It's Summer!

Well; it's not actually not quite summer yet, but it's close enough. Close enough for a Frugal Propellerhead to plan for the summer. For a teacher, summer means quite a bit more time on our hands to do what we want, and of course for me, that would mean working on all things having to do with computers, home audio AND photography. Unfortunately that can also mean spending money, lots of it and that's something that can't happen. So a satisfying Propellerhead summer takes a little planning.

First of all, we need to take a look at what needs to be done, then we can talk about how to deal with that in planning. First of all, my daughter's custom lavender ThinkPad X30 is a little long-in-the-tooth. It specs out as a PIII (Tualatin) processor with 1Gb of RAM running XP! Although the size, and operating system is fine for her, the hardware is past due for an update. Fortunately, the X30 is built on the same chassis as the X31 which was a whole generation (if not more) forward in technology. It's built on the Pentium "M" (Banias) platform which completely skipped the hot running P4 series. Being built on the same chassis, I can simply move the lavender lid/screen assembly straight over. I will have to repaint a new keyboard bezel which was a different part, but that's not a big deal. Maxing the RAM out to a full 2Gb will have Katie all set for another couple of years! 

The trick here is that I didn't wait to buy it this summer when I have the time. Several months ago, I came across an ad for an X31 barebones-"base" (w/o LCD assembly) on the ThinkPad Forum for a song....so I bought it and stuck it in a cabinet.

 A few months ago I started seeing 128Gb, 1.8" SSDs selling for a very low price ($125). I was working on my "Ark" project at the time and bought one for it; then I started thinking about it and realized that I should probably pick up another one to upgrade my X300 since the load on it was getting a little old and would need a reload soon anyway. This second 128Gb SSD actually came in at just below $100 so into the cabinet it went as well. 

 Around that same time, the next generation of Sandforce SSD controllers came out and I ran across a special on the 128Gb Mushkin Chronos SSD for less than the price that I gave for the 60Gb Mushkin Callista SSD a little over a year ago. 

 The next project waiting in the wings is a Windows Home Server 2011 upgrade from the original WHS that I'm running now. I can't really claim good planning for this one, but rather it's the result of good fortune! I was having an email discussion with my brother last week about some projects that he's been working on and he described several machines that he's upgrading from the older Intel socket 775 line to the more current "Sandybridge" i3/i5/i7s. One of these project was a WHS 2011 machine, so I replied by telling him about the WHS file server that I cobbled together from free and traded-for parts. The upshot is that he offered to send me his left-over 775 boards, CPUs and misc parts! Although, the socket 775 may seem old to him, it's plenty new enough for me, and with a dual core processor on board, I'll be able to upgrade to the WHS 2011 as well since it's a 64-bit operating system. 


He also sent me a few other parts which have gone into upgrading the my XP computer, my regular workstation as well as the HTPC which will be receiving the 60Gb SSD that was in the workstation. So; things are lining up to be a busy summer ahead!