The "Little" things

Let me just throw this out there since it just happened and is fresh on my mind. The prevailing trend for some years now is for folks to switch to laptops vs. desktops. And as much as I'll disagree with them, and say till the end that the desktop has a place in the modern home, I understand the attraction for most people.

There are a number of downsides to using a laptop and I tonight isn't the time to get into them, but there is one that virtually everyone forgets......and that's the battery. It's assumed that when duty calls, like a good soldier, the battery is always ready to go, but much to the chagrin of the typical owner; that's exactly what's happened. It's gone! Granted, its not the bad old days of the Nickle-Cadmium batteries with their "memory effect", but things aren't as perfect with today's Lithium-Ion cells as manufacturers would like us to believe. No, they aren't nearly as prone to "memory effect", but it isn't perfect either.

First of all, batteries wear out; they all do. Why do you think that regardless of how long your laptop is warranted for, the batteries are covered for no more than one year. The expectation is that under a corporate environment, with a battery cycling (I explain in a minute) every day, a battery should last about a year....give or take. That's because a battery is essentially a contained chemical reaction inside of a little case, and those chemicals can only do their thing so many times before there's no "fizz" left. However, this is mostly an issue for the corporate crowd who use their laptops unplugged on a regular basis.

Secondly, you have the opposite issue: people who keep their computers plugged up ALL THE TIME. You know who you are. You do this in the belief that your trusty laptop will always be ready and the battery will always be new since it's NEVER BEEN USED! OK; yes and no. You have indeed kept the cycles down, but this tends to kill batteries over time, even the Lithium-Ion ones. Quite often, these batteries get to a point where they "go bad" and won't even charge any more.

So, what to do!?! I'm aiming this at the average user who has one or two of these things at home. Here's a few things to remember:

• Brand new batteries must be "cycled" or they will might never be able to reach full capacity. Mean that you need to charge the thing up and run it all the way down (unplugged of course), a couple of times when the machine (or battery) is new.
  
• A "cycle" is where the battery records a process where it discharges and then recharges. Don't ask me how much does it have to go down before it decides that its a "cycle", I don't know. But it looks like, when I carry my machine from one charger to another, it doesn't seem to discharge enough to count as a cycle.
  
• All batteries need to be cycled periodically. Think of it like giving the battery a little exercise. For my home machines, I tend to do this once every week or two. This is enough to keep the number of cycles down, while keeping the battery from dying.
• In the end, ALL BATTERIES must be replaced. No escaping it (like death and taxes), it's going to happen.
  

So what should you like-minded frugal types do? In case you haven't priced the things, the manufacturers tend to charge over $100 each for these things! I just checked and mine that you see above is $150! OK, here's what I do:

• Keep the ones that I have on an exercise routine, so they do die and early death.
• Always buy one of more at my leisure, so I'm not caught in an emergency and end up paying the $150 because I'm panicked. More on this later.
• Keep a "bad" one in the machine at home when it's plugged up 90% of the time, so if one is going to die, it's the bad one. Anyway, it's at home, so all I really need from it is 5 or 10 minutes anyway. It's like having a built-in UPS.
• Every once in a while, rotate in one of the batteries that are in storage so they'll get a little exercise as well. I'm not fanatical and put them in the freezer though.

So what's the story on buying batteries....other than; don't pay $150 from the OEM. I also then to not buy the generic ones that you see all over eBay listed as "for" Brand X, Model Y. No, I've never had a terrible, melting laptop episode, but I'd prefer to minimize the chances of that ever happening as well. What I do do is still go to eBay, but buy batteries that are specifically listed as OEM, or Genuine. If you can get a new one cheap that way, then jump on it. I have on occasion found new ones pretty cheap, but its rare.

I buy used ones. Simple as that. I know, that that's a "crap-shoot", but I've done it a lot and my experience has been that you'll come out ahead on the average. Yes, in fact, I've gotten a few that have come in with some ungodly number of cycles and is all but useless, but most cases, they will be fine. My most recent case is a great example. I wanted another 6-Cell battery for my beloved everyday companion ThinkPad X300. That battery has 300+ cycles on it and the capacity is down to about 2/3s of its original. Although, fine for around the house, not great for traveling. I also didn't want to put the 3-Cell battery into play since they are rare (read hard to find and expensive) and I want to keep it in good shape for those occasions where I need the machine to be super thin and super light. Yes, yes, I know it's "gilding the Lilly", given that it's already at 3lbs and just slightly thicker than the MacBook Air, but hey.... Anyway, after scanning through all the eBay ads for real X300 batteries, I found one that was going for $26 with free shipping. So I jumped on it! It came yesterday!

After it got fully charged up and I checked the battery info, here is what I found. It has 58 cycles on it, and it had 100% of the original capacity. It was $124 less than a new one from Lenovo! At that, I can afford to make a few mistakes and still come out ahead. This isn't even the most spectacular case. I once bought an T4x/R5x battery, that was new with 0 cycles on it. I think, mostly these things come from surplus outfits who just take the machine that get apart and sell of the parts. They have so much stuff, they don't bother to check for condition.

Re: Upgrading.....Frugally

In the last post, I talked about the Z61m that I picked up to fix up. Today, I'm going to talk about the "nuts and bolts" aspects of how to upgrade, "on the cheap". So, we'll start with the end product: I always ask people what they want to do with the end product. I figure, if you don't know your goal; how do you know what to shoot for?

Here is what I'd LOVE to have on that machine, other than fixing up the things that are not right, like the messed up screen and the shiny keyboard (I hate shiny keyboards). I'd love for the CPU to be one of the Intel "T7xxx" series Core 2 Duo processors that have 4Mb of cache and run at 2ghz or better speed. I'd also love to have one of the Seagate Momentus XT "hybrid" hard drives that have a big platter-based disk, along with 4Gb of SSD, PLUS 32Mb cache. I'd love to have a matched set of 2Gb RAM modules making it have 4Gb total that can run in "dual channel" mode. Let's see: $70 or so for the CPU, $100 for the drive, $50 or so for the RAM, making the total for those parts to run $220....if I'm lucky! And that doesn't include the amount that I'm going to spend to replace the screen (?), and about $25-30 for the keyboard which in all probability, is going to put my total outlay NORTH of $300!

I don't like the sound of that one bit! So, lets look at how we can get out of paying that much without giving up a bunch of capability.

1. First the CPU. Apparently for the C2Ds that this machine can run, there were the T7xxx and the T5xxx (the second number must be even, and the other two must be zeros). The difference is that the T7s have 4Mb of cache vs. the 2mb of cache for the T5s, at similar clock speeds. So for double the cache, the apparent extra costs is double the price- something like $25-30 vs. $50-70.
2. Although the price of the "XT" drives have come down by about $25 recently, $100 is still a "chunk of change". Recently, though, Newegg had a special on some Hitachi 320Gb HDDs, that spin at a respectable 5400rpm, one of which I bought 2 weeks ago for a client computer for $35. I think I'll wait for another sale.
   
3. RAM, that's a complicated one. Really, the price isn't too bad right now for DDR2, but you guys know how I am on spending money! So here is my plan: get it for free. That's right, get 4Gb of RAM (in 2 modules) for free. How am I going to do that? OK, here is how it works. On a regular basis, I'll have folks ask me to find them a laptop for about $250-300, and for that budget, I can find Dell Latitude D620/630 any day of the week for about $200-225. So I tack on my $50 fee (I do more than just find it) and Voila', I sell a computer. What does this have to do with free RAM? I generally quote a client a D620, with an 80Gb HDD, XP, and 2Gb of RAM. If I'm careful, I can usually find them with 3Gb of RAM on board (surplus companies that sell these things don't care about the difference). So, I pull the 2Gb module out and replace it with a 1Gb module that I typically have on hand and there you go. If I'm patient, I can pick up 2, 2Gb modules for little or no costs.
   

So, if you add that up, I end up at around $65-70 "all-in" for all the upgrades that I'd like to do. Yes, granted, it's not "top of the line", but from a daily use standpoint, the differences will be difficult to detect. Hopefully, then, if I'm lucky and/or industrious in looking, I should be able to even do the screen and everything for less than $150. And that sounds much more frugal than $300+!

The Beast in a Tux

As I've already discussed, based on what I think its going to take to get "The Beast" aka Alienware M7700 up and running reliably, I decided to abandon that project and get my money back out of it. Of course, that doesn't mean that I abandoned the concept of having a "mobile workstation", something that is completely unnecessary, and an exercise in excess. Actually this whole thing started some time ago when I became inspired by one of the IBM/Lenovo design deadends (what else); the Z Series ThinkPad, specifically the bigger of the 2 Z-sizes. So let me go back and do a little ThinkPad history while I'm at it:

Back in 2005, the newly minted Lenovo, after having just acquired the PC divisions of IBM, release a new machine; the Z60. It was the first wide-screen ThinkPad AND the first available with anything but a black exterior. You could get it with an optional "Titanium" metal cover over the lid. The concept was to go a different direction, and create a ThinkPad what was almost completely designed to fit in the "multi-media" product category. It turned out that it was maybe too radical for the traditional ThinkPad buyers (who are almost 100% corporate), and never attracted the folks who should have been looking at it (folks who disdain to look upon anything that isn't Mac). There wasn't anything that was the matter with the machinery, as it was really a T43 on the inside. But, after a second commercially unsuccessful version, the concepts were integrated into the rest of the product line, and the "Z" was put to sleep. In fact, today, its difficult to find anything in the ThinkPad line that isn't wide-screen and have some sort of on board card reader! In fact, our school district just issued us ThinkPad L420s to replace the aging R60s and they sure look like an updated Z61!

Back to the "Z". Originally, there were 2 models; the Z60t, 14.1" WXGA screen at around 5lbs, and the Z60m, 15.4" WXGA or WSXGA+ screen at around 6lbs. These were internally, the guts of the updated T43 at this point powered by the Intel "M" series chips. By the second generation and the introduction of the Z61, the internals had become full-on T61 equivalents, with Core Duo, and eventually Core 2 Duo CPUs, running at 667mhz bus! These things were seriously fast. They even added a "p" version with an eye-straining WUXGA screen and 256Mb FireGL video adapter. If you are getting the impression that this was pretty much the precursor to the typical modern "workstation" laptop, then I'd agree with you.

So, here's the thing on them. They are kind of hard to find. IBM/Lenovo didn't sell a lot of them. As you guys know, rarity generally translates to mean expensive.....and that runs contrary to my mantra....right? Well....not always; sometimes, rarity can mean obscurity and that can sometimes mean a bargain! In this case you get both: generally, they are expensive, often ridiculously so, in excess of $400, but every once in a while, you can find them (for whatever reason) at a price FAR below their actual worth as well. A little less than a year ago (when I first became obsessed with them), I found several that came up for sale on eBay for a little over $130. They were in pristine condition, and was exactly what I was looking for: meaning it was a low-end model with a Celeron processor, small hard drive, 512Mb RAM, CD-ROM drive and low-resolution screen. So, a trip to my parts drawer for 3Gb of RAM and a DVDRW drive, plus $70 for a new 320Gb Hitachi hard drive and T5600 Core 2 Duo CPU later......I had a smoking fast new laptop, just right.....for my wife! You see, that low res WSXGA screen was too low for me, but just right for my optically challenged spouse! All-in-all, that $200 total was less than what I sold her old machine for to a client who was looking for another laptop. AND NO....I didn't take him to the cleaners either! That $250 that I sold him the old R52 for with 2Gb of RAM, and a fresh XPP load on a 250Gb hard drive is pretty much what the market price would have been anyway. So, is this a story about my wife's computer?

Heck no its not! A couple of days ago, I came across this Z61m that you see above on the ThinkPad Forum listed by a friend in DC. It had been a project machine of his and he was cleaning out. Apparently, its in decent condition internally, but has a bad screen, so he sold it to me for $75! The interesting part is that it has the hi-res WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) screen, and the cool titanium cover on the lid:

All the other specs are "dumbed-down" (eg. Celeron 420 CPU, 40Gb HDD.....), but I can handle that. Again, I've got most of the necessary parts to "max it out" already, although I'll need to pick up a C2D CPU, and hard drive, but again, that shouldn't be too bad. The wild-card of course, is if I can pick up an LCD cheap, but therein lies the challenge!

Re: A "To Do List"

One of my downfalls is the actual completion of the project. Everyone has their strong points and weak points. For me, areas of strength has always be planning, and accumulation of resources, while project coordination comes in behind and lastly would be execution. Often; like many other pack rats, I find myself with an accumulation of a mountain of gear with often sit for long periods doing nothing. This is why I love to help other people so much! I get to plan and acquire, without having to be responsible for the execution!

For some time, I just assumed that I was "lazy", then I realized that I don't really mind the work, since I will readily work all the time...sometimes till the wee hours of the morning. It's the impetus of action that I have trouble with: therefore, in order to resolve this when there's something that truly needs to get done......I make a list. For me, when "the list" gets created; it's like Moses and The Tablets! I start working through it and don't quit till it's done. My wife found this to be a very useful tool for her when we both worked at Texas Tech. I just gave her permission on my Outlook via the Exchange server, and she could just put items on my "Tasks List" and keep track of the progress (or lack thereof). It worked out great! Things got done, and she didn't have to nag me. As long as it was still there on that tasks list and not crossed-off, I felt compelled to do it.

So; what does a Frugal Propellerhead put on a tasks list for himself over a summer? Firstly, you have to look at it in terms of the philosophy that I'm espousing as "the Frugal Propellerhead", meaning that if I can do it myself and save money, then that's the best course of action. Therefore, I'm VERY rarely if ever going to hire out to get something done, even if I've never done it before. After all, isn't that what the Internet is for? I just did one of those elevated flower beds by building a retaining wall using those "landscape blocks", by watching some YouTube videos. Anyway on to the list:

The Audio/Video System

• Install the "in-ceiling" speakers for the rear 3 channels of my home theater rig in the living room. The speakers are there, the wiring is run and sitting up in the ceiling; I just have to get those speakers in. Not as easy as it sounds since the ceilings are 10+ feet there and I'll have to crawl through the attic to get to where they need to go!
• Install the porch speakers. The wiring is run, but the kicker is that I also have to install a volume control "in-line" that I roughed in when the house was built.
• Connect the 3-gang A/V panel on the wall behind the huge A/V cabinet so that the above 2 items can be connected.
• Finish the A/V computer that's pretty much finished with the exception of the video capture card that will allow it to work as a DVR, as well as connect to the network and allow it to access content stored on the server.
• At that point; my intention is to go ahead and hook up the "secondary monitors" in the system. One is an old Amdek RGB monitor from an Apple II that'll allow me to see the on screen items displayed by the receiver. The other will be a to-be-purchased, LCD TV which will function as a monitor for the A/V computer as well as a secondary TV in the system. It looks like a 19" wide-screen will work in here just fine which works out very well since that's the smallest generally available commercially. So a used one should be easy to find most anywhere from swap meets, to pawn shops.
  
• Oh yeah, almost forgot, that I need to get my $8 Goodwill find, the Onkyo cassette deck installed in the system as well.

Computers

• Complete the last few items so that Josh can migrate to his new gaming computer! I'm really kind of irritated that this isn't done yet, but all I've got to say is that....it's been a rough month!
• Finish the last couple of items on my main computing system. Meaning, I need to build the little shelf to elevate my monitors, which should be a quick little project. I also need to either fix or replace the integrated amp that was the hub of the "archiving" part of my system.
  
• The last bit of "setting up" to get everything working well with on the home network and the Windows Home Server.

Other Stuff

• The rest of my son's "loft" conversion: build the reading/lounging/storage bench, build the train/lego table, build the book/storage case and finish the details of the bed like the little shelf to go on top of the posts so he will have somewhere to put his light, clock and other little boy stuff. Yup, I know, there's a lot of "builds" in there, but hey....at least the bed part is done.
• The rest (especially the other front) of the flower beds, at least one of which will require the landscape stone build-up.
• Fix up random stuff on our travel trailer.

Sounds pretty ambitious doesn't it? But there it is, it's all stuff that has to be done (preferably before we go back to school)!

New Stuff......Kind of......

Well; it is computer stuff, but computer stuff I haven't talked about before.....monitors! What's so exciting about monitors, you say? Here's the thing: most monitors suck! You just won't have any idea how bad they are till you sit in front of one that doesn't suck.

Without getting into the details, I'll just do a quick whirlwind tour of the basic types. Basically there are three on the market today. The TN type which is the typical LCD's that we see everywhere. They probably comprise 75% or better of the marketplace because they are cheap to make, and cheap to buy, but they have MUCH narrower view angles (both horizontally and vertically), and their depth of color isn't very good making them look washed out when compared to the other types. The best and the most expensive is IPS, they are rarely seen in the marketplace because they are expensive, making them a niche market product that is typically special ordered by demanding users such as graphic artists and photographers. More toward the IPS end of the market in performance, is the S-PVA which is similar, but somewhat less expensive.

To give you an idea, you'll find random LCD displays from various manufactures (big and small) that will be amazingly inexpensive. For something like $125-150 you can often get a brand new monitor 20-22" in size. This is pretty amazing, and the American consumer who is a huge believer in "bigger is better", has those factories in China cranking them out 24/7. And you know what? Compared to their old tube monitor that took up a lot of space, but had very small screen sizes, these things look pretty good. Then, what's the problem? The problem is that, it could be SO MUCH BETTER!

If you've ever worked on an IPS or S-PVA screen, you'd know what I'm talking about. They aren't just typically brighter (although that's the first thing you notice), because they usually are, but they also seem brighter too, because there is very little if any drop-off regardless of your angle all the way down to some VERY severe off-axis viewing. On top of that, its not just the brightness, but the color saturation make the images just pop. It's one of those things that next to impossible to describe; you just have to see it.

OK, let's assume that you are convinced...what does that mean to the frugal amongst us? We are living in the golden age of used computer monitors....that's what! Years ago, when I was working in IT and wanted to try out some of those "new-fangled" LCD flat panels, my boss didn't say "NO". What he said, was: " show me why its a good idea and I'll let you give them a try", so off I went to do research. This was 1999, so there just wasn't that much info out there and they were way expensive to buy. What I did find wast a research project done by the Los Angeles Water and Power Board that showed that not only did LCDs drawn something like a quarter of the energy of a CRT monitor, but that they had a life-expectancy of 2 to 3 times as well.

Which brings me to my previous assertion about it being the golden age of used monitors. You see, large corporations and such have IT departments who use a concept called "replacement cycle" to determine their schedules for upgrading. Typically, for computers, that comes to 2-3, at the most 4 years. And this is just fine for computers, given the changes in software, hard drive and power supply failures being what they are, plus given Moore's Law meaning that computing power has at least doubled and doubled again in that amount of time. However, monitors no longer fit this model with the advent of the LCD screens, soooooo you have a bunch of these things hitting the used market at half or less of their product life expended! AND on the used market, all products are pretty much equal. Those resalers couldn't care less whether that particular LCD is a TN (which they almost all are), IPS, S-PVA, or ET technology. So largely they sell for the same price which is completely based on screen size, cosmetic condition and whether or not it powers on.

So, at long last I get to the specifics of the topic! I have lusted after a big high-end monitor for a long time. I had previously delved into the used market to pick up my Acer AL2032w (1680 x 1050 resolution) which at the time was considered big. It was a very nice monitor, not sold in the United States since Acer sold it as the Acer/Ferrari F20 (red paint instead of silver) here for a lot more money. But recently I've been lusting for a replacement....really ever since I lucked into a 20" IBM L200p for $21 on the local Craig's List and have been using it as my "side" monitor. It has an IPS screen and has 1600 x 1200 resolution although it's not wide-screen. This may sound weird, but having your secondary monitor have a higher vertical resolution than your primary monitor was very annoying to me since I move things back and forth all the time. And for those of you who know me, you're probably aware that I'm a high resolution junkie. The higher the better: I love all those tiny packed in pixels!

Of course I started researching used monitors on eBay. I found that IPS/S-PVA displays are hard to identify, BUT can be incredible deals when you do spot them. The trick is to figure out which ones had the nice panels, and of course, there's no manufacturer who's easier to find out things about than IBM/Lenovo since they make all their specs readily available online. I also learned that although a 24" screen sure sounds sexy, that even the high-end ones only had 1920 x 1200 resolution and that if you look carefully, there are 22" models with the exact same resolution, BUT they are harder to find. You see; they weren't very popular with most people since the density was so high it made fonts look small and most people didn't like that very much. However, it's awesome for me since I don't have a lot of space and if I can get the same real estate in a smaller physical size, all the better.

Which brings me to the current love of my life, the Lenovo ThinkVision L220x: 22", Samsung S-PVA panel, 1920 x 1200 res., 4 USB ports, vertically and horizontally adjustable stand, landscape/portrait rotatable, $550 MSRP (pre-Obama $s), eBay $70 shipped! Of course its used, and has some scratches, but the screen has no defects and its the brightest thing I've ever used. In fact I have the brightness setting down to 65%! Now I just have to stave off L2440x lust.....you know those do have LED back-lighting......