Fujitsu FPCBP234 laptop battery www.dearbattery.co.uk |
Posted: March 20, 2018 |
According to AMD, this chip is designed for touch small form-factor notebooks, tablets, and hybrids 13 inches and below. So is Samsung testing AMD's latest to extremes regarding suitability? Interestingly Acer has the A6-1450 installed on its 11.6-inch Aspire V5-122P model and it's not shy about it either.Samsung's coyness aside, the Ativ Book 9 Lite didn't strike me as crippled, even if it is treading a fine line between tablet tech and notebook needs. How that Acer performs with its HDD remains to be seen, but being SSD-equipped, the Samsung consistently managed booting to login in 8 seconds and to the desktop in 12 seconds. For general use it, didn't complain much either, just occasional pauses to load apps but nothing especially troublesome.The only significant weirdness I experienced was with rendering a PDF that left multiple trails when scrolling. But this could easily have been bad PDF authoring or just the file size, as it didn't occur on any other PDFs I viewed. A couple of things worthy of note are that this AMD setup does run the 64-bit version of Windows 8, unlike the current crop of Atom tablets I've tested of late, which stay rooted in 32-bit mode – apparently it's a driver issue for Intel's babies that Microsoft hasn't fully addressed yet. HP has unveiled a new Chromebook that it says borrows design ideas from Google's posh Chromebook Pixel - while still keeping the price tag under $300.Unlike HP's earlier Chromebooks, which you'd be hard-pressed to tell apart from the company's Pavilion laptops at first glance, the HP Chromebook 11 was designed in close collaboration with Google and incorporates a number of novel features.Perhaps most notably, it's the first Chromebook – and possibly the first laptop of any kind – that charges via the microUSB port, so you can carry a single charger to power up your Chromebook and your phone, tablet, e-reader, and other devices.It also has an extra bright (300-nit, to be precise) 11.6-inch IPS display that promises a 176-degree viewing angle, although unlike the ultra-high-res Chromebook Pixel, it runs at a modest 1366-by-768 resolution.Under the hood, HP's new Chromebook is powered by a dual-core Samsung Exynos 5250 GAIA CPU, making it the second Chrome OS device to be built around an ARM processor after the second-generation Samsung model. It also features speakers that project audio up at the user from underneath the keyboard, rather than underneath the chassis like many other laptops.Otherwise, the specs are similar to those of other Chromebooks. It comes with 2GB of RAM, a 16GB solid-state drive, dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, two full-sized USB 2.0 ports, and a VGA webcam. LTE connectivity (through Verizon, in the US at least) is optional and coming soon. Battery life is said to be around six hours, which is typical of other Chromebooks.All this is stuffed into a 2.3-pound (1.04kg) magnesium chassis that comes wrapped in either white plastic with your choice of blue, green, yellow, or red color accents, or plain black for the more traditionally minded.HP and Google have bundled the usual Chrome OS extras, including 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years, a 60-day trial of Google Play Music All Access, and 12 free sessions of GoGo Inflight internet access. Still, if it can be hard to tell one Chromebook from the next, Google's formula seems to work for quite a few folks. Chromebooks have been described as the fastest-growing segment of the PC industry, accounting for nearly a quarter of the US market for cheap laptops.If you like the sound of it and you're in the US, you can pick one up on Tuesday in white with blue accents at select retailers – which means Best Buy and we're not sure who else – for $279.99. HP will begin selling them on its website on October 16, and they'll be available via Amazon.com and Google Play, as well.Curry's and PC World will be handling sales in the UK, where the HP Chromebook 11 will go for £229 and will be available beginning on October 21. World Solar Challenge If you doubt for a moment that central Australia is currently mad for solar energy, know that at the Hilton Hotel in Alice Springs a board offers information on the current temperature, wind speed and strength of sunlight expressed as watts per square metre. Vulture South made it to the Hilton after sundown, so can't report on recent readings, but can suggest that there were watts-a-plenty out there today as the leading cars managed to advance around 800km on a day so hot local radio outlets described it as “stinking”.The day's racing featured two control stops, each of which require a 30-minute pause, and a 10km stretch of 50kmph speed limits through the central Australian city of Alice Springs. As competitors can only run between 08.00 and 17.00, we surmise the leaders averaged over 100kmph when on the open road.While the leaders speed along, the weather and pace have both been unkind to others: just 17 of the 38 starters remain in the race. Others have “trailered” their solar vehicles, a peculiar verb that denotes the racer having been moved under another car's power for a time but continues the journey to Adelaide using only solar power. Others have withdrawn entirely.Trailering an entry doesn't mean the danger is past: Istanbul Technical University today suffered the indignity of a support vehicle catching fire. Whether the team can find and ready another support truck in time will test the resources of the central Australian city of Alice Springs, where many entries are spending the night.
Another Japanese entry, Tokai University, is doing rather better in second place but is struggling to catch the Dutch Nuon Solar Team from Delft University. That team's Nuna 7 is spending the night in the Australia desert, some 70km north of famed opal mining town Coober Pedy. Tokai and Nuon are 120km ahead of third-placed Twente. Curmudgeonly Michigan, which had hoped for a breakthrough win after three consecutive third placings, is in sixth place.While this action has been going on, The Reg's two race-following operatives have also met local aboriginal communities and inquired about how they are using the internet and if it makes a difference. Suffice to say we'll be explaining WAN optimisation to them soon, of which more later. The global scientific community is up in arms after Chinese researchers were banned from an upcoming NASA conference on the Kepler space telescope for reasons of national security. The key meeting is set to be held at the space agency’s Ames research Center in California next month, but thanks to a US law signed by US President Barack Obama in March, applications from Chinese nationals were rejected, according to The Guardian.The law in question, the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013, contains key passages designed to reduce the threat of government espionage, especially from China.It prohibits, for example, various US government departments and agencies from buying any IT systems “produced, manufactured or assembled” by any organisation which is “owned, operated or subsidised” by Beijing.It also bans NASA from hosting “official Chinese visitors” at its facilities.The conference was apparently set to be one of the most important of the year covering developments in the Kepler space telescope project, which aims to seek out planets similar to Earth outside the solar system.Unsurprisingly, the scientific community isn’t pleased.University of California astronomy professor Geoff Marcy branded it completely shameful and unethical” and apparently refused to “attend a meeting which discriminates in this way”. Professor Debra Fischer, an astronomy researcher at Yale University, has apparently withdrawn from the conference along with her team, while British Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees branded the ban a deplorable own goal by the US”, according to The Guardian.The ban would probably hold more weight were it not for two high-profile gaffes from US officials earlier this year.First, there was the dramatic arrest of former NASA employee Bo Jiang as he boarded with a one-way ticket to China on suspicion of smuggling top secret research out of the country.Jiang was accused of espionage by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) – the same lawmaker who helped to put the new rules on China and its nationals on the books – after he had been tipped off by a NASA whistleblower.However, in May Jiang was exonerated, after his laptop was found to contain porn and pirated movies, not state secrets. Also in May, lawmakers were furious after it emerged that the Pentagon leased a Chinese commercial satellite to help communications with its African bases. Shortly after being told I have Asperger's syndrome, I stood in front of 30-odd people, my work colleagues, telling them I have Asperger’s and what it means to them and to me. Some were like: Meh, whatever!, some were busy looking their watches: Is it lunchtime yet? I could feel my job slowly ebbing away.It was like crashing your car, in slow motion. You can see it coming but it takes its own sweet time. It wasn't my idea to make the disclosure, I hated doing it, and I really don't know what HR were thinking. (Does anyone, ever?)My diagnosis had come about via a very non-standard route. During a course I attended I scored off the chart on a personality test in certain traits. At the end of the class and the teacher and I got talking. There were lots of questions along the lines of Do I do this? Do I do that? Then she dropped the bomb. I only do this as a stand-in for when the lecturer is not available. My day job is working with people who have ASD and I think you may have it.On further questioning, as to her validity to make that call, it turned out she is one of the UK’s few specialists in the field of diagnosis. Fast-forward two months and I had more offers of help than I knew what to do with.The outcome of all this was that within six months I was gone. My boss and I had never seen eye to eye, and this was the perfect way to get me out. Now he knew all my weaknesses, my Kryptonite, if you will, and could get me in an obsessive/defensive mood and then give me a hard time while I was still trying to fight my corner.He would purposely drop things on me at the last minute and expect me to adjust everything to fit in the changes, and then complain because something else wasn't done. He would be purposely evasive and vague in his requests, for instance, he would organise a meeting and not tell me what was being discussed, among other gems, so I would fret and get obsessed about the meeting beforehand.
This was despite the fact that I had Welfare to Work the unions and the backing of my mentor.Don't fret. There is light at the end of the tunnel. To be blunt, I walked. It was the best thing I ever did. Going for a travel refund that same day, where it said reason I just put: Walked out of my job and thank God I did. The guy behind the counter remarked: You must have loved your job.”After I got past the sod this, I am outta here anger, I found a job for a company that has a more enlightened view of Aspies.My life now is completely different. I have become a relative expert in my field and have been given the opportunity to travel the world on business. In short: it is All Good. I am not saying I no longer have issues – I do. But the company worked with me to help me, and my manager is genuinely there to help me – even when I don't always see it as help.Here is my hard-earned advice as an Aspie who has been on both the positive side and the negative side of having the condition. Understand that we are private people. We have very narrow, very focused interests. Usually these interests are solitary things where we don't have to interact with other people; this is why so many of us work with computers. We don't mind having a chat, just it has to have to have some perceived value in it. Small talk doesn't do it for us, unless it about our niche subject.Some people seem to think most of us are so rude as to just not talk. When you see films with autistic characters, such as Rain Man, you have to understand these people are light years away from most of us with the condition. Sure, we share characteristics but neither the same intensity nor level. We just quietly do our stuff and left to our own devices get on with what's at hand. Aspies as well as NTs (neuro-typicals – or normal people to you) all exist somewhere on the spectrum. That is why diagnosis can be so difficult.But although I may not be able to add much to a non-nerd/tech/work conversation, I do like to be included. Please just don't expect much eye contact. We do it on occasion but to us it feels odd and unnatural. To be blunt, if we hold eye contact for more than a second or two we feel we are staring.
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