Love My Netbook

I have my Asus Seashell! A pretty little netbook, with a 10-inch screen, 1-inch thickness and 1.1kg weight, it’s easy for a weakling like me to cart around. In terms of specs, it’s no different from the kazillion other netbooks on the market. It has an Intel Atom N280 processor, 160GB storage and a built-in battery with a supposed 6-hour life (for real life, divide by two).

While I’m figuring out the functions, I’d like to recommend the shop I bought it from – Digital Asia, at Funan Centre. Funan, in general, is the posh version of Sim Lim, but quite a few shops still treat potential customers with scornful disdain. In my case, I suppose it is because netbooks don’t earn retailers a whole lot of money. But pitiable though my money is, I will spend it at a place that gives me better service any day.

I’d gone to Funan knowing that there would be no point bargaining. The Asus Seashell radiates a patina of novelty, being so delectably thin and elegant, and every single shop will quote a non-negotiable price of S$798. In any case, I suck at bargaining. I had previously visited Funan to suss it out, and every salesperson I encountered reacted with supreme indifference when I told them what I wanted – all except for a nice chap named Benjamin at Digital Asia. He explained the specs to me (your typical girly technophobe) and was very nice even when I said I needed more time to consider. This time, when I revisited the shop, Benjamin wasn’t there, but another guy, named Kelven, was just as helpful and knowledgable.

This, for me, was the clincher – apparently the Seashell does NOT come with an upgraded (i.e. usable) BIOS, which means that it CANNOT GO ONLINE as it is. Buyers have to queue up at the service centre to get their upgrade before they can surf the Net. They cannot upgrade their BIOS themselves because they would have to go online, WHICH THEY CANNOT DO. Like, arrrrrghhhhh!!! How stupid is that?!!

Fortunately, Kelven told me that he was PROBABLY able to upgrade the BIOS there and then, using a program he had on his thumbdrive. He’d never done it before, but was pretty confident. I decided that if he could, I’d buy the thing.

He could, and I did.

Plus, if I used cash, there would be a discount. Thirty bucks. Fine with me.

So now I have a lovely new gadgety toy. :)

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