This post is just to confirm that I am not that guy.  :)

Around a month ago I realised I wasn’t really using the Mini as much as I had thought I would when I first bought it, and after some thought I decided it was because the machine just wasn’t quick enough even with the RAM upgrade. Booting up and logging in took a few minutes and launching Firefox once I was in seemed to take just as long. This meant the machine wasn’t really the convenient there-when-you-need-it computer that I had intended for it to be. This was a shame because the machine itself is really nice – both aesthetically and ergonomically.

My initial attempt at working around the hardware’s limitations was to install Jolicloud, a Linux operating system that uses HTML5 apps to breathe life into older hardware with its modest system requirements. While Jolicloud was significantly faster to use than Windows, I wasn’t entirely happy with this solution as a) I actually really like Windows 7; and b) most of Jolicloud’s “apps” are actually just website bookmarks which to me just seems like cheating.

So, what I did was perhaps a little crazy – I ordered an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD from Scan. I already had a Vertex 3 in my desktop and a Vertex 2 in my laptop and had been incredibly impressed with them both – indeed, the Vertex 2 in my laptop had transformed the machine beyond recognition just a few months before.

The drive arrived a few days later and I quickly set about installing it. I had also ordered a USB3 caddy from eBay to turn the old drive into a portable HDD, and while Windows was installing again on the Mini I setup my new portable HDD as a portable development drive with all of my work mirrored on it from SVN.

Before taking out the original HDD I ran a benchmark which I also ran on the Vertex once the Mini was all set up. The results are quite amazing: with a linear read speed of just over 30MB/sec, a random read speed of just over 3MB/sec and an average access time of 8.74ms the original drive scored 3,637 points. The Vertex performed on an entirely different level with a linear read speed of nearly 134MB/sec, a random read speed of nearly 53MB/sec and an average access time of just 0.27ms to post a score of 495,793.

The Mini now feels like a different machine. It boots in seconds, logs in instantly and opens Firefox pretty much as soon as I’ve released the mouse button. I now use it all the time! According to Windows Experience Index, the bottleneck is now the CPU with a score of 2.4; the SSD has a score of 7.7 and everything else on the machine sits between 3 and 5. I can’t upgrade the CPU as it’s soldered to the motherboard, but to be honest there’s no need to – the Mini was intended as a convenient web browser and emailer, not a gaming rig, and it now does both of those tasks (and a few more besides) pretty much instantly so who cares if the balance of power is a little uneven inside?

The Vertex was perhaps overkill on a 1.6ghz single-core netbook like this, but what a difference it’s made! Also, I can always swap things around again if/when I get another machine in a few years as it’s not like the Vertex has been welded in or anything. Or at least that’s how I justify it to myself!

Although new to Windows, it didn’t take long for me to realise that Windows 95 sucked quite hard. I upgraded to Windows 98SE at the earliest opportunity and boosted the RAM with an additional 64MB taking it to 96MB in total. For the next few years I used that little laptop extensively and I learned a lot from it.

Tired of BSODs I eventually upgraded again to Windows 2000 which offered a much more stable environment at the notable expense of speed and responsiveness. Eventually it became time to upgrade to a desktop and the Toshiba was handed down to my younger twin sisters who, as it turns out, thoroughly abused it.

I dug out the machine while at my parents’ house a couple of weeks back. I was quite mortified to find the keyboard and screen covered with various bits of food, the modem cable was missing, the track pad nipple was missing, the little door covering the PCMCIA slot was missing and the charger socket was loose which meant the laptop would only charge if you held the cable in at a certain angle. Considering I had always kept the machine in good order I was not impressed. I decided to rescue it in the interest of nostalgia and brought it home with me.

The first thing to do was get all the food stains off it, which was quite easy with some wipes after taking out the keyboard. Next I got onto eBay and found a replacement modem cable, track pad nipple and PCMCIA door. I ordered one of each and then set about fixing the loose charger socket. I doubt I’ll ever use the modem again as I have a wireless network card that will fit this, but it’s better complete than incomplete nonetheless.

After finding a service manual for the laptop (mirrored below) I was all set. I opened it up to discover that the machine had obviously been pulled around by the cable as the solder was cracked and broken on BOTH pins! No wonder charging was so hit-and-miss! A little touch-up with a soldering iron and that too was fixed, though I now know why my sisters have gone through no less than 8 charger cables between them with their new laptops – and it isn’t anything to do with the quality of the cables which is what they claim the problem to be!

Over the next couple of days the various replacement parts arrived and eventually the laptop was as good as new – apart from the Windows installation which was full of all kinds of freeware/adware/spyware. I decided to reformat and re-install, which was easy as I’ve kept ISOs of all my OS disks over the years.

Interestingly Windows Update no longer works for any browser older than Explorer 6 SP1. As Windows 2000 comes with Explorer 5, I had to find an offline installation executable to manually update that before I was able to download the other 100+ updates required through Windows Update!

After hours and hours of downloading and installing updates I now once again have an as-new Toshiba 320CDT laptop, fully up-to-date (as far as Windows 2000 goes anyway) and ready to go. It’s too slow to use every day, but as it’s where it all began for me I do feel much better having restored it to its former glory.

If anyone else is restoring a 320CDT, here’s a list of resources and software that might be of interest:

• Service manuals, user manuals, specifications sheets
• Toshiba Utilities – Windows 2000 base layer (required before any of the below)
• Toshiba Utilities – Windows 2000 display driver
• Toshiba Utilities – Windows 2000 power extensions
• Toshiba Utilities – Windows 2000 utilities

Well, tonight I had some free time so I Googled SkyNet. Naturally I got a load of Terminator movie references, but a link two or three results down pointed to the Skynet Research Distributed Computing Platform. I opened it up and checked out the terms of service for the tool before installing:

Skynetresearch.com is a website controlled by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc. (“Warner”) and is presented in association with the release of the motion picture “Terminator Salvation.” Site and related content, including Skynet Research, are fictional for entertainment purposes. Enjoy! To operate the application, you must have Adobe Air version 1.5 or higher. By downloading this interactive application, you consent to our Terms of Use [link] and Privacy Policy [link] and consent to the use of your information for Warner and the Warner Bros. Entertainment Group [click to link], themselves or “on behalf of Skynet Research” to send you updates and other information concerning “Terminator Salvation” and “Skynet Research” and via the application, subject to our Privacy Policy [link]. Should you wish to unsubscribe to such updates and information, please check the “unsubscribe to all updates” checkbox on the application splash screen. Unsubscribing will not affect your ability to use the application normally.

Well that certainly didn’t look right! I looked up at the URL and yes, I was at warnerbros.com! This was obviously some kind of viral marketing tool for one of the Terminator movies. I hadn’t even looked at the URL before as I had just assumed by the title of the search result that this was what I was looking for and the look of the website did nothing to suggest that I was in the wrong place. I closed the window and went back to Google.

The next link in the list was this one, a WordPress article that encourages people to take part in “furthering Skynet’s understanding of humanity”. Pretty fluffy and yes it linked to the Warner Bros website so clearly an extension of the above marketing campaign. However when I looked down it became apparent that at least one guy seemed to think that he was installing the SkyNet tool featured in the BBC article as he mentions having installed the SETI@Home tool in the past. It seems that an unfortunate choice of name has made the client that several willing participants are looking for difficult to find.

Eventually I found the correct website and in an effort to point anyone else who is interested in taking part in the right direction, the link you need is http://www.theskynet.org.

After installation I loaded the program to take a look and see if I could spot anything new. To my surprise and slight horror, a pretty big window called Skype Home opened alongside Skype itself which I quickly closed, assuming that it was only showing because of the fresh install of the latest version. Just to be sure though I quit the application and loaded it again, and to much greater horror this time Skype Home opened once more.

I had a look around for one of those “do not show at startup” tick-boxes that you sometimes get with stuff like this but couldn’t find one. I opened Skype preferences and had a look in there, hoping to find something similar to the settings in both Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, but to no avail. It was then I opened Firefox and did some searching on Google to find various forums full of people lamenting about a new “feature” that Skype have added without any way to turn it off.

A number of things became apparent while reading these forums, such as the fact that Skype did something similar back in 2010 but backtracked in the face of mass protests from their users – so why they would try exactly the same thing two years later and expect a different reaction, I don’t know. Another potentially helpful fact I learned was that the issue only affected users who use Skype in classic view – those who use it in the new, social network-style view are unaffected as Skype Home is built into that interface. I say potentially helpful because sadly it wasn’t of any help to me as I don’t use that view – because it takes up two or three times more screen space.

The bad news was that Skype really haven’t allowed a way to disable the window and with only vague hints that such a way might be provided in the future I was given a choice: either go back to an older version (5.3.0.120 is the latest unaffected version which you can get from here) or find an acceptable workaround. I contemplated rolling back to the previous version but some of the changes in the change-log refer to fixed bugs, and the thought of re-installing software with known bugs didn’t really appeal to me so I decided to search for a solution.

After trying a few different solutions, the most elegant one I’ve found is ClickOff by a guy called Johannes Hübner from Sweden. This tiny little program continuously searches for other programs with defined window titles and performs default actions on them when they’re found. Apparently it was written with the intention of automatically responding to prompts (hence the word click in the name) but another task it’s ideal for is to close unwanted windows such as Skype Home. What makes it better than some of the custom-written programs out there that are specifically designed to target windows called “Skype Home” is that ClickOff will also work for users who use different languages. It can also be used with any other applications that might sometimes pop up unwanted windows (WLM does sometimes, even though I have specifically told it not to) or of course with prompt dialogs that you always answer in the same way.

Why am I posting this article today? Well yesterday Skype released another updated version of their messenger, and after the torrent of abuse they’ve suffered over the last couple of weeks I expected them to have included a way to disable Skype Home from within the program – but unbelievably they haven’t! So it looks like I – and many others – will continue to need ClickOff for the foreseeable future at least.

Update: It’s taken the Skype team an awfully long time to resolve this issue, but at long last they have. As of version 5.5.59.119 the Skype Home window no longer opens by default!

I took the parcel to my local Post Office and had it sent via Parcel Force. Standard Express48 delivery cost £11.25 but bearing in mind the value of the contents I also took out enhanced cover for an additional £5.70 to bring the total to £16.95.

Two days later the buyer sent me an email to say that the parcel had arrived but that the helicopter was broken in two places. From the damage caused it was clear that the parcel had been subjected to considerable force from above, crushing the helicopter inside the well-insulated box. Dismayed at the incompetence of the service seeing as the whole box was wrapped in “FRAGILE” stickers, I at least took solace in the fact that everything was covered by the enhanced insurance and that everything would be put right at no cost to me.

The buyer emailed me some photos of the damage for me to see for myself. Amazed at how much pressure it must have taken to snap those areas I thanked my lucky stars for taking out enhanced cover. I completed a claim form, printed out all of the relevant evidence and sent it off to Parcel Force. I issued the buyer with a refund and he promptly returned the parcel to me.

Almost three months on I’m still waiting. Initially I was supposed to be getting an inspector come and see the helicopter for himself, but that story changed last week to them needing confirmation from the recipient that the helicopter had been damaged. Apparently the photographic evidence and a print-out of his email confirming the matter aren’t good enough. I asked what would happen if they didn’t receive a reply from him and they said they wouldn’t be able to pay up. I pointed out that in that case I’d have to take them to court and the response was “that’s not a problem”. So despite me being their customer, me having purchased the insurance, me having filed the claim and me having the helicopter at my place for the last 9 weeks or so waiting for their inspector, they now need confirmation from an unrelated 3rd party before honouring their insurance policy. I’ve read through all of their terms and conditions and there’s nothing in there about needing to consult with the recipient at all.

They claimed to have sent a form to the recipient on April 1st and another one on May 3rd – though having just spoken to the buyer this morning he said he hasn’t received either but would be happy to complete such a form if one turned up.

Update 1: on the 9th of June I received an email from the buyer which stated that he had received a letter from Parcel Force asking for confirmation of the damage and that he had replied. So far though I am still yet to hear anything from Parcel Force.

Update 2: yesterday, three and a half months after I first posted the parcel, I received a cheque from Parcel Force for the full amount that it will cost to repair the helicopter. I’ll be sending it off for repair shortly – and obviously won’t be using Parcel Force! The Royal Mail has problems, but at least when they make a mistake they’re pretty quick to pay up!

A week later the site was still down for me which prompted me to remove the card and come up with the little icons instead – we can’t be having unsightly error messages on there, can we? I still wanted to know why the site wasn’t working though.

I tried it in IE and it worked straight away. Back to Firefox. No. I disabled my plugins one by one and kept trying the site. No, no, no.

I eventually got down to having no plugins at all turned on and the site was still refusing to work.

I closed Firefox and renamed the profile directory, then ran it again so that it would create a new profile. Xbox.com now worked! So there was something about my profile that the site didn’t like, but it wasn’t any of the plugins. I closed Firefox, removed the new profile and went back to my old one. I cleared my cookies and tried the site again and hurrah! Xbox.com worked once more!

Having since Googled “Firefox Xbox.com” it seems there are lots of people having the same problem so I thought I’d post this article in the hope of helping some of them.  :)

I got home and installed the RAM only to find that the netbook now refused to boot up. All I got was a black screen. Amazed that I had been unlucky enough to pick an incompatible stick of RAM, I went back into town to get a different brand. The shop didn’t have any other brands at that specification so I found myself driving to PC World in Aintree.

PC World had an alternative stick from PNY, which I took to the counter and asked them to check in the netbook before I bought it. The assistant seemed to think I was having a laugh when I told her that some sticks weren’t compatible with different machines, until a colleague of hers confirmed my claim and installed the memory for me. The machine booted up fine and device properties reported 2GB of system RAM – great! However, when I tried shut the machine down I discovered another problem – Windows would power down but the power light stayed on and the machine refused to turn off. I had to turn it off by holding the power button. I restarted the machine and tried again – nope, it wouldn’t turn off.

I took out the memory and retried the original stick and the machine returned to normal. The assistant informed me that they didn’t have any other brands and that maybe my netbook was faulty. I didn’t really believe it was faulty because if it was then it wouldn’t work so perfectly with this original stick. I made my way home.

I got home and opened up the machine. I took the original RAM stick’s details – Elpida 1GB 1Rx8 PC3-10600S-9-10-B1 – and searched for exactly the same thing but a 2GB version instead. This damn netbook was obviously really fussy so I decided that getting exactly the same brand but a bigger version of it would be a fairly safe bet.

I found exactly what I was looking for on eBay, bought it and it arrived a few days later. Crossing my fingers, I turned on the power with the new 2GB stick installed. Nope – black screen again. By now I was getting quite annoyed!

I listed the stick for sale again on eBay (yes, I’m using it again – wish me luck!) for the same price that I had bought it for and hit Google. While plenty of websites and forums discussed upgrading the 210′s RAM, none of them mentioned any particular brands or models that it would actually accept.

Eventually I found Orca Logic, a very knowledgeable memory specialist from Surrey. I phoned them up and explained the trouble I’d had with the netbook and they knew straight away what was wrong. Apparently this netbook (and its Compaq cousins) are incredibly fussy and only accept single bank RAM at very specific speeds. They sent me a 2GB Transcend stick which arrived this morning and I’m pleased to say that, thanks to Orca, I finally have a fully-functional HP Mini with 2GB RAM!

Update: I’ve had a fair bit of traffic looking for instructions on how to install RAM in the 210, so I’ll add some!

To replace the RAM stick in the 210, firstly remove the battery. Once you’ve done that the bottom of the laptop will pop off when you just reach inside the battery slot and pull on it a little: unlike on some other netbooks there are no screws to undo! Once that’s off you should see the RAM stick in question. Replace that with your new stick, pop the case back on and slot in the battery – job done!

I’ve just called a company called Azam Marketing which has left me distinctly unimpressed.

The guy who answered the phone answered with a confused “hello?” and not the usual formal greeting so at first I wasn’t even sure that I had gotten through to the right place.

Me: Is this Azam Marketing?

Him: Yes.

Me: Ok, good. Are you involved in media buying at all?

Him: Yes.

Me: Excellent. My name is Gareth Jones and I’m calling from a company called Learnalot. I was wondering if you’d be interested in working with us on our ad-supported subscription on an educational portal that is aimed at 11-16 year olds.

<click>

I wasn’t sure what just happened. Did the guy hang up on me? Was there something wrong with my phone? Was there something wrong with his phone? I called him again.

Him: Hello?

Me: Oh hi. What happened there?

Him: Stop ******* calling here or I will ******* report you and write about you all over the internet, you ******* ****!

Me: Whoa, what the hell is this? Who are you?

Him: I mean it stop ******* calling here trying to sell me your ******* advertising.

At this point I hung up, not really sure if I had just imagined the last 5 minutes. I checked the number on the site against the number I had just called – they were the same. I then replayed the conversation in my head and noted that I had asked if this was Azam Marketing before he confirmed that it was. There had been no mistake here – so what was this guy’s problem?

This guy lists clients such as BMI, BT, ITV, Disney and Hilton on his website, but I seriously doubt any of those companies even know who he is.

Apparently, Learnalot had been flagged up in one of their meetings as a company that might be able to help Michael achieve this goal. How flattering. She explained how they would like to feature an article on Learnalot that would follow Michael’s piece and asked whether I’d be interested in that – to which I naturally replied yes. She then told me that “of course” this would come at a cost – £2,396 plus VAT in fact – and that the article would be written by us and not them.

So, I was basically being asked to pay for advertising space in their magazine, which made it expensive irrespective of their subscriber list, but as the magazine seemed like a high-quality publication and the claims she made of their subscriber list were impressive, I still wanted to know more about them before turning them down. I said I was interested but that I would need to check a few things first, and she said that they would send over the agreement. Slightly concerning was that she then asked that I sign the agreement immediately and return it to them before she went for another meeting – which was in 5 minutes. I wasn’t about to sign over nearly 3 thousand pounds in 5 minutes, so I said I’d return the agreement after checking that everything was alright first and not before.

Joanne took from this suspicion that I wanted to see some examples of previous editions first to reassure me of the quality of the magazine. This seemed a little pointless really since by her own account large chunks of it had been written by third parties, and in any case it wasn’t the quality of the magazine that had my alarm bells ringing anyway.

Still concerned by the request to agree within 5 minutes, I got in touch with Laura at Hamilton House, our PR company, and asked them what she knew about PSR. In the meantime, I received a copy of the proposal from them with a note along the top asking me to email the signed copy “straight away”.

In the meantime I Googled the company and found this page, a blog from a guy named Andrew Jaffe and a load of comments from people who had all experienced the same thing. It turns out that this stories about short deadlines and meetings is something that PSR like to use a lot! I forwarded the link to Laura who then called me and kindly suggested getting in touch with PSR on our behalf to find out more about them and their subscriber list. She too was concerned about this “straight away” business and told me that she had never heard of a publication asking for such immediate commitment before. She also thought the piece was expensive – even for a glossy magazine.

Laura got back to me within minutes and said that Joanne had given her some information, but not the specific information that she had requested: namely the all-important breakdown of readership. She suspected therefore that the readership was not at all made up of the maths teachers that I was hoping to reach, and without a definitive printed statement of the readership it was difficult to consider otherwise. Laura also said that she had found Joanne somewhat difficult to deal with.

As soon as I got off the phone with Laura it rang again. I answered and it was Joanne. Joanne claimed that Laura had been very rude to her, which I really didn’t believe. She also tried to nullify Hamilton House’s concerns over her worrying need for immediate agreement and their expensive pricing by suggesting that she didn’t like their website.

Attacking the website and approach of a company one has chosen to work with is a rather odd approach, and overall I was unable to work out how that was relevant. The remarks about Hamilton House’s website were also made despite Joanne’s claim at the beginning of the conversation that her internet access was down because of a virus. In all, this did nothing but confirm beyond doubt that I needed to give Public Service Review a wide berth.

Update: Here’s another link that contains some useful information on Public Service / PSCA.

Important: It appears that some of the comments below may be from ex-employees of Public Service who are seeking to discredit the company, although of course such a possibility is almost impossible to verify with certainty either way. Please bear this in mind when reading these comments. These comments are solely the responsibility of their authors and are in no way linked to me or this blog.