• Replaced Battery.
• Installed a Bluetooth module.
• Upgraded the LCD – WXGA+ LCD to WSXGA+ LCD.
• Upgraded to 4GB RAM.
• Upgraded the CPU.

Although I haven’t purchased a docking station. I wrote a Wiki page about the upgrade on my laptop.

• t94xr’s wiki – HP 6710B Elitebook Upgrade

• Cleared the BIOS password (which was set and enabled for boot).
• Swapped out the 80G hard drive for a 500G.
• Upgraded from 1G to 2G RAM – stock 1G RAM module is inserted below the keypad.
• Ensured there was no excessive dust build up in HSF and vent area.
• Cleaned any dirty marks from casing.

It was secured with a BIOS which I had to clear  by removing battery, removing the keyboard (just move it up out of the way a bit, I found you didn’t have to fully remove it and disconnect it from the laptop) and finally removing the CMOS battery from the laptop for about 15-30minutes.
30minutes is overkill but I wanted to be entirely sure, plus I was distracted for that long anyway :)

It’s been a great laptop – when plugged in – nice loud speakers, palms don’t usually make contact with the keypad when typing and it’s just a laptop, without all of the fancy design aspects that most have now days.

I’ve been planning upgrades for it already!

• Replacing the battery (absolute must!)
• Installing a Bluetooth module (internal)
• Swapping out the 1280×800 resolution WXGA+ LCD Screen for a 1680x1050res WSXGA+ LCD!
• Installing 4G RAM (2x2GB) – upgrading from 2G (2x1G)
• Purchasing a docking station.

I was stunned and so excited, I had wanted to come up and help out in the protest and be apart of the movement, but I couldn’t get there.

The next day, I got away bout just after lunchtime and went to visit the occupation and was incredibly welcomed by very kind and pleasant people. I met Penny Bright who is a wonderful person and one of the main protesters fight for the rights of the occupiers in the Auckland District Court.

I took some photos which I have on Facebook [ gallery ] and when Cameron arrived (not me, watch the youtube vid) and ended up in a discussion with Penny Bright, I was standing about 2meters behind the camera-woman who was filming the entire thing, I met Penny just after that conversation.

I fully support them and I think they’re all doing awesome work! I really wish I could have stayed and supported them!

Apparently my mate AJay visited an occupation in Germany, I think that’s awesome.

Also I found out where the The Whitehouse is, I was really shocked and excited at that distance between my friends office and The Whitehouse and everything I’ve wanted to see & visit in Auckland! It was just an awesome trip!

• Occupy Auckland

So to avoid getting caught torrenting what he wants, he wants me to show him other methods of downloading media and files. I told him I can guide him but there are things he has to learn for himself. He comments that I should tell him because it would save him hours finding what he needs to know on Google – time he doesn’t have.

I’ve spoon fed someone before, I gave him the answer to every question he asked – helped him with every issue and gave him complete assistance. He’s now become completely reliant on me, which is something I don’t want Nicky to be.

We ended up having a discussion about this lack of motivation to learn things and how that would affect a job and his career, because he was of the opinion that he’s sorted once he has a qualification to get employed.

Before he went offline, he said this

nicky says (10:48 p.m.)

i know that that’s the same with any job but my point is searching on the internet for answers to a question that might take an hour is pointless when you have the answer

nicky says (10:49 p.m.)

I’m not saying researching is bad or anything but that’s pretty much the whole education system they have already got the answers and are teaching the students that’s just like me going for a walk for an hour to find a teacher just to ask them a question i love pulling apart computers an stuff because it’s not a waste of time
and is fun

I thought about this for a moment and the thing he doesn’t understand is that half the fun is learning something for yourself, having the answer given to you is pointless because that’s what education is, finding out the answers and figuring out stuff for yourself.

And that’s what I find incredibly fun about the IT industry and computers in general, there are plenty of things I find enjoyable in computers but the most I find enjoyable is finding stuff out for myself, it’s incredibly satisfying is understanding how to solve an issue or understanding how something is done, especially if it’s been fairly hard for me to figure out, having the answer given to me is useless because I don’t actually learn anything from it.

I actively use these Free & Paid Appz, their worth downloading, using and paying for!

Top Free

• Google+
• My Account (Vodafone NZ Ltd)
• Dolphin Browser^tm Mini – pro-tip, avoid the HD version, unless your installing it on a tablet.
• Google Docs
• PayPal
• WordPress
• Facebook for Android
• MyPhoneExplorer Client
• Subway
• Discount Calculator
• TED Mobile

Top Paid

• HandySafe Pro
• EasyMoney – I’m using this currently to keep track of my car savings fund.

Highly Recommend

Although I don’t use these, I have tried them out, they’re not something I’ll use on a day to day basis – but they are highly recommend for users of newer higher resolution phones, these apps are a must! Especially Beautiful Widgets for the non-HTC owners!

• Minimal Reader Pro
• Beautiful Widgets
• TWIDROYD PRO for Twitter
• ezPDF Reader

I quite like it, Gigabyte motherboard, Core2Duo E8400, 4GB DDR2-1066, 500G, EVGA GTX550 Ti FPB 1GB graphics running Windows 7 & such.
Now for the sad part of my post, I lost a good friend this year – Ayesha, died on the morning of Saturday 17th April 2011. She was the wife of one of my best mates, Bevan Nelson. Unfortunately she had her two children in the car when it happened, south of Raetihi – she rolled her car and sadly died instantly.
Her death affected all of us – I was only talking to her not more than couple of days before her death on MSN.
She was an awesome mother, great friend and someone I really enjoyed talking to. Spending Christmas 2009 with her was awesome, hilarious – she had a great laugh and always found a joke to make us all laugh!
I miss her but we all do, my mate, his kids, her family, all of us.
Lately I’ve been sorting out to get the money for a car I want to buy, 1989 Mazda 323/Familia Supreme – 1500cc, manual, power steering, electric windows. It’s a great car to drive, needs a bit of work on it though.
Drove it to Hamilton & back, that was a great drive.

Unfortunately the owner of it recently got busted cheating, so my mate broke up with her, so to get back at him, she hiked up the price and so now, she’s going to come over and pick it up.
So my mate is going to get another car for me, which is cool but I really liked that car. Sure it needs work, massive clean-up and some replacement parts, but it has electric windows! Which I found might be useful since I almost crashed dads car on the way to Rotorua a while ago winding down my window as I crossed the center line of the road.
But alas, I’ll save up and see what else I can buy when the time comes – probably after I get my restricted licence, then I’ll probably be on the road for a lil while catching up with mates and attending events.

I am currently deciding if I should get either the Kingston or GSKILL for my modules – 2x 4 DDR2-800 CL4 (4-4-4-12) modules. Although I can OC my board because of some MSI feature and run DDR2-1066 modules and overclock my CPU – which I don’t want to do, yet… – So I’ll have a spare set of 4GB (2x2G) DDR2-800 modules & now to be soon spare C2D E6750 processor.
Since I have this spare gear I’m going to get an Asus 775 motherboard probably from TradeMe or one via Pricespy – doesn’t need to be expensive, would like to have one for $150 – but I’ll go for $200 max because it would need to be a fairly decent one, for that I’ll build in dads case & dads current computer will be moved to either my old case or another case – most likely my old one. That would become my Ubuntu Linux desktop, which I’ll either keep or give to my friend and get my other spare desktop back. Either way…

It’s been a while since I posted, I do try and post but I generally forget, don’t care and cbf doing it, although I do try.

I’m going for my licence soon, I know i should have had it years ago but life got in the way, strangely.

There’s this girl I met, she’s kinda interested in me, I’m kinda interested in her – strangely I think she’s actually quite awesome, she wants to take it slow – so I’m gonna sort things out in my life and then I’m going to make the move to see her a lot more, when I get my restricted & a car – which I can get fairly easy since one of my mates is a good backyard mechanic and pretty good with getting a decent car to sort out.

I’m on a course at the moment that is a day a week, we have a road code to read – which I want to buy a copy of myself, so we can read up – as of yet I haven’t had a chance to look at it, been all over the place sorting things out, fixing this computer and sorting that out.

Shouted my mate Mei dinner tonight, got McDonalds, she got me McDonalds few times before I thought it was right for me to shout her this time, she enjoyed it. Joked about us going off and doing it, cracked up when her boyfriend (my other mate John) replied “well at least I get my burger, that’s fine then” – Mei had a shocked ‘au what?!’ – we had laughs all round.

I watched WWE Monday Night RAW today, 01-Nov-2010 episode, it was funny because Pee-Wee Herman was on it, I found it funny because I remember reading the news report that stated that he was arrested for masturbating in an adult theatre, after his arrest he lost his contract with the tv studio, so he lost his tv show – now he’s got a Broadway show he’s promoting and WWE was a publicity gig.

I do find him mildly entertaining but honestly if the parents knew their son was going to be Pee-Wee Herman, they should have aborted him early. But ohwell, his naivity is somewhat funny, although remembering that he lost his tv show because he was caught masturbating in an adult theatre gives it much more hilarity, especially during the show he suggest Twister with the WWE Diva’s.

I’m taking a look at using LibreOffice for all my system setups, apparently there was something happening with Oracle so a lot of the OO Dev’s quit and started up the Open Document Foundation or something. Looks to be a fairly good package. Apparently Ubuntu is set to roll over to LibreOffice in place of OpenOffice in Ubuntu 11.04 according to Mark Shuttleworth. Debian is apparently expected to release LibreOffice in their next update, but I cant confirm that just yet.

Anyway Im tired, Im going to bed. I might post later, dunno – there might be something happening lol

Had drama’s last night, friend of ours Jackie decided to try and steal some smokes from my other mates daughter Katie – last two cigs and tried to hide them. So apparently she’s out some friends at the moment – hopefully everything clears up but who knows, if she can make up the fact that she tried to steal, we might still be friends with her – I’m stuck in the middle, since I helped her get in our group of mates – as with Bevan who’s in some kind of relationship with her.

I’m not a smoker, don’t intend to be – but what do you expect when you nick someone’s last smokes!? My mates Bevan & John steal each other smokes all the time as it is, but given that most of the time it’s right in front of each other when they do it, but that makes no difference.
The group of mates I’ve helped form here, trust is a big issue, we need to trust you with our stuff, otherwise how can we be friends with you? And if you’re a smoker, you make sure you buy enough smokes to keep you going between paydays.

I went to LAN last week, great LAN – almost got shutdown before the pizza’s arrived. Some new guy security guard decided he’ll be the big powerful man and claim some guys were smoking weed on campus. Don’t think they were but they left and then we had a great LAN, so good the next security guard who came on, decided he’ll come back as a Lanner ! :D

I fixed my issue with my system, I was experiencing was due to an obsolete bios – Accam’s Razor ugh… I updated the bios, done. Issue hasn’t come back!

I’m seriously considering buying a Quad Core, I’ve decided I’ll get the Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9550 (12M Cache, 2.83 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB), it’s a great spec for a quad core CPU. I was originally looking at the Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9505 – but I to finish this system build off I have no problem with paying another $100 to get a the same CPU but with 6M more cache!
Had a laugh with my mate Brent, said I should get myself a nice new 1333FSB motherboard – unfortunately I run 4GB (2X2G) DDR2-800 modules, which run at the 1333FSB of the board – Brent said it DDR2-800 was 1066MHz but I’m sure Blackbox 2 says otherwise, that was funny.

So here I am at Bevan’s place, Mei turned up with John. Bevan almost blew off his hand with a can of contact cleaner, one of those pressurised cans, he did it twice, … someone didn’t learn from the flashout from the first attempt that enveloped him.

We’re all on the internet, with laptops – dinner’s soon, I should go tell Dad to get our dinner cooking in the oven!

My system is now,

• Intel Core2 Duo E6750 2.66G 775
• GSKILL (2x2G) 4GB DDR2-800
• Corsair Hydro H50 – purchased, to be installed really soon!
• MSI P45 Neo3 v1.0 (MS-7514)
• EVGA GeForce GTX 460 Super Clocked 768MB – (768-P3-1362-KR)
• Data – ST3500630SV (465 GB)
  Data – WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1 (1397 GB)
  OS – ST3250410AS (232 GB)
  Data – ST3500320AS (465 GB)
  Data – ST31000528AS (931 GB)
  Data – ST31000528AS (931 GB)
  Data – ST3500641AS (465 GB)
• Cooler Master Centurion 590 (RC-590)
• BenQ T2200HD (Digital)
• CoolerMaster GX 750 (RS-750-ACAA-E3)
• Microsoft LifeCam Cinema USB 720p
• Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000
• Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

Removed the Internal flash card reader, unfortunately…

My machine had literally outgrown and aged out of the original case it was built in.

The case is a great case, needs improvement but a great cheap case for those who travel with it. It’s very durable, handles the weight well and should stand up to an unimaginable amount of abuse – you’d be surprised the amount of abuse my previous case took, seriously it would shock you! And that was a Cooler Master Elite 330 – lol

I have a semi-decent laptop now, should shove in a nice big 500G for it – should look after it well. I’m waiting for Ubuntu 10.10 to be released then I’m going to dual boot it. Not very powerful, Compaq Presario F500 – Pentium Dual Core 2.1G, might see if I can upgrade that to a low end C2D or higher clock’d Pentium Dual Core someday.

She got a Nikon Coolpix L20, 4GB SDHC, Energizer Recharable NiMH & a Internal USB Flash Card reader.

To make life easier, I installed the Internal USB Flash Card reader – discovered that the Foxconn motherboard would drop the voltage on the USB itself when the reader was plugged in – rendering the keyboard & mouse useless.

So an upgrade was planned,

• Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 Processor BX80571E7500
• MSI P45 Neo3-FR Intel 775 Motherboard
• Enermax Tomahawk ETK405AST, 400W ATX PSU, Metallic
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 250GB Hard Drive
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive
• BenQ G2220HD 21.5" Full HD
• Transcend JetRAM 2G DDR2-800 Dual Channel Kit (2x 1GB), 240-Pin, 64Mx8 CL5
• microsoft windows 7 home prem 64bit
• ASUS NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS EN8400GS/HTP/512M(LP) DDR2 512MB Efficient Cooling Fan
• Linksys WRT54GL Wireless-G Opensource All-In-One

Along with her existing, DVD-RW & ATX 2.0 Case plus the USB Card Reader I installed, she now has a very decent system. It’s all installed, setup and running – well except the WRT54GL, that’s yet to arrive – we expect that by courier soon though!

I also plugged up her Logitech G51 speakers, which her purchased via TradeMe – which had missing the audio plugs which we had to replace lol – we got the speakers plugged up and she loves the sound that comes out of them.

I swapped her older system into a spare case I had lying around in the back room.

I’ve placed a AGP MX440 64MB graphics card into it to make it run a bit smoother. Its a 775 setup, seems quite alright.

Anyway my mate absolutely loves it, its quieter than her previous setup, she can actually do stuff, aside from the obvious fact that it’s faster, more powerful, dual-boots into Ubuntu Linux 9.10 32bit.

Anyway after I set it up at her place, went around a about 15minutes after I completely finished and showing her what’s what, showing her everything’s working – we go around cuz she got a bit panicy over something lol

After that, we went to town – purchased myself some Rugged Shark Sandles – I had no idea that Rugged Shark even make sandles?! – I got some, on sale too!

I purchased Battlefield Bad Company 2 Limited Edition on Steam – thats 15-16GB of game!

I can’t wait for the official release – I haven’t downloaded the Beta release of it, yet; that’s 1.5GB though.

Oh I decided that I’m sick of limited amount of TV that we have, I want freeview – but I don’t want a standard bog, freeview brand stuffy box.

I ordered a very new – about  to be somewhat officially available on the 8th Feburary  – Satellite receiver box with DVD player built in & USB PVR. It’s also DivX compatiable – it supports everything a normal DVD player would support as well as MPEG4 & DivX.

I’ll post up pictures and video of the box up on my website, it seems to be a great little sat box.