As one of the proverbial tasks of being a blogger of technology are the eventual shopping errands and during this particular one with my aunt, we ended up with a red HP X360. Her requirements were simple enough, something that can handle basic web browsing and desktop publishing tasks all while being light and a practical carry. Plenty of options yes, and while I was initially pushing for a UX305, the HP had won it over because it has three USB ports and a standard HDMI output… for all intents and purposes the X360 had better flexibility. We got ours for a discounted price of 24,990Php. The configuration we went away with had a Core M (0.8 GHz), 4GB of RAM, and 500GB HDD storage.
The HP X360 is a touchscreen-convertible laptop by way of 360 degrees of rotation on its hinges
The Configuration
Having Windows 8.1 out of the box was first to go on my list – while nothing is installed I should bring the system up to Windows 10 for peace of mind and the inevitable remote assistance via phone.
It was supposed to be easy, just time consuming as updates had to be taken down from MS servers, but it was not. This particular model was intermittently going into a state of what can only be likened to instant hibernation. The screen goes black (1) and all the lights go out (2) and when you press the power button again it starts up as if it just got powered up but when you return to the desktop all the processes are still there. It happens both on and off AC power and I’ve yet to be absolutely certain this event does not occur when I’m away from it.
Naturally I went out of my way to go through all the power options making sure nothing was triggering the symptom… I did find there that there is an entry for “hard disk” which I haven’t encountered before (not with any HP laptop that I had configured prior, and there’s plenty of those) and it was set to 3 minutes in battery and 15 minutes on AC power, I’ve modified it to high values so it’s all up to real world usage to see if we need to take it back for replacement because of this weird behavior.
I was able to eventually being it to Windows 10 having to do a ‘clean’ reboot right after the Windows Updates Diagnostic tool ran a few times. Phew! Of course still not without the symptom occurring right after the Windows 10 update download had completed.
It’s now ready for utility and, should any number of untoward occurrences happen once again, I’d more than likely bring it for exchange.
The Takeaway
I’m just hoping that the same had not happened to other, less tinker-y type of owners because instant hibernation isn’t something regular users would find amusing. I didn’t that’s for sure.
This was also the first time that I had been able to use a HDMI to VGA cable and it’s an amazing piece of conversion technology! I had thought only a few resolutions were going to be available but the data being transferred is almost as if the HDMI cable itself was plugged to the external monitor! A bit expensive at 900Php but really useful indeed.
I wasnt able to take any photos for my own since I had been doing the configuration all the while XD
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