The Return of the Laptop

Mr Durabook rolled up from Melbourne yesterday, with a shiny new set of power plugs, & takes a charge like a champion.

I did get one grumpy surprise in that the 3-year warranty is only a labour warranty for the last 2 years — which the wholesaler I’d bought it through had definitely not made clear, so I had to pay for parts.

Even if they were generous & gave me 9 months back for the time I spent off the air last year, I’d still be over the limit.

On the other hand, their repairs are really well done. As well as actually fixing the stuff they had to, they’ve added some nicer touches like replacing the edge I broke off instead of just sticking it down again. No extra parts, no extra cost.

As well as replacing the dodgy worn-out inverter which drives the display, they went through & replaced the worn-out wires connecting up the display itself (which they didn’t need to do because it wasn’t actually broken).

It feels much more solid & “new” than when I sent it away a week or so ago.

Oh, yes, & actually works! (-:

Round of applause, TwinHead! (-:

Comments

sen said…

Yeah the little I've had to do with them has been a surprisingly pleasant experience as well.
Those Durabooks are a great way to buy a halfway tough machine without paying the premium you get slugged from the other well known vendor starting with P (sounds like para-phonic)

04 October, 2007 11:01

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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