Recently I installed Windows 7 Beta on my netbook, then wanted to test the restore process to get it back to Windows XP.  I used the windows home server to backup my netbook originally and to backup the installation of windows 7.  This, I thought, would allow me to jump back and forth between XP and W7 at will.

The biggest problem happened though.  The windows home server bootable restore wizard doesn’t recognize my netbooks LAN card.  Thus making restores impossible.

I was distracted for a short time while I exchanged the netbook for another with a WWAN card.  But now I’m back and solved the restore problem.

A long time ago I purchased a copy of Acronis TrueImage Workstation, a backup/restore solution I was using to backup customers hard drives. 

I used it to create a bootable disk on one USB thumb drive, and used a second much larger thumb drive to backup my XP image.

Now I can restore my XP drive at will… Yay!!!  Thus giving me the comfort level to move forward with additional Windows 7 testing.

So… I purchased my mini without the WWAN card and purchased it separately in an attempt to save myself $50.  It worked kind of…  I got my mini in and a week later I got in the WWAN card via a separate order.  I open up the mini to install the WWAN card and to my dismay I find no WWAN antenna wires.  So what does any sane person do… refer to the manual.  I locate the product number of the antenna and proceed to call HP to order the missing part, this is where things get interesting.

I spend the next 3 hours on the phone being passed between 20+ people all telling me they don’t know what I’m wanting, it’s not in stock, they can’t find it… the list goes on.  When they realize they can’t help me and I’m not hanging up they quietly pass me down the line to the next operator where I describe my problem again, and again, and again, etc…

My persistence paid off though…  After 3 hours I got round-robined back to someone who passed me along 15 people ago.  He felt so bad, I’m guessing, that he helped me from that point on.  They were not able to get me the part I needed and offered me an alternative option:  Return the Mini I had and order another with exactly the pieces I need. 

In the end I spend an additional $60 from my original order… and I can now return the WWAN card I ordered separately and get that money back.

All said and done, I should have ordered the mini with the WWAN card in the first place… but I was trying to save a few bucks.