Micromax Ignite LPQ61408W - First hand review of slim and light laptop

I have been an ardent 'collector' of laptops. If you dont know what i mean, my friends and kin will tell you more about it.

I was looking for a light and slim laptop, since the older ones were taking toll on my back while travelling. While i was waiting for a good second hand deal on Macbook Air, or perhaps the much touted Xiaomi laptop, i found another great alternative at much lesser price too.

I found a very interesting model by Micromax (not the first name you would think for laptops). Have been very happy with their Television for about 2 years, thought it was worth taking a risk with a good configuration and inexpensive laptop. My decision was further reinforced by my Gadget expert students on facebook where i posted my query.

The basic configuration of Intel Quad core processor (N3700), 4GB RAM and a whopping 1TB hard disk was a great bundle. Add to it a HD screen of 14 inches, makes it adequate for my main purpose of a bit of coding, browsing and Office Suite applications.

Strange that the weight and dimensions of the laptop are not mentioned on flipkart as well as the company website. However a tweet to the company revealed that the weight is 1.4kg (half of my earlier laptop) and thickness at its widest is about 2.1 cms.

For a budget price of RS. 18990, the laptop includes pre-installed Windows 10 Home edition. Makes for a great bargain

Initial Performance
The Micromax Ignite gave impressive performance with its quick boot-up and setup. The fully charged battery indeed worked for about 6 hours on about 30% screen brightness which is visibly bright enough.

The reviews mention about heating issues. Though i encountered the device heating up particularly on the left side, it was within expected limits of any laptop.  Another negative point was slow charging, with the laptop taking upto 2 hours for a full charge. In my opinion, slow charging is not all that bad since that would help prolong battery life.

On its day 1, where i showed it to my colleagues at a College where i teach, i have had many of them wowed and wanting to purchase.

At Rs. 18990, its quite a deal and steal.

If you would like to buy it here's the link"
Micromax Ignite Pentium Quad Core - (4 GB/1 TB HDD/Windows 10) LPQ61408W LPQ61 Notebook

Aaj Jaane Ki Zid na Karo

I fell in love with this song when i first heard it via Shankar Tucker's arrangement. His coveted Shruti Box album has many more great curated gems..

Lyrics of the song can be found Here - Lyrics of Aaj jane ki zid na karo (thank you Manjusha)

Here's Aaj Jane ki zid na karo from his album

--------- The song drove me to look for other versions Here are some:

Habib Wali Muhammad (1974)

By Farida Khannum (Old recording)

Farida Khannum on Coke Studio (Epic)

And the Awesome A R Rahman unplugged.. adding his signature.

The same song, not very different tune passing through different artists bringing out a new flavour and ultimately keeping its music and lyric timeless!!

Happy listening!

Wordpress CMS and Website Building

It's my fourth year as a self-employed consultant in the digital marketing, enjoying my passion towards serving SME and Non profit segment with solutions to get them online and set up their own medium.

Undeniably, my journey wouldn't have been successful but for the love and support of the open Source Wordpress content management system and its vast community.

Most of my skills in the digital marketing space is completely self taught, and experiment thanks to my pet project - Radio Idli . The site began first on blogger, and then it was moved to a self-hosted Wordpress based platform thanks to push and initiative of my friend Krishnanand "Sankalp" Nayak.

During the transition, i got acquainted with the bare basics of managing domains, shared hosting, cpanel and eventually installing and building a complete Wordpress CMS based website. While still at my day-job,  Sankalp and i got an opportunity to voluntarily revamp the website of Vishwa Konkani Kendra. Its been revamped again by my consultancy -  CoreGray with lots of support from the Vishwa Konkani Team headed by Gurudutt Baliga !

Over a period of time, we jointly did few websites for community run non-profits. All these projects gave me hands-on and on-the-job training of Wordpress. The Wordpress Documentation and Support forums were my meccas of learning, they continue to remain!

Today its great to see that i am a part of a community of professionals thriving on Wordpress as a trusted platform. Together we are seeing a day here where 1 out of every 4 websites on the Net is made using Wordpress CMS!