Laptops used to be a nightmare to work on.  Half the time the RAM was hardwired onto the motherboard…  And if it was possible to upgrade the RAM you’d have to virtually dismantle the laptop to get at it.

Things have gotten better over the last few years…  These days the RAM is generally accessable from a panel on the back of the laptop.  Just screw or two and you can swap out the RAM.

Usually the HDD and the wireless card are similarly easy to get at.  And the keyboard isn’t usually too hard to remove either.

We just got in an HP ProBook 4710s and I am absolutely amazed at how unfriendly this thing is.  It seems like they intentionally made it as difficult to work on as possible.

I needed to slave up the HDD to run some scans on it.  Normally this is very easy – just remove a screw or two and slide the drive out.

On this laptop, however, the HDD is hidden underneath the palm rest.

Firs you have to remove the switch panel…  Normally these things just kind of snap in place, but not this one.  This one is secured by seven screws.

Then you have to remove the keyboard, which is secured by two more screws.

Then you have to remove the palm rest, which is secured by three more screws.

Finally you can remove three more screws to get the HDD out.

Seriously, who designed this thing?

I had to stop using my Logitech MX 5000 cordless mouse…  Great mouse.  It’s been terrific for years.  But the response time just isn’t there for an FPS like the new AvP.

So I hooked up my old MX 510…  Which also served me very well back in its day.  But there was a reason I stopped using it and bought the 5000 in the first place.

The middle mouse button is very unreliable.  I have to click it two or three times before it registers a single click.  And the left mouse button is just plain flaky.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

So, it looks like I’m going to have to find myself a new mouse…  Something wired, with lots of buttons.  I wonder if they even sell wired mice anymore?

Looks like there’s been an update to the nook’s firmware.  I’m not entirely sure when it was released…  I’ve been too busy and too exhausted lately to do much more than crash in bed at the end of the day.  But there’s an update out, and it’s been downloaded and installed on my nook.

The first thing I noticed was a new GUI.  The buttons look more like buttons now…  Everything has a slightly rounded and contoured look to it.  Frankly, I liked the old style better.  The interface was much simpler.

There’s also the ability now to sort your “My Documents” section by author’s name or book’s title.  This is very handy because previously that section was sorted by file name, which wasn’t always helpful.

What I’d really like to see is the ability to organize my ebooks in some way – to be able to tag them, or sort them into folders, or something.

I’ve got roughly 150 books on my nook.  Some of those I’ve read, some of them I haven’t.  And I’d really like to get the read ones out of the way without removing them entirely.

With books purchased on the B&N website you can “archive” them…  This removes the book from your nook, but leaves it in your on-line library, so you can download it again.  And the book’s title on the nook gets grayed-out, so it is obvious that the book has been archived.

With the books that you add from other sources, however, there is no such functionality.  The ebooks all wind up in your “My Documents” section, and there’s no way to categorize them beyond simply sorting by title or author.

My nook has arrived.

It was a rather late delivery by UPS…  Despite the tracking information indicating that it was “out for delivery” I really didn’t think I’d be seeing it today.  But, here it is.

Showed up in a large, plain, brown cardboard box…  Which contained the nook retail packaging within.

The retail packaging has a nice, minimalist, Apple-ish feel to it.  Lots of clear plastic and textured white paper.  Very understated.

I registered it, plugged it into my computer…  It shows up as a generic USB device, no funky software to sync it or anything weird like that.  It immediately started downloading an update.

The 3G out here is about as bad as I figured it would be…  It shows a strong signal, but the speed is horrible.  Good think the nook has wi-fi.  I was quickly able to connect it to my WLAN and the update downloaded much faster.

The update, once it was downloaded, immediately applied itself – which I did not appreciate.  I was in the middle of poking through the menus and it just rebooted and started applying the update.  I would have liked to be asked permission first…  Or at the very least been warned about what was going to happen.

Another minor complaint is with the USB connector.  The nook itself does not have a  miniUSB plug…  It looks more like microUSB, but I’m not certain.  Which means I have to use the cable that shipped with the nook, and not one of the many miniUSB cables I already have.  This won’t be terribly inconvenient here at home…  But if I want to charge or sync my nook anywhere else I’ll need to remember the cable.

My final complaint is that the microSD cardslot isn’t nearly as accessible as I would like.  You have to remove the entire back panel…  Which seems vaguely flimsy and entirely too likely to break if removed too often.  And then the microSD cardslot itself is less of a slot than a flap…  The flap has to be flipped up, the card inserted, and then the flap flipped back down.  Again it seems to fragile for frequent use.  Obviously the intent is to put in an SD card and leave it there to increase storage capacity, and not to use card swapping as a way to sync the device.

We attempted to get some more Christmas shopping done over the weekend…  Went across the lake to see what they had to offer over there.

We stopped at a number of stores, but didn’t really come up with anything new.

We wound up at Barnes & Noble…  I got to try out their nook demo unit.  I was a little bit surprised.

The nook is smaller than I expected it to be.  All the videos and pictures I’ve seen on-line make it look larger than it really is.  It isn’t a whole lot bigger than a paperback novel…  The e-ink screen is probably about the same size as a normal novel’s page.

The LCD touchscreen at the bottom is very small – which really isn’t a bad thing.  After a few moments, when the LCD turns off, it basically ceases to exist.  It isn’t terribly noticeable at all.

The menu system on the LCD works much better than the e-ink menu system I saw on the Sony Readers.  And the LCD touchscreen is plenty responsive.  There is a definite pause after you select something…  But it really isn’t bad.

The nook felt very comfortable in my hand.  It had just enough weight to feel solid…  The back cover is curved slightly, to fit your hand.  And it’s got a vaguely rubberized texture on the back, which felt nice and grippy.

The e-ink display was very readable.  Just as readable as any printed page I’ve seen.  It isn’t quite black and white…  More of a charcoal on vaguely off-white…  But still very readable.

When opening a new book, the nook takes an awfully long time to “format” the book.  I’m not quite sure what it is doing…  Re-flowing the whole thing?  There was a good 30 seconds or more while the nook just sat there displaying a “formatting…” message.  I suppose this probably won’t be a big problem as I wouldn’t expect to be switching between books all that often…  But it was annoying.

I had a coupon for 10% off a single item, so I bought a cover/case for my nook.  It’s a simple leather cover, with a pocket inside to secure the nook, and an elastic band to hold the whole thing shut.  It vaguely resembles a moleskine notebook…  Kind of.

After actually getting to handle a nook I’m even more anxious for mine to arrive.  And more certain that I chose the correct device.  After handling the nook, I can’t imagine how the Kindle manages to keep that keyboard at the bottom from being obtrusive.  Either the Kindle has to be larger than the nook…  Or that keyboard has to be absolutely tiny.  Either way, I’m glad my nook won’t have that keyboard on the bottom.