As you know, I love Sony Vaio Laptops. The styling, quality, reliability... The whole package.

Over the years, I have owned several of them. you may have already read my posts about Sony VGN-FZ180E from 2009. Currently, I have three Sony Vaio Laptops at home. All but one was purchased at the Sony Outlet Store.

I currently use a Sony Vaio VPCCA190x I purchased back in October 2011 as a refurbished model for 50% off the Outlet Price. I did get a 1 year extended service contract for $69 since the refurbished Sony Vaio Laptops only come with a 90 day warranty. Happy to say that I did not need to use it. My VPCCA190x came with a 1600x900 High Definition screen, AMD RAdeon HD 6630M video, 320GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive and 4GB Memory. I promptly replaced the Hard Drive with my favorite hard drive and added another 4GB of memory. Oops! I forgot to mention that this laptop has a second generation intel Core i5-2410 2.3GHz CPU. It was quite a steal for little over $500 at the time. It was as good as new.

Well, the Sony Outlet Store is having another sale now and you should not miss it. Currently, they are offering a 25% discount but if you use the code OUTLETVAIODD your discount will go up to 35%. I don't know when the code is expiring but take advantage of it and score yourself a Sony Vaio Laptop. I recommend you pick one with discrete graphics and High Definition screen. You can always replace the Hard Drive and add more memory. You can pick up a Sony Vaio E series Premium Plus Laptop with 3rd generation i5 CPU and HD screen for little over $600. It sure beats buying new from Sony or Amazon or buying used one on eBay.

I bought this Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive over a year ago for $74.95.  I have been perfectly happy with the performance and the space and thinking about getting another one. Then the Thailand floods came and the price skyrocketed to... $175.00. Yep, I was even tempted to sell mine on eBay and make some easy money. Well, early this morning Newegg put this drive on a three day special at $69.99 and about an hour ago Amazon matched the price. I already got one from Newegg this morning. If you are looking to upgrade your laptop's hard drive you can't go wrong with this one.

Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive List Price: $229.99 Sale Price: $72.00 You save: $157.99 (69%)   Eligible for free shipping! Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Description

Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB (WD7500BPKT) 7200rpm SATA2 16MB Notebook Hard Drive (2.5 inch)

Features

• 5 Year limited warranty.
• Quiet - In a notebook drive, silence is golden. WD's exclusive WhisperDrive
• WD's 750 GB 2.5-inch drives offer huge capacity for space-hungry operating systems with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video.
• Combines 7200 RPM spin speed, 16 cache, and SATA 3 Gb/s interface for the ultimate in power computing.
• With technologies like IntelliSeek which calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption and SecurePark

Getting blank pages on your WordPress admin panel?

Tried re-installing WordPress? Kept activating and de-activating plugins with no results? Kept looking at WordPress files like wp-config.php to find a blank line? Tried increasing WordPress memory limit by editing wp-config.php and still getting WordPress Blank Screen of Death?

OK, let's cut to the chase:

First, .htaccess file is your friend. Add the line below to your .htaccess file to troubleshoot the WordPress blank page error:

php_flag display_errors on

Now when you go back to your WordPress admin panel, you'll get an error message telling you what it is that is wrong. More than likely the error will be about exhausting memory. If that's the case, don't even mess with wp-config.php file. Here is what you do:

Delete the line we put in the first step and add the following line in .htaccess file:

php_value memory_limit 64M

Now, if the error message was memory related and this does not fix it, try putting 96M instead of 64M.

That's it! You just solved your WordPress admin panel blank screen problem.

I have been running the Microsoft Windows office 2010 Pro Beta version until yesterday. After the official release of Microsoft Office 2010, I wanted to uninstall the Beta version but it would not uninstall. So I tried to install the new release over only to be greeted by an error message asking me to remove the pre-release or beta version first. Nice!

Luckily I remembered trusty old Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. It removed beta version in a jiff and now, I am enjoying the all-new Microsoft office 2010.

Windows Installer CleanUp Utility is a great utility to have in your toolbox. Anytime you are having an issue uninstalling a program, use this utility.

I have been using Microsoft Office 10 Beta for a few months now. I can tell you it is the best version of Office. It should be available in stores by June 2010. Microsoft is offering a Technology Guarantee:

Purchase and activate a qualifying Office 2007 product between March 5, 2010, and September 30, 2010, and you can download Office 2010 at no additional cost.

I've never upgraded to Office 2007. I still have the Office 2003. The good part is that when I installed the Office 2010 Beta, I did not have to uninstall Office 2003. These two versions co-exist.

Buy Office 2007 qualifying products today and download Office 2010 for free

There are a number of lightbox tools are available. Until I discovered ColorBox JQuery plugin, I wasn't completely comfortable using any of them.

Why ColorBox? Well, it is easy to use, lightweight and it supports all kinds of different content like photos, photo groups, slideshow, ajax, inline, and iframed content.

I am using ColorBox JQuery plugin on one of my sites but I wish it was as easy as the thumbnail viewer plugin when using on a WordPress site. With thumbnail viewer plugin all you need to do is add rel=thumbnail to any link tag surrounding your thumbnail. You'll see an example below.

There are a couple of WordPress ColorBox plugins available. I haven't tried the LightBox Plus yet. I haven't been able to get the JQuery ColorBox WordPress plugin to work. I'd rather use ColorBox JQuery plugin on my WordPress site without a plugin. I am still experimenting with that. Including JQuery functions on WordPress header is a little different. I will soon update you on that. Stay tuned...

UPDATE 03/06/2010:

OK! Now the image on this post works with ColorBox. Here is how I made it work:

Added the link to the ColorBox stylesheet on the header.php right after all the other stylesheet links.
After "wp_head();", I put the link to the ColorBox script and the JQuery function call:

$(document).ready(function($){
$("a[rel='colorbox']").colorbox();
});

Now, pay attention to the $ in the function bracket. You won't see it on ColorBox example pages. This is required when you are adding JQuery functions to your WordPress header. Without that all the $ within your code would not be interpreted correctly. This is the best way to add JQuery functions to your WordPress header.

Finally I added the rel="colorbox" to the link to the image. You can use a different name but make sure it is the same one you in the JQuery function.

One last point: If you have the WordPress Flickr Manager plugin as I do, disable the image viewer.

Here is the ColorBox example:

UPDATE 01/11/2013:

I switched to prettyPhoto. So the example below is using prettyPhoto.

This is an update on the previous post How I Upgraded My Sony Laptop to Windows 7 Ultimate.

I am happy to report that Windows 7 is still running flawlessly.

I am also happy to report that Sony has changed its stance to "If your computer meets the system requirements to run the Windows® 7 operating system, your model should be able install and run Windows® 7." Sony still does not provide drivers or support for Windows® 7 for this model but this new stance is much better than "Don't upgrade, just go buy a new laptop if you want to run Windows 7."

As far as the drivers concerned, I have had two issues so far: Vaio update crashes anytime the customer starts. I just get a 'Close this program' notice. Second issue is that I was not able to get audio when I used the HDMI out. This is not something I do often but it would be nice to get it fixed. I have not had time to research solutions to these issues but as soon as I find new information, I'll post it here. It would be nice to hear from you if you know any way to solve these issues.

Well, there is one more thing: Running Windows XP on Windows 7!

I have another copy of Windows 7 installed on my desktop. I have downloaded and installed Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP mode. It is way cool to have your Virtual Windows XP PC running in its own window. Well, it is not possible to do that on Sony VGN-FZ180 because..., surprise surprise, Sony turned of the Intel Virtualization Technology and there is no way to turn it back on. According to Intel Processor ID Utility the CPU supports Virtualization Technology. There is no BIOS option to enable it though. Again, this is not a pressing concern at this time and I have not taking the time to find an updated BIOS or any other solution. If you know a way to enable it, please do so.

Aside from these issues, I can honestly say that Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E is running much better and faster with windows 7.

It sure would be nice to get a new Sony Vaio Laptop with Windows 7 like the ones below, but sorry Sony, this laptop is still doing a great job and I wish you supported the Windows 7 upgrade.

Sony VAIO VPC-F137FX/B 16.4-Inch Laptop (Black) List Price: $1,399.99

Description

Sony VAIO F Series: Entertainment and Gaming PC with Premium Performance Locked and loaded for all-out performance, the Sony VAIO F series laptop in black (model VPC-F137FX/B) is forged for gaming and built for quickness...

Features

• Accessories - Standard Capacity Lithium-ion Battery (5000mAh), AC Adapter, Power Cord; Software Bundle - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter (Purchase a Product Key to activate a full Microsoft Office 2010 suite), Norton Internet Security 2010 30-Day Trial Offer, 1-Year Limited Warranty
• Intel Core i7-740QM Quad-core 1.73GHz Processor with Turbo(R) Boost Technology up to 2.93GHz
• 6MB L3 Cache
• 6GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM (8GB max.)
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive

Sony VAIO VGN NR498E 154 250 GB Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz 3 GB Laptop $360.00 Time Remaining: 29d 23h 58m Buy It Now for only: $360.00 Buy It Now

SONY VAIO T Series SVT13138CXS 133 Touchscreen Ultrabook Silver Mist $1,299.99 Time Remaining: 29d 23h 40m Buy It Now for only: $1,299.99 Buy It Now

Sony VAIO E Series 14 White Notebook $200.00 Time Remaining: 6d 23h 35m Buy It Now for only: $300.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

SONY VAIO SVD11223CXB 116 Touchscreen Convertible Ultrabook $1,199.99 Time Remaining: 29d 23h 40m Buy It Now for only: $1,199.99 Buy It Now

SONY VAIO SVD11225CXB 116 Touchscreen Convertible Ultrabook $1,449.99 Time Remaining: 29d 23h 40m Buy It Now for only: $1,449.99 Buy It Now