The snails power of a mini laptop

Being used to a core 2 duo, three gigabit Ram and a cooling power of a Dell Inspiron Laptop, then downgraded down to an Atom run laptop is such a pain. To make you understand I shall briefly give you the specifications;

Processor – has a processor known as Atom, it was made so small in order to fit into a mini laptop, imagine it being the same technology as the one of smart phones, back to processor speeds it has a maximum clock rate of 800 Mhz, FSB speed of 400Mhz and it is even smaller than a Eurocent coin.

Ram – the thing runs at a one gigabit Ram, this is the size that caters only for compulsory programs such as antivirus, Wi-Fi, updater etc., leaving you with a very small amount of memory to run your daily applications, the result being hanging and patiently waiting for each application to use the tiny Ram before you move to the next.

Size – in fact these should have been my first issue as I was used to a 15.6 inch screen then dramatically downloaded to a 11 inch screed, now with my eyes problem matters become worse, all projects seem to work properly from my screen but when I send o someone with superb quality screen the quality of the project is questioned.

Graphics- with a smaller size, smaller Ram, the graphics is zero, in fact negative, every time I open something that requires high graphics the poor thing restarts, or flickers the screen, so movies, games, graphic design even simple Dreamweaver cannot run on the thing.

Operating system – now am forced to go back to Windows XP, before being forcefully downgraded, I was already doing test on the Windows 8 beta version and my take was a I shall shift once it has been launched, unfortunately I am back to Windows XP, which Gates has already warned me that he shall no longer support it from September 2012. With Windows XP, it is full of limitations, you cannot quickly organise your folders or even simply searching your files, the small thing can only run on windows 7 starter which is even worse since you cannot join any domain, so the only option is Windows XP Pro.

Optical drive – since I deal mostly with software’s, most are recorded in optical disks, unfortunately the thing doesn’t have one forcing me to borrow a machine, copy the cd in a flash drive, back to the thing then copy all over again sh**.

Antivirus – this thing does not let you choose what antivirus you should use, being an advent fan of Kaspersky small office security, which usually runs on a dedicated four hundred megabytes of ram, for me now it is a go no zone I have to play along with Norton which is lighter, but has annoying warning every time you have an application using any of the resources heavily.

Lastly the thing that disappoints me the most is the battery power, being used to go five hours straight without looking for a power source, now I am confided to one and half hours. Now this is what we call urban – rural migration.

Whatever your case is at least we have a netbook, which we all proudly call laptop, and no matter how slow the thing is, or its refusal to cooperate with some of our demands at least we have one.

My worst Day !!

Well we usually do not dread to have a bad day, but well what exactly causes a bad day, is it getting dumped after investing so much in a relationship, or is it loosing hard earned cash from a con, either way it gets you, you just have to pick up the pieces that are left and stand up even stronger. As a sign i have just read today in a matatu "Do not mind what your enemies throw at you, it only makes you stronger"

Back to my story, the day looked bright as I had prepared myself well for a paper I had on this fateful day.

5.30 am - I did not have enough sleep (imagine i slept at 2 am watching "persons of interest" TV series), so waking up I had outdid myself, had a heavy breakfast to see me through to 2pm when i shall be done with the paper.

6.30 am - Already in town but sh** it has started raining, saw it as a blessing because normally when it rains while am doing my exams I get straight A's, but that was not the concern, people in Nairobi become extremely crazy when it starts raining, therefore I picked the longest cut to campus to avoid bad luck.

11.30 am - already am 10 minutes late to exams as I had forgotten my spectacles at the school library and had to go back and collect them and as you understand today in Nairobi, if you have an appointment go ten minutes earlier to give time for the guards to ask you clinical questions and frisk you up as well as your bags.

2 pm the exams went well, in fact I finished the paper before time, and on opening my cell I get a message from one of my clients, He issues me with a very potential referral, and at that point am Happy and I run to see the client.

4 pm- I do not get to understand why my university during exam period cannot create extra rooms for us to revise, as I walk through the corridors they are all full with people trying to cram for their next examinations, but am lucky because of the relationship I have created with the guards am told of a place in the campus that is free (imagine for me to create a rapport with the guards, every time we meet I have to part with my hard earned Twenty shillings)

6 pm the guard tells me that during exams they normally close at six and I should pack my bags and go home, even the rains excuses could not land on his deaf ears he still insisted I needed to leave, I walk out with the heavy rains and go to the library, these time am lucky as sixty percent of the students have already left so I get a comfortable seat.

9 pm - I feel that am ready for the next exam, so I pack my bags and call it a day, leave and walk from university way to railways, with small showers, but I walk as I hymn the amazing grace as I know one day I shall not be walking with the rains but driving through the rains.

10 pm - still at the bus station, no matatus, still raining and every matatu coming is charging three times the fare, which definitely is out of my budget, so I wait.

10.30 pm - a bus comes with a fairer price and am the first one to jump in, usually for buses I prefer going in one of the last people and check around on suspicious people as I have a bad experience of hijacking.

On the way along Mombasa road, i hear a gun being cocked within minutes one of the gangs takes over the bus we are ransacked, valuables are stolen, actually I won’t write mine down because in future I do not wish to remember what I lost on these fateful day, finally after twenty minutes of the horrible ordeal, I was slapped four times while requesting for my books remember I was doing my exams, and later dumped in a dark alley.

11.20 pm - we are able to reach the nearest police station or police officer and we narrate our ordeal, where the only thing am seeing them doing is to ask as a lot of questions instead of sending a team along the route to check if they could get the thugs.

12.30 am still at the police station, the bus did not have fuel and at that time of the night we could not get any other means to go home so we had to wait for the owner to come and bail us out, which he does but on arrival what he does first is to check if his vehicle is okay, any way after narrating our ordeal he decided to take us home.

1.00 am - am home shaking, stressed out because i have another paper to do the same day, remember it’s the next day already, not able to eat, counting my loses, I manage to communicate with my loved ones and their words, they are the pillars of my life.

2.00am I manage to pull myself to bed but cannot sleep I was seeing the images of the thugs, God please save them because they do not know what they are doing; I manage to get a one hour sleep.

5.00 am – I am up and ready for a new day, with lots of blessings.

I dedicate these blog to my loved ones who have been with me through this horrific experience, and to God who took care of me during this period and to my colleagues at work who understand that I was slow on my targets because of the experience and finally to the thugs, may God bless you.

BYE BYE HOTMAIL !

Dear Hotmail,

After all these years this is a difficult time for me to say goodbye, we shared fun times and bad times. Do you remember the day I was anxiously waiting for an interview reply and you ended up delivering the mail after two days and almost cost my second interview? Do you also remember the first love letter I through you, which this time you delivered on time and resulted for me having a one month stand?

Such are the memories which will go down the lane for us being friends.

Now because our relationship has come to an end kindly let me tell you what i disliked the most about you:

·         AD's those ads which used to pop up on my screen every now and then were annoying, sometimes I thought you were doing this deliberately to test our relationship, as much as I was faithful, it was sometimes difficult not to face away from mpango wa kando.

·         Mobile site- these is something you always promised to give me but our relationship ended without you even acknowledging my request.

·         Too many colors, do you remember when I indicated to you clearly that I have eye problems and when it comes to colors too much of it causes me to be blind, but you chose to ignore, basically all you did is to add more colors each day.

·         I never understood why you were slow, every time I opened my mail I could only see a loading yellow tab below my screen, sometimes you would load till I move on and leave yourself loading, this was very disturbing.

But with all this mistakes I still slept with because:

·         I was never hacked to like yahoo, refer previous blog

·         I was able to synchronize you with my Microsoft outlook and be able to store a backup of my mails

·         when you felt pity about my hard disk space you gave me 25GB free of hard disk space, no one even Google has ever been this generous to me.

·         You were able to filter spam and ensure I do not get to read those enlargement pills in my mail box( super kudos for these)

I could go on and on about why you were the best, but this might make you hang on me while already I have moved on to your sister outlook.com