Tag Archives: toshiba

anchoa revived!

10 Monday Sep 2018

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In other home computer news… about two years after buying La Anchoa as a travel notebook option back in 2014 (instead of lugging my big 17″ guy around on trips) I began having problems with her screen. It starting flickering on one trip to Málaga, and in the end it got so bad I had to give up and just use my iphone. Then one day it went flickery-flickery-flickery and totally died. Damn. At the time I thought that it probably wouldn’t be worth taking her in to be fixed, but I also didn’t want to fork out for another small travel option. So oh well. It was adiós Anchoa and back to either taking massive laptop with me or working from the iPhone (NOT ideal) on trips.

Then the other day, while reading the specs on El Boquerón (shit, I’ve already named him!) I noticed that he has a touch screen, something I hadn’t noticed at the store. And then I thought… hey, Anchoa has a touch screen too. Hmmm, I wonder…

So after not having used her since 2016 I took my little Anchoa out of hibernation, revved her up, saw the old flickery-flickery thing start up… and then I TOUCHED THE SCREEN. And hey – problem solved! I mean, fucking DUH or what? Why hadn’t I thought of that before??

And the best thing? Picasa works just fine on her! I can upload my photos and they all show up, ready to be edited and sorted. Yay! There was a tense moment when suddenly Windows starting doing updates (well, it had been two years…) and I thought I might lose Picasa like I did on Sterling. But so far so good! Of course, editing photos is primarily why I want to have a nice big 17.3″ screen at home, so now having to do it on a tiny 11.6″ screen kind of defeats that purpose. But at least I can do it. So for now my little Anchoa is set up next to my desk, propped up on a stack of books, acting as my photo editing assistant.

Now I just have to decide if I’m keeping El Boquerón…

la anchoa

10 Saturday May 2014

Posted by in computers, gadgets, geekiness, retail therapy, shopping

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satellite-nb10Meet the newest member of my ever-growing Toshiba family… Anchoa!

This is my first ever notebook/netbook with an 11.6 inch touchscreen and weighing in at just 1.3 kgs. Plus lots of other cool specs that made me suddenly eschew all reason and splash out on this rather spontaneous purchase. I’d actually spotted her the other day in FNAC (for some reason gadgets are always either clearly male or female to me) and thought what a pretty new toy she’d make, but of course I couldn’t think of a good reason to buy her. But with a trip to Málaga coming up, and a few other trips planned over the next few months, it started to seem like a Good Idea to have a small travel computer. The last few times I’ve gone away I’ve taken Shadow with me, which left flatmate Peter using a now very slow and clunky Sexy Beast (sorry, nobody but me uses the Greyhound). But Shadow, although reliable, is quite heavy to lug around and so the thought of this sleek little number started appealing even more. Then on Thursday morning I got an email from FNAC saying they were offering members 12% off Toshiba products… and well, it was a sign, right? So off I went and bought the wee thing!

I’m still going through the throws of setting up a new ‘puter, which is never without a few glitches – like when I raced back to the store in a huff after spotting a nick where the screen fits into the lid. It was the microphone (duh!). And I’m not sure I like Windows 8.1, though I wasn’t ready to pay twice as much and have to get used to the whole Mac system. Also, since I won’t be needing Shadow anymore, I was able to remove all my files and programmes, which put the C-drive back into the Blue Zone, so that should improve things for Peter too. Win-win!

For awhile I was stuck for a name for the new arrival and then it came to me… small, shiny and silver just like a little fish. Anchoa! I almost went with Boquerón, which would have been very fitting as her first trip will be to Málaga (Malagueños are called boquerones, another name for anchovy) and I also love Málaga so much that my friend Victor calls me a media-boquerón. But to me Boquerón sounds like a boy’s name… so Anchoa it is.

anchovy

meet the greyhound

28 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in computers, gadgets, geekiness, retail therapy, work

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I had a feeling this was going to happen this week. On Monday after uploading more photos into Shadow I had less than 10 GBs of hard disk space left and thought that if FNAC put on one of their “Día de Socios” (members’ day) I would go and get a new laptop, as I would get 10% off. Two days later I got a text message from FNAC telling me about the next one and so on Thursday morning I showed up ready to get the steel-blue 15.6″ Toshiba I’d been looking at. And then I saw The Greyhound. It’s the same one that I mentioned here but as it was now in stock I could actually see what it looked like. And I have to say it looks pretty sleek and the cover is also quite attractive, like silver and grey tiny-square graph paper under glass. I think the salesclerk was a bit surprised when I asked him to confirm the specs for me and then said, “okay, I’ll take it”. The entire transaction took less than five minutes. But of course I’d done all my research previously.

I have to say I’m very pleased with the new beast, though it will still take me awhile to get him all set up (bookmarks are taking forever). It’s quite nice having a big screen (17.3″) again and, with all my photos and programmes installed, I still have 470 GBs of hard drive available. Yay! But it’ll take some time to get used to Windows 7. One very annoying thing about it is that it doesn’t come with Century Gothic installed, which is the font I use on all my websites, including this blog. It’s actually quite disturbing to think that everyone on a Mac or using Windows 7 doesn’t get to see my sites as I’ve set them up – in another font it just doesn’t look right and the spacing also goes wonky. So I immediately got online to download Century Gothic, somehow chose a dodgy site in my haste, and ended up with a malicious browser highjacker called Babylon, which was a bugger to get rid of. Thanks to Sledpress for the additional help with Firefox!

Also thanks to Sled for suggesting this name. I’d been going back and forth between a couple of possible computer names, but as this one is grey and sleek and fast “Greyhound” fits. It also fits because Pat used to foster rescued greyhounds, and was as gadget-crazy as I am, so this is yet another way of keeping her in my thoughts.

time to upgrade?

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

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I’ve been thinking of upgrading lately and am just ever-so-slightly miffed with myself for buying the iPad before a new laptop, but oh well. Shadow’s hard drive is pretty overloaded by now and I’m at a loss as to what files to eliminate (gosh, 3 years ago 250 GBs seemed like so much space!) and so I’ve been looking around. I still like Toshiba though lately their designs have been, well, kinda ugly. I did see a nice brushed metal one I liked, another 15 inch like Shadow, with pretty good specs. Then the guy at FNAC told me about this Satellite L870-10Z. For the same price (700€) I can get a 17 inch screen and a whole whack of RAM and HD. Which I think makes more sense than getting a smaller one as I really just want this one for working at home. When/if I travel I can either take the iPad or else a wiped-clean Shadow.

Thing is, this one has to be ordered in and I don’t actually know what it looks like. From this photo taken from the FNAC website it just looks plain dark grey, like Shadow is, which would be fine. But what if it ends up with some dodgy pattern on it? I know this shouldn’t matter, but it does. What I’d really like is another Sexy Beast, but ever since they discontinued that model Toshiba stopped doing sexy. So as long as this new beast isn’t plaid or anything I’m thinking I might go for it. I could probably have it paid off by Christmas if tapas tours continue to go well (and my flatmate gets some work!). But then I wonder if I should wait until after the next PET scan in September… what do you think? I hate putting my life on hold like that, but if the worst happens then I’ll need the extra cash to live on. On the other hand, having an efficient computer to work on from home would also help. Anyhow, you can see the specs below…
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password problem

19 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by in computers, gaaaaa!!!, geekiness

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Oh noooo!

Two nights ago I was shutting down my laptop Shadow (a Toshiba Satellite L-300) and suddenly the screen went wonky and then a page like this showed up asking me for a password. Except I don’t use a password for Shadow. And then I remembered that the same thing happened to my friend Flor a couple of years ago with her almost new Toshiba. Apparently there is a company-set password that exists in each Toshiba computer and sometimes something sets it off – have never been sure what. Anyhow, Flor had to have her laptop memory replaced and lost all her data, photos, etc. because she hadn’t made a back up. Disaster.

I have no idea what happened the other night but it could be the very stupid shut-down process on Windows Vista. As you can see, there are various options given, the first three being “change user”, “close session” and “block”. Block?? Who the hell would want to block their own computer? In any case, ever since hearing about Flor’s problem I have been very careful when signing out, but I must have hit block instead of close session and then got the scary screen above asking me for my password.

I tried one of my usual passwords (even though I knew I hadn’t set one – panic!) and then remembered that when Flor tried doing this, after about three tries her computer shut down totally. Aack. So then I tried rebooting by holding down the off button and turning it back on again and … phew! It worked! But later when I tried shutting down by closing my session I got the scary password screen again. So I did the same re-start thing and haven’t dared turn my laptop off since. It has a sleep button, so I’ve been using that.

Luckily I had just reorganised all my photos and had done a back-up of all my important files on my external HD. But now what do I do?