Well you can see from the screenshots I have provided below that as I predicted, despite being totally confused because it should NOT have happened, the missing driver message appears once again!
On checking device manager, see second screenshot, the exclamation mark has returned once again.
This was one of those fancy HP Pavilions, or so it looked, with the aluminium casing. So much so that many thought it was an Apple laptop.
Unfortunately that is where the quality for these Pavilions both starts and finishes.
Also bizarrely both this HP Pavilion and my last HP Pavilion both lost the lettering on the keys. Only the last Pavilion lost them after about two years or so and this one had lost a couple within two months!!
This leads me onto something else about laptops which along with other problems I have with manufacturers to these mobile devices and charge so effing much for them.
They fail to understand the concept of being mobile!
OK so a few years ago a waterproof laptop would have been expecting too much ... but today I read about some motherboards that had a coating on them that stopped water being able to short anything out. But let us forget this while I momentarily point out that all mobile phones, for the stupid over the top prices they charge now, should be able to withstand one of the most common things you encounter when you get outside your door. RAIN!
The other issues I have with laptops is the lack of illuminated keys unless you spend upwards of £750 minimum. This does not guarantee you illuminated keys ... just that the ones that are are upwards of this price.
If your knowledgeable in this stuff you will be surprised at how many times I have had people buy laptops for £300 to £500 that think they are getting top of the range and the fastest processors and largest hard drives for this money. No ... you are not.
Oddly enough I have been looking at laptops ... albeit smaller and bloody cooler than this one. I expect to be doing a lot of ... travelling. A lot more often that I previously did and to a great variety of places too. This will continue for several years.
The cheapest one I like was £750 and once again was a HP, only a much higher model than a Pavilion which I would not touch again with a barge pole. It also had an SSD drive which was good ... only it was only 128GB. As I purchased a Crucial MX100 256GB for £75 I find the capacity somewhat ... disappointing for a laptop of this price. Had it been able to have a second drive added it would not have been so bad but with its svelt and slim size I simply think this option impossible.
So buying laptops with illuminated keys then assures me that the letters do not rub off ... even after two years? Well, yes. but that is not all though.
So back to the mobile aspect once again. What is it that you can encounter while out of your house that is far more common than rain? Well ... most of the time. Something that becomes far more common at a certain time of the year too! Especially in winter and more so the closer you are to either the north or south pole?
Well that would be night then.
Yes ... they must all design and manufacture these things on the equator?
Further into the northern or southern hemisphere the earlier in the day it is when night time arrives. So much so that you can have darkness, or indeed daylight, for months at a time! So you had better not take your mobile computer out then? Yup, unless you take a bloody lantern with you or are going somewhere else where their is light.
I did see a couple of others and one was closer to £1000 and the other a little over £1,100.
It cost me £800 to build my main desktop to use for typing and gaming along with many other things and that cost me around £800 which included two 256GB SSD drives, 16GB of 2400MHz RAM, fast and dearer than average, 2TB Hard disk, 24 inch monitor, Corsair case and a Roccat Ryos professional keyboard wth illuminated and with Cherry black switches which was £150 when new. Also it had a built in graphics chip and I later spent £130 odd putting a Radeon R9-280 graphics card in it to speed up my games. These expensive laptops I mentioned do not have one of these dedicated graphics chips that are upwards of £100 retail.
So you see where I am going?
But then it is only because of Apple they get away with it. Nice as their laptops are they are even more ridiculous amounts of money for what you get. But then if the things last you several, not one or two but several, years and are still going strong then the price is not ... quite so bad.
So if your working on the move what do you do? My answer ...
Do not, I repeat do not decide upon a tablet.
Everyone thought that tablet sales would just keep getting higher and higher. I did not. They tailed off.
I tried a tablet and a powerful one at that. Except it is still more powerful than most tablets sold today but is somehow ... slower?! A lot slower!
Also as well as wondering whether Google takes money from manufacturers to force these effing updates on you that you have no clue that have done anything instead actually slow your device down? Well so you go and buy another one of course. A newer and faster version.
I would bet that something along these lines gets found out by someone at some stage and ends up all over the news? I will wager big on that! I mean to say that this is for these types of computers and so this includes phones too. Do not say i did not warn you, lol.
No, if you just have to have a mobile computer to work on, because phones are useless at many things, go laptop. But spend upwards of £700 if you want something that wont be failing or not doing its job anytime soon.
Windows can slow down ... but only if its overburdened with lots and lots of programs. especially if they are constantly running, which you can look at at the bottom right of your screen in the system tray. In Windows 10 its is the arrow, caret, that points up. Press that and you will see ... most of the programs constantly running and it is where your anti-virus will appear.
This slowing down also comes down to power too and of your CPU, be it Core i3 or Core i5 and i7. I will point out that these are multiple chips in one. What the numbers do not tell you is how many there are.
I chip today can have two, four, six or eight cores.
Some of these can do two threads, though this is deliberately put across as having double the threads and so double the power and speed this is not true in many cases. In those that I names here.
Then there is the speed, or the frequency measured in GHz. Gigahertz.
So amount of cores and the speed they go.
So if you buy a laptop that has six or eight cores, I do not even know if they make one but I do see laptops with Core i7 CPUs, it os not going to have an issue with many programs running at once in the background. See? Simple when you now how.
Only ...
Every so often the chips and the pipes and transistors inside them go through a shrinkage, known as a die shrink with a die meaning chip. This has not happened in awhile but is about to in a big way. There is talk and rumours of more than ten cores. Processors, or CPUs (Central Processing Units), are likely to have 16 cores in them. I would wager 20 or 24 would likely appear. There is talk about 32 cores but I think that is pushing it somewhat on the sizes they will be manufactured. This sizing is known as lithography.
Sounds great? Yeah except it will not be until 2016 and no one, well everyone is doing their usual guessing, predicting and arguing but as I was about to say no one, really knows for sure.
Oh wait. We are talking about laptops here and working while being mobile? Well provided you do not run anything intensively 3D like games coming out next year or even right now you will be fine. Ooh ... I should also mention something most of you will not be working with. 3D animation programs like that they use for cinematic films like Jurassic Park and others. These could be demanding and slow down but only if your models are extensive, highly detailed and especially if animation is being worked on.
There are several of these programs and if your not familiar with them and now thinking of getting one for your shiny new laptop ... STOP! You may be in for a bit of a shock.
There are several programs and I worked with one years ago and knew of two others. there may be more today but ..
3D Studio Max I worked with and was £7,500 a pop at the time around 1999.
Ready for this next bit? That was the cheapest of the three!
Soft Image (latter pronounced 'im-arge') was a lot more, could have been over three times the price?
Maya was another. You can, or could, buy magazines regarding these things and I have seen them in WHSmith in the past. Not looked in recent times. There was a rumour that one cost around £30,000?!
Remember this is 'per licence'. Got a group of buddies wanting to all work on animation with these things? You had better have very deep pockets.
Mind you this might have changed and maybe they are more affordable? If others came along with cheaper products it is possible a price war might have gone on?
Yoinks! I seem to have gone on a bit ...
Well if any of it helps then it is worth while. If I end up with a laptop and what type of laptop and why will of course appear on here when the time comes.
I can also tell you that it will be the start of a flurry of things to appear and many quite exciting. Not just for this blog either and each one will get many different ... subjects and endeavours appearing in quick succession and for a fair old while too.
All in good time. Not very long now, that I can assure you.
Ooh ...those screenshots ...
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