My new laptop: Dafferianus [VAIOus]

On Saturday, 24th November 2007, I bought my new laptop: a SONY VAIO VGN-C2S/H at MediaMarkt Köln. This laptop is meant to replace the old ‘[Johnny] Travelmate’, an ACER Travelmate 2355 NXCi. I decided to name it ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]’. I picked this name because I used the Erasmus Mundus scholarship money to buy it 🙂 I was inspired by one of Indonesian PhD students living in Bonn who several weeks ago bought a digital camera and called it a ‘DAAD camera’ since he used the scholarship money from DAAD to buy it. So I also related my laptop’s name with Erasmus Mundus => ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]’ 😀 Below is the picture of both ‘[Jhonny] Travelmate’ & ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]’.

‘[Jhonny] Travelmate’ & ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]’

My main reason for buying a new laptop was the need of more processing power to cope with my daily activities which almost always involves my laptop. Sure Jhonny had done a very good job in assisting me until today. Help me through the working days at PT. PSN, final bachelor project, searching & applying scholarships. But however, I must admit that Jhonny uses Intel Celeron M as its processor and it can’t handle stuffs well now. When I was back in Yogyakarta, my dorm didn’t have internet connection, and I had another desktop PC. I used Jhonny only for running a word processor, spreadsheet, implementing some *nix goodies, and a bit of programming. At the office I load-balanced my tasks with the office’s desktop PC. But now, everything should be done in a single box. Since my room is connected to the internet, now I use a word processor, spreadsheet program, music playing, browsing with several tabs, opening 3 instant messenger applications, and running a development application at once. Jhonny seems exhausted doing these things 😦 I hope VAIOus can handle them. So far it works well 🙂 Actually VAIOus doesn’t use the most current tech out there. In fact, it’s a bit old in tech term. It uses Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66 Ghz, 1GB RAM, and built-in Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. But I chose it, since the price/performance was fine, and it’s 13.3″ (well less than 14″) 🙂

The story began several weeks ago. After deciding to buy a new laptop, I made a constraint that the laptop’s screen size should be < 14″. So I went to H&G and Galeria Kaufhoff at the city center of Bonn to compare the prices. I also checked http://www.notebooksbilliger.de , and found out that the average price was > 1000 € except for Acer and Fujitsu Siemens. But however, almost all of my friends and even sales persons at the computer shops didn’t recommend Acer laptops. I dunno why, since Jhonny did all its tasks well back then. So I was targeting one of Fujitsu Siemens’ 12″ Amilo series. But then I found out from H&G that the warranty of Fujitsu Siemens products sold in Germany aren’t valid outside Germany 😦 Then on Friday, 23rd November, I went to MediaMarkt Köln with Vina & Eddy. And there I found the offer of VAIOus for 849 €. But the drawback was that it’s the last piece available at MediaMarkt and on display. So I decided not to take it yet. The other day I checked Saturn in St. Augustin and ProMarkt in Bonn West. And I was really shocked to see the same Sony Vaio product as in MediaMarkt Köln priced 1299 €. So, I decided to take the offer at MediaMarkt Köln and went to Köln the same day to buy it.

At first I found the product somehow stupid, since Sony didn’t give any installer CD/DVD inside the package (except the Windows anytime upgrade DVD), and VAIOus was bundled with a Windows Vista Home Premium operating system in German language 😦 And the OEM license is only for that German Vista Home Premium….. Damn!!! So I downloaded an English version of cracked Vista Home Premium using torrent and installed it, coexisting with Fedora Core 7 soon after. I feel so sorry for using a cracked version of Vista Home Premium, but I think it’s not so bad since I have the German license 🙂 And besides, there’s no way of using Windows XP => NO DRIVERS!!!! Even at Sony’s support page!

At last I hope VAIOus will do its job well assisting me through my activities….