It has been many years since I got hold of a Dell notebook. The one with me now is currently turning 8 this year and today I got hold of this red Dell Studio 15. W00t call me jakun or whatever, but I think the bag looks quite good. Though the bag capacity is rather limited, it can still hold a couple of things like your external drives and stuff in it and still look slim.

Here’s the Dell’s version of Targus notebook bag.

This thing looks gorgeous from the outside..

The inside, hmm.. not so good. Looks rather plain with the grey/silver finish. The keyboard was slightly on the “bendable” side because during typing you could actually see the whole keyboard moving slightly.

Call me jakun again but it look me a minute to figure out where the power on button was! HAHA!

As usual, the Dell Studio LED screen did not fail to impress me. Colors were vibrant and text was sharp. The blacks weren’t black enough though..

At a certain angle I could see some line scanning going on, I’m not sure whether this is a problem with the screen or it is meant to be like that. Anyway it is only visible if you really stare at the screen properly. Will check it out once the setup is complete.

Again! the 90w power adaptor has been trimed down to a size thinner than my phone. Nice one. It runs pretty hot though. The notebook itself runs quite hot during idle times too.

Overall, the Dell Studio 15 is a quite a powerful machine here. Equipped with the Core i5 2.4ghz , 4gb DDR3 ram, 1GB ATi HD5740, 500GB hdd, this notebook is perfect for watching my TVB dramas!! AHHAHA.

Special thanks to Ivy and Eddy for letting me molest their very new toy. I couldn’t resist myself from snapping photos of your notebook. It was simply a natural poser.

Here’s another contender in the plastic skin protection industry. GadgetShieldz. Its supposed to be “again” the same material used in other brands like InvisbleSh*eld and BestSk*nsEver. However GadgetShieldz promises a lower price compared to the other two brands and after browsing their website, it really does turn out to be cheaper with its free shipping worldwide.

Well, does this product really live up to its ” cheap but same quality as the more expensive brands” standard? Hmm.. yes and no.

YES / PROS

1. GadgetShieldz gives an almost perfect cut on the skin letting very little of the phone surface exposed.

2. GadgetShieldz offers a more variety of skins, ( more than the BSE but rather the same or less than IS). They didn’t have the skin for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 on the BSE but they did have them on the IS site with a much much higher price.

3. GadgetShieldz comes with free worldwide shipping via courier.

4. Like the others, it does give some scratch protection.

5. It’s reasonably priced.

Here’s how the screen protector look like once it is applied on the screen. Pretty nice almost-perfect cut.

NO/CONS 

1. Some of the skins arrive with a little scratches on them already. One of the review units had a pretty long but fine scratch on it.

2. The skin magically turns black / oil-mark stain if too much pressure is applied on it after some time. I had a few cases of this happening already. Even though I was given the replacement for the skin, this phenomena repeated. Shame on you GadgetShieldz.

Anyway, I was told that this phenomena does not happen on every skin. Probably the batch that I received had some problems during manufacturing.

Left: A new piece of GadgetShieldz. Right: The “oil-stained” GadgetShieldz.

Verdict: The only reason I’m using GadgetShieldz currently is because they have the full body protection for my SE Xperia X1. Otherwise, I’ll rather spend a little more and get the BSE instead. Although that skin costs a little, yes a little only bit more, it would save the hassle of replacing the “oil-stained” skin from GadgetShieldz.  Anyway, if you’d like to get some GadgetShieldz for your devices and keep them scratch free thoughout their lifespan, I’m selling them too here. Oh yes I know that contradicts my sentence above.. but oh well.. as I said, it only happens on some skins and it can be replaced for free.

Thanks to GadgetShieldz for the skins =) .

Alright, there was this Samsung T400 phone lying around because the screen was supposed to be “not working” . Sent it to the repair shop for a checkup and was told that RM80 would be needed to get it fixed. The ribbon connecting the main board to the LCD screen was “supposed” to be broken.

Heck.. for a 7 year old phone, RM80 isn’t worth the money. So lets get dirty and break it up.

The Samsung T400 was only secured by 5 screws on the lower part of the phone while only 2 screws held the screen in position. Unscrew them, un-clip the plastic holders securing them together and its open. Easy huh?
The phone consists of only 2 parts which are the screen and the main-board. LOL.

Once opened, the whole board looked like a “forest” of IC’s and pins. I’m no expert in this so I’ll just have to do it the usual NBTD way, which is to remove all removable pins/plugs and simply clean the device. The chances of getting your stuff repaired this way are close to ZERO but then what else can be done? Just trying my luck.

The phone was simply powered up to see what comes out and *pooof*
It lights up!

Before assembling back the parts together,  the keypad of the phone was slightly modified by adding some supporting pads on some of the keys. Due to wear and tear, some of the keys are no longer that sensitive and they needed more contact pressure to work.

There you have it, another device brought back to life!  My X1 would be having a good rest now while I’ll get this Samsung T400 up to a good stress test.