend and colleague Ia Lucero for finally getting herself a brand-new laptop, which she has christened Risk. Believe it or not, Ia bought her new toy while Typhoon Milenyo (Xangsane) was brutalizing the metropolis! Talk about risk, indeed. [...]
Hi,
I’m also interested in the Acer Aspire 5583WXMI Core 2 duo. I googled it and found your website. Your Risk tale is very interesting. I wonder, is it performing as expected? Do you think I could get a similar deal from PC Corner? Is the owner a friend of yours?
Well, I didn’t get the Acer, but they should have stock for that (it seems they’ve got good contacts with that particular model!). Try calling them or visiting their store to find out if they still have it; it’s quite new anyway. I do think that model is a dream come true, and for a branded computer it’s a steal.
Is it performing as expected? Well, again, I’m referring to the Blue brand here: yes, it’s pretty good so far. And about the owner, we’re not friends, haha. He’s not always at the store but it’s better if you talk to him as he can explain everything you need to know. While you’re online, try contacting pccorner_help via Yahoo Messenger if you can’t go to the store at the moment.
Thanks for dropping by!
Thanks for your reply. Actually, I’ve found a store which has the Acer but I was intrigued by the Blue that you described. It has better specs than the off the shelf Acer. Is the suggested retail price the same or close? Thanks again
Actually, yes, the specs are better in terms of the processor speed and the dual-channel memory. You’ll have to look at the specs carefully though (Blue doesn’t have Bluetooth I think). As for the price, you can look at Laptop King for the SRPs. Those are the prices more or less, except that I was given a different offer for the Asus and the Dell at that time. :D
Impressive specs! However, I do not really recommend getting a Core 2 Duo just yet - until the FSB has been bumped up, which won’t be until Q1 of 2007. The Core Duo will suffice and considering that the price difference is significant, you may be better off getting more RAM.
Anyway, Intel’s next offering will include the Core 2Duo, 800MHz FSB (which is what the C2D needs to run optimally), 1GB NAND flash (for faster boot-up) and Nokia’s HSDPA. Quite impressive, huh? Am waiting for this setup as well as Mac OS X Leopard before I upgrade my MacBook Pro.
Yes I’ve heard. But I’ve been pushing myself as much as possible to wait for the best specs I can muster without sacrificing productivity in work. But come September 28, the desktop conked out, most likely due to the storm–even if it had a surge protector. So, yes, I couldn’t wait any longer.
And as I’ve mentioned, the Core 2 Duo Acer was a much better deal than its Core Duo counterpart, but since it was out of stock, I chose Blue, which turned out to be better than either of them. And again, the discrete video topped it all off.
[...] I hadn’t bought a notebook cooler for Risk just because I never felt the need to, but like most laptops out there, Risk gets warm too. [...]
[...] I am a stickler for remembering what happened to me exactly one year ago, and if need be, the year before that, the year before that, and so on. Case in point: September 28. [...]
[...] I won’t expound here. I just wish I’ll be able to do the things I want to do and get the things I want to get soon. I’m feeling a lot less deprived and I feel good about it, but I also hope to straighten out my long-term goals and means to accomplish them. I’m currently ignoring the one voice that’s complaining about my “career move”; I want to solve that “issue” (and all issues surrounding it) this year, or at least as soon as possible. [...]
[...] I recently had the privilege of unboxing one of my most treasured possessions ever: an Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium. It’s not a gadget, but it’s tangible, and costs more than any other thing I own (other than Risk, my laptop). [...]
hi, i just bought a new ACER ASPIRE 5583WXMI. I’m glad I was able to purchase it cause as you said, lagi na uubusan mga stores. Anyway, I like the specs that you picked out.. How much total ba nabayaran mo lahat? bu the way, visit my blog din, I’m just starting out cause I had the new laptop na kasi.. :)
ciao!
My current laptop (close to a year old!) is about five thousand pesos more expensive than the Acer, if I remember correctly.
[...] Two weeks ago I tagged along with my mom on an international conference, the ICAS5 or International Convention of Asia Scholars, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She was chair of one panel and reading two papers there. Since I was finally out of school (I’m not the kind who skips school for any leisure traveling) and can work anywhere Risk has an internet connection, nothing was stopping me from finally stepping out of the country. [...]
[...] It was because of my friends’ stories that when I realized I needed a laptop, I decided to go for a Mac, a Toshiba or a Lenovo, no matter what. When I read Ia’s story, I was really saddened that she took a Risk. [...]