Last Friday I ordered an HP laptop from the Pavilion g6 series from the okay.cz online store. All of this because in summer there will be one cyclist after another passing by here, and not just cyclists, but also pedestrians and even lots of wheelchair users come through. At times like that I will take the laptop and go away – somewhere out into nature.
I tried to buy some power supplies for my older laptop, but external power packs were made by only one company, which no longer makes them today, and as luck would have it, batteries for my laptop were not available either.
I had a plan – to go to Ostrava, where there are several HP service centers, and call them first to ask whether they could recommend a battery compatible with the HP 635 and whether I could try it out right there and then buy it, so that I would not be buying a pig in a poke. But that AMD had started to get on my nerves. I told myself it was a good deal, that I would sell the old one and get some of the money back.
Anyway, this laptop was only keeping me from my work. And on top of that, you may laugh at me, it seemed to me that the laptop was haunted, in the sense that the programs on it did whatever they wanted. Of course I also had several other explanations besides “ghosts“. Namely that something is wrong with my Windows. Or simply that W7 is not compatible with VC# 2005 (which it actually warned me about during installation, but I paid no attention to it and even had the nerve to tick the box so that it would stop showing up).
I also thought about hardware faults, especially the CPU, but I was told that if that were the case, the whole PC would keep crashing into the blue screen of death and not a single program would work properly, and that was not the case. I only saw the blue screen when I caused it through my own fault, for example with a driver; otherwise even that AMD was 100% stable. And then of course there are just my own mistakes, which is also possible and maybe even highly likely.
In any case, I had run out of patience with this snail, even if a very cheap one, and decided to sacrifice just under 9,500 CZK to have everything Intel again. And so it happened. Today I told Mim about my intention, and then we turned all 3 rooms I live in upside down to find my ID card. The thing is, since I had not withdrawn from an ATM for 2 months, had not been to a shop, or anywhere else where I would need a PIN, I had forgotten my PIN.
In most cases I would get by with internet banking. In the end I remembered my hiding place and found it, after Mim had already given up. Tit was still fixing cars, and then we drove into town. They dropped me off at Billa, and I popped over to the post office. Luckily, the nice lady was behind the counter, so she had no problem letting me try entering the PIN a few times. On the second attempt I managed to enter it correctly. I politely thanked her for her kindness; I would never have thought I would have such luck and actually remember it. I went to the gas station, where I had arranged with the two of them that we would meet up again.
Well, we drove a bit further, they still needed to pump up the rear left tire. Then we headed towards Kaufland. I wanted them to go in with me so I could ask whether I could return it within 2 weeks and have witnesses, just to be safe. But Tit refused, saying he would never set foot in there in his life, and neither would Mim, because she has to listen to Tit – or rather, not because of Tit but for her own sake.
I went in and said I would like to pick up a laptop. The young woman was probably about to direct me to the laptops when the other one pointed out to her that it was “the online store”, which I confirmed in an instant. Nobody was there, and that showed in the mood of the two women. One was sitting and the other standing, and both looked as if they were about to die of boredom.
I read out my order number, which I had in the text message they had sent me, and then they brought the box with the laptop out of the safe. I handed over my card, worried before the receipt printed out that I could not make such a large transaction, but that turned out to be unfounded. Since I turned 18, even though I still have a Junior account, the limits are practically unlimited for me. I thanked them and said the classic “bye”, and outside the door I realized it would be great to have it opened with something sharp, because I had nothing, not even fingernails :).
I went back and asked whether it would be possible to open it, whereupon the more bored one, of fuller figure and the one sitting, got up, pulled a box cutter out of her pocket and opened the box for me. I then wanted to check that everything was there, but immediately added that it was probably straight from the HP factory and that it surely did not need checking.
The danger did not occur to me at all that if I left the store and then found out something was missing, I would have a smaller, slim or perhaps zero chance of proving their mistake. Fortunately, everything was probably there. In the car I turned the laptop on and chose trivial things like the language and so on. The license key was already pre-filled, and of course there is a license sticker on the bottom of the notebook.
I tried to connect to some Wi-Fi, but I could not find any that was not password-protected.. and there were quite a few of them, about 10-15. Wow :). There was no room to move in the car, so I was squeezed in like a sardine and got nothing done. I did not want to move the seats because the two of them use the car for deliveries/work, and I would have cost them more than a few neurons :-).
After a while Mim came back with Tit and we headed home. Tit was just fuming that he did not know what they would drive tomorrow, since there was no diesel in any of the cars and at the Shell station today you could not pay by card. And what annoyed him most was Mim, but she would annoy even the most laid-back person with her silly questions and suggestions. This was the first part of the article; the second, enriched with photos and screenshots, will follow later (hopefully tomorrow) and will be about the laptop itself, its performance, looks, hardware and its HP-customized environment/software. Oh, I almost forgot, this is the laptop: https://notebooky.heureka.cz/hp-pavilion-g6-1205-a3a20ea/ , and I bought it for just under 9,500 CZK, including shipping, VAT and so on. Right now the cheapest price is 9,889 CZK, and that does not include shipping, packaging or possibly in-store pickup/cash on delivery.
I think I made a good purchase. The headphone/audio output acted up a bit, but I have hopefully fixed that and it will not come back. So far it only works with earbuds; the over-ear ones gave more trouble.