I realised the plague of Fizzbooks being problematic here on this forum. It's no wonder those have ever been abandoned and in some cases, put up on eBay for someone else to suffer with more problems. But that wasn't the case for me. Prior receiving my Fizzbook Spin NL1 from eBay, I had one from Argos. Knowing myself in 2009 and all, I ended up with a ThinkPad SL510 from the refund, which had it's own issues lead to its demise of a dying motherboard as of 2017.

This one had issues, mainly BSODs and most cases, touchscreen glitches. Now, considering other users here work or worked in schools had a fleet of these, it was almost a no easy task for myself to get one working as it should. My particular Fizzbook runs Windows XP Professional with Office 2003.

When I got it, I only got the unit with one adapter and it had no stylus and lacked the cover for the HDD and RAM. This is where things went even more downhill. This netbook uses no ordinary 2.5in drive we see in many many laptops. It's one of those iPod hard drives or drives previously had in Macbook Airs from 2009 and notably used in the ThinkPad X300 and Dell Latitude D420 and D430. Although, the Dells use a thicker HDD, so those wouldn't have fit the Spin's internal space.

Now, I have two of these NL1s from eBay because of parts. One had the missing stylus and cover along with some missing screws, and an almost-dead battery. And the other had a better battery, the underside cover and stylus yet looked more battered. Under the NL1 with the cover present, it had what I needed for installing the drive (which was a plus because I was almost ready to buy the rubber caddy and a new ribbon cable) and a drive already in it. This drive was on its last legs, and it was in bad shape upon turning it on.

Installing XP was the easy part, but the OEM key on the device wouldn't have worked. Regardless if I had used a XP Home CD, it wouldn't have worked and accepted it. So, to elaborate, the XP Pro install was obtained from eBay as well.

Looking for drivers was the hurdle I had to get over. I had the choice of using CTL's drivers for their NL1, and obtaining some from Zoostorm (which I have already received a DVD with everything I needed). Zoostorm did their part, although in a more tedious way (you need to contact them and they will NOT charge you anything for it).

After the setup and being relieved no further changes needed to be done during it, installing drivers became a breeze as the screen is now calibrated. It runs XP, it runs smoothly and surprisingly quick loading up Word 2003 or OneNote 2003.

The Fizzbook Spin NL2 I also possess didn't need more than a new 2.5in drive and that was that. Windows 7 Pro on there accepted the key under the device as it should. Definitely an adventure for me, and a bit of a throwback because I loved small netbooks like the Asus EEE PC 701, Vye's ultraportable PC and the like.

I'll have pictures up on this blog, but as of at the moment providing pictures with my desk in an atrocious state because unfortunately I'm a little lazy and laid-back...