It turns out that if the Boot Booster is enabled in the BIOS, it limits the amount of usable RAM. To fix this, press F2 during boot-up, go to the Boot menu, use the arrow keys to highlight Boot Booster and press Enter to change it to Disabled. Next press F10 to save, then reboot and you are done.

Note: You may still only have 1.75 GB usable, but that can be blamed on the leeching onboard video.

What’s in this bag I lug around to each client? Of course there’s my HP tc4400 Tablet PC and battery charger, but there’s a whole lot more, in no particular order:

• Small TechNet binder (Contents will be another post).
• An assortment of small screwdrivers for laptops and PCs alike
• Cables: 7′ Ethernet, Cisco serial, USB to PS2 converter, USB to serial, iPhone charger
• 160 external hard drive, USB (for moving files and dumping images)
• Leatherman
• A small handful of unlabeled customer access badges and keys
• Three USB thumbdrives (1GB, 2GB (BitLockered) and 32GB)
• Small metal business card holder
• Sharpie and blue pen
• Tape measure

Don’t get me wrong, I do like Vista (I think I may be only one of eight people), but as an IT professional I should be using the latest operating system.

So I got started with swapping out the hard drive to start with a fresh install (always the best way to go), and tossed in the install DVD. The install went flawlessly and I followed with Windows Update, as one always should. Upon rebooting the system, it failed to start.

What followed was a large pain in the posterior: After attempting to do a System Restore (it failed, of course), I reinstalled. This time during Windows Update, I deselected some of the likely updates that may have caused the boot failure issue, same result. This process went on five times before I found the (in)correct update:Intel Corp – Display – Mobile Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family 16.6MB. Not surprising that it’s a video driver, since those are typically the drivers that will hose a Windows system most often (rather embarrassed it took five tries to find out the obvious). Anyway, the update was released in September, 2009 and is one version behind what is available on the Intel website.

Once I skipped the Windows Update version of the driver and installed latest display driver from Intel, I was in business, actually Windows 7 Professional (can’t MS marketing decide on a consistent nomenclature?).

After chewing on this for quite a while, I found the issue: a checkbox on the Ports tab “SNMP Status Enabled”, which when checked (along with SNMP turned off on the print device) will result in the printer being listed as Offline. Once the box was unchecked, it was back online and the customer was back to printing once again.

I thought I was in for some laptop disassembly to remove the CMOS battery or change a jumper; perhaps even worse, to send it back to a repair depot for reset; but it was amazingly easy. 

All that had to be done was hold down the insert key while the system was booting to reset the BIOS back to default. Okay, I had to do this three times before it worked, but it worked.

Although I was relieved to be done with this in just a minute or two, making it this easy to do a reset completely invalidates the security afforded by having a BIOS password in the first place.

Anyhow, it is now happily running Fedora 11; which BTW required 515 updates for 1.6GB (and people complain about Windows updates).

It also helped that the iPhone 3Gs came out, offered a mature OS with a landscape keyboard and the big surprise, cut and paste.

I must say I’m rather enjoying the new phone; finding new Apps is rather addictive. The interface is pleasing and mostly intuitive, iPod functions are nicely done and most importantly, ActiveSync with Exchange works quite well.

I was rather dubious of the AT&T network, but so far so good.

More on being in the “iCrowd” later…

My customer’s Samsung LCD monitor was off center, but when he tried to use the Auto adjust feature or manually change the screen position, the menu always showed “Locked!”

A quick search showed that all that needed to be done was to hold the Menu button down for five seconds to unlock it. Adjustments were then made and all was right again in the world (at least in a world that only contains one Samsung LCD monitor and nothing else).

Q. What uses the most battery power on my laptop?
John Savill

A. The LCD display. In fact, almost half the power in most laptops is used by the screen, which is why dimming your screen can save you a lot of battery life. Below is a list of the major power consumers on your laptop. This list also applies to desktop computers, other than the screen figure.

LCD: 43%
Chipset: 21%
Processor: 9%
Graphics: 8%
Hard Drive: 5%
Network: 4%
Other bits: 10%

Obviously different systems will vary based on their components, but this gives a rough idea of where that battery power goes.

Dell is now offering Outlet deals via Twitter. You can follow here: http://twitter.com/DellOutlet

Update: Check out who the Dell Outlet is following, there are more deals to be tweeted.