I had already been without a PC for 2 weeks, during which I could only use Mim’s PC and had to save my stuff mostly on a flash drive. On top of that, Mim’s cheap (CZK 7,000 incl. VAT) Acer couldn’t be connected to an external monitor via HDMI (well, it could, but the monitor showed pink and purple stripes), and since I also didn’t know when my PC would come back from repair, I bought a new one.
At ElectroWorld I spotted an HP Compaq laptop with a Core i3 for CZK 8,999, so I rushed there right away on Saturday. But a very unpleasant man told me they would only have it at that price from Monday, so I had to walk from Avion Shopping Park to the OV Vitkovice train stop, because bus line 45 (the only one running there) left right in front of my nose).
On the way back I bought a baguette at Agip for about CZK 55, just to cheer myself up a little. I got to the station just as a train was leaving, so I hurried, but unfortunately it only went as far as Havirov, and in Havirov I had to wait half an hour for the next connection to Tesin anyway. I came home empty-handed, and my sis told me that on Monday she would probably be going to Ostrava for school and that I could come along. I explained that it would suit me, given my situation. And that’s exactly what happened.
We arrived at ElectroWorld at 8:59 and waited about 2 more minutes for them to open their doors. My sis kept stressing that by 10 she had to be at school and still had to find her way there, so I tried to get it done quickly. We walked past the laptops looking for the HP Compaq CQ58 priced at 9 thousand CZK. We only found it at the very end, and the price was CZK 10,000. I kept asking my sis whether I should buy it. I liked it (though I didn’t yet know what awaited me with it at home), and I especially liked the keyboard, because it had no numeric keypad, which I can’t stand.
Another problem was that I only had CZK 9,500 on me, and I wanted to pay in cash so that I wouldn’t have to give anyone my card details. Besides, I had withdrawn that CZK 9,500 on Friday or Saturday, and I have a weekly limit of CZK 10,000 for all transactions, so I didn’t know whether paying by card would even work. Just to be safe, I asked my sis whether she had Tit’s card with her, so we could pay with it in case of emergency. She did, but in the end it wasn’t needed.
Then I walked back to the OV-Vitkovice station again, and my sis went to school with the laptop in her car trunk. She brought it home to me after 1 pm, so I quickly unpacked it and started exploring it. I had originally intended to sell this laptop once my original one came back from repair, so I chose Czech as the language. Today I know that was a terrible mistake, because all my .NET error messages are in Czech and I can’t look them up online.
And now there’s probably no way to change it, although I haven’t looked into it in detail yet. Otherwise, whatever I can, I have in English, but the Windows language annoys me. What really annoyed me was that there was no license key on the bottom (the COA sticker), so I had to find the license key using a program, and now I’ll try reinstalling it on another HDD of the same capacity (just with a different RPM) to see whether it can be activated. But the truly major fail is that what doesn’t work is the WiFi.
The F12 key, or fn + F12, turns airplane mode on and off. When it’s on, WiFi turns on as well (the indicator glows pale blue), and when it’s off, WiFi turns off too (the indicator glows red). The PC is also slower overall than my old and cheaper HP laptop, which only has a Pentium B950 processor (this one has a Core i3), and it didn’t help at all even when I removed all the utilities from HP.
Overall, I’m not very happy with the laptop, and my previous one is much better (it has a better WEI score for memory and graphics). I have the feeling that something in this HP Compaq laptop seriously slows down and limits the components, and of course my biggest suspicion falls on the graphics card.