ThinkPad Triumph!

They say: "Every Dog Has His Day"! I say: every computer problem has a solution.... almost anyway. You guys know that last week was a disaster in all manner of ways. I figured that over the course of the week, things would resolve themselves like they always do:

• On my day off with the sick daughter; I finished repairing the fence by building a new gate.
• Then I resolved my problematic R60 ThinkPad issue.
• I got a cool offer from Lenovo for half-off of a new device.... which I took advantage of!
• Got another of the R60s up and running with a different OS.

I gotta tell ya; I LOVE Windows 7! When given enough RAM and a halfway decent set of hardware, it'll run with the best of 'em. Essentially, it's like a modern Windows XP! That's a high compliment indeed if I do say so myself. When I moved the hardware from the R60 that was freezing up to another one of those machines; it was like magic! All I did was to take the T7200 cpu, the 4Gb of RAM and Intel 40Gb SSD out of the one machine and put it in another one and "BAM" (like Emeril Lagasse would say), it just worked. I took it to show my Principal how fast those machines could be made to work and he was suitably impressed. Now it's in the hands of one of my computer club student/minions for long-term stabilty testing. 

I was so excited that the very next evening, I loaded up the previously freezing-up R60 with Zorin OS 9 and showed that to my Principal as the "proof-of-concept" for what I wanted to do with the rest of the 26 R60s (and possibly 100+ X200s) sitting on selves in a closet! I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed with how simple Zorin was to work on coming from Windows. Now for the ultimate test! I'm going to try and put it in the hands of one of my least hardware savy computer club minions for daily trials. Stay tuned!

While all this was going on, I went on a shopping binge.... the Frugal Propellerhead way! You guys know that for the last several months, I've been busy helping a number of people buy computers. You might, or might not have figured out that I mostly make little, if anything on these gigs. It's kind of like playing in a weekend band. However, besides the occasional old computer they throw out, there is a little bit of a silver lining. The majority of these purchases come on eBay, and for the last couple of years, they've had this little incentive program called "eBay Bucks" which returns a tiny percent back to you from the purchases four times a year. A bit like what credit card companies do with their loyalty points. Over the last quarter, I've had a lot of these purchases ranging from the Dell Precision workstation laptop for a former student going to college to the ThinkPad X1 for a co-worker. All this ended up netting me a whopping $57 in eBay Bucks for the quarter that ended on September 30th! Don't scoff: in the Frugal Propellerhead world, $57 and some cents is no laughing matter! Basically, it allows me to rationalize buying things that don't really have a real purpose. 

I know what you're thinking: Really; what in the heck is this weird stuff!?! OK. From top to bottom, it goes as follows. A Cooler Master 4-in-3 drive cage. It's purpose is to go into my old Cooler Master Centurion 5 case that I'm turning into a file server. Although it was actually designed for this case, it can be used in any computer tower that has 3, 5.25" external bays and turn it into a, fan-cooled drive cage that can hold 4, 3.5" hard drives. The second device is a portable USB 3.0 Hub/Card Reader that in one device will allow my ThinkPad X1's single 3.0 port to do multiple things. And the last is a rather difficult to find, power supply for one of my Lacie "Porsche" external Firewire hard drive enclosures. That will not allow me to use the other of them "daisy-chained" together as external storage for the "Old ThinkPad Server" project that I'm building out of an A31. It's just $60 worth of stuff; why not just buy it and have done with it? It's all part of my philosophy and the purpose of this blog to start with. Finding ways to do things as cheaply as possible and if possible using old repurposed technology.

Requium For An Old Friend: Windows XP 2001-2014

More appropriately, I should have written this on Tuesday when Microsoft ended support for XP, but I was hip-deep in gators. Meaning, I was busy looking for and writing about DDR3 RAM. Well, OK. XP support ended at our house a couple of years ago when I took the kids off of their old machines. Although, right up until a few weeks ago, I had an XP box to support a client who can't afford to buy a newer version of CAD that would run on Windows 7. But I pulled it when I upgraded my desktop workstation and move it's parts over.

The issue isn't whether Windows XP is or isn't good. That'd be like asking whether a 120 year old whether they're a good athlete. Well.....100 years ago, they probably were......but they're 120 years old!!! The reason that we're even asking this question is that 30+ percent of the computers in the world are still running this. Why!?! Not that XP is just that great! It's mostly because Vista sucked just that much!

One of these days, everyone will just automatically avoid every other M$ product and be done with it. However, this issue cause them to keep XP on life support loooong after it should have been dead and buried! What does it have to do with you? Did your XP box just fall over on April 9th? Obviously the answer is "NO". You are welcome to continue to use it, literally "till the cows come home".

The issue is this..... If you've ever been a regular user of a XP box, you are aware, that it was the Anti-Virus maker's best friend. It was pretty darned unsecure, and was a haven for every virus and malware write in the word (Don't be too smug, Mac users; if your OS was more relevant, you'd be in a similar position too). So, imagine your are some virus/malware/spam/what-have-you writer out there, polishing your skills getting your latest brain-child ready to go out there into the "wild". It's ready in Dec, Jan, Feb, or March.....what do you do? Release it and have Microsoft patch the vulnerability in the last months/days of support? Heck no, you've known for months that the day YOU want to release is April 8th...or shortly thereafter, right? Who wouldn't!

No, No, No! Don't even think about getting out there on the Internet with that Z-Box (Zombie)!

Another Day Off....Woe Is Me......

Well; as it turned out, the daughter came down with Strep AND the flu, so after Mom took Monday off, Tuesday came my turn (since her fever didn't go down). So, what's a Frugal Propellerhead to do, trapped at home with his toys!?!

Go ahead and dismantle that bridge used to "cross the technological Rubicon", of course! The last two everyday computers left in our house that didn't run on an SSD boot drive are my daughter's IBM ThinkPad X30 of 2003, running Windows XP, and my son's IBM ThinkPad Z60t also running Windows XP. That almost 10 year old X30 had a lot of my hard work in it. I wanted it to be very friendly first computer for her. It was disassembled and I spent the better part of a week, cleaning, sanding, and painting all the upper case parts a nice little girl oriented lavender. I called it the "Princess Edition" ThinkPad. My original intention was to eventually replace the bottom of it with an almost physically identical X31....which still resides in a cabinet by the way. She'd then, still have her lavender computer and be upgraded from a PIII-M/1.2 to a P-M/1.6 machine. It doesn't sound like much, but that completely bypasses the whole P4-M generation! 

 

However, after bringing a "parts" X61 back from the dead and being in possession of a spare 64Gb SSD left over from my X300 upgrade the last time she was sick.....well, it was an easy decision! Plus, after checking the chipset information and the parts list of the X61, I realized that in all probability, I wouldn't even have to reload the OS! ......And sure enough, it was almost a perfect swap. It did require a 1.8" Micro-SATA to 2.5" SATA drive adapter. Of course Microsoft made me reactivate Windows 7 because of the change in hardware, and I had to uninstall a few things, but it couldn't have gone smoother. Although still sick and coughing, the daughter was very happy with the "new", MUCH faster computer!

Then, there I sat, all puffed up with success and the other "spare" SSD sitting on my desk, taunting me. What's a dad supposed to do? I went down the hall and got my son's laptop of course! So, out came the old 120Gb mechanical drive and in went the $30 Dell 50Gb SSD (Samsung OEM) drive that I had used as a temporary when the Mushkin went down. A couple of hours later, his Z60t was fully loaded and configured, ready for use. Of course, there's going to be hours of, and hundreds of, that mana from heaven otherwise known as Critical Updates. There was the somewhat major snag of the lack of Windows 7 drivers for Intels Express 900 integrated GPU. Yeah, as it turns out, Intel never got around to releasing drivers for that chipset, so I had to use Vista versions in compatibility mode. It'll work though. But hey; it's a small price to pay to have both kids happy with dad's work for today!

Here's the real pay-off though. Just like I've been incessantly harping on all these posts on how great of an upgrade the SSDs are at today's prices. This was the perfect example. These weren't new machines. My son has been using the Z60t for over a year and I've had that X61 working for a number of months as well. While neither was a terrible slug, they are both way snappier than they were before the upgrades. I didn't change anything else either, there was no RAM upgrade or CPU change. The 50Gb cost $30. The 128Gb that I put into the X300 costs $90 after shipping. So all-in-all, I spent $120, got one machine upgraded and two others switched to a "game-changing" device. Plus, we are all on the same, newer 20v ThinkPad A/C adapters, and ALL the computers run the same Windows 7 OS! That's a pretty good day (off), in my world.

Now.....about that noisy file server with a mechanical boot drive......

The Other Side of the Great (Technological) Divide

This is the consequence of crossing the technological Rubicon that I posted on a while ago. The other day, I found myself discussing and defending the ThinkPads that we're issued at work. I was part of the first group of teachers when the school district made the decision to move from desktops to laptops and was issued a ThinkPad R60. We were told at the time, the "cycle" would be 4 years which is going to be typical and understandable for a money-strapped public entity like a school district vs. a corporation (typically 3 years). Unfortunately the cycle went to 5 years which isn't good, but workable for a machine running XPP. After all, the mission of these machines was to do "office" type applications, email and browser oriented functions. These were dual core machines and could handle those tasks well, however, the powers that be in charge of sourcing and spec'ding these machine are.....shall we say.....lacking in expertise with hardware? Which is where I'm going with this post. It's not a rant regarding them (although their lack of understanding in this area given their jobs is inexcusable), but more so a general issue that's out there among most if not all buyers. I'll just point out that they ordered them with 512Mb of RAM and 40Gb HDD.

We are an "Ebook" school, meaning that the district made the decision some years ago to purchase computers for issue to students and attendant electronic versions of the text, vs. physical books. Given the price, weight and rapidity of change in texts in today's world, it looked to be the right decision. Although ultimately this project is doomed to be abandoned (partially due to circumstances beyond anyone's control), lets just say that the implementation was lacking from the get-go. As most anyone who's worked in a corporate environment knows, the implementation of security software is enough to significantly slow down any computer, so certainly they don't need to be further hampered by being purposely crippled in the ordered specifications! 

Three year ago when I moved to the High School, I was duly impressed by the fact that the issued computer to the students were the ThinkPad X200. And for those who aren't familiar with this model, it's basically a shrunken X300 without an optical drive at half the cost! One day, after listening to the students complaining about the slowness, I decided to look at one. I was horrified to find that it was equipped with 1Gb of RAM! Thinking that this was a mistake or that someone had taken out one of the modules, I checked another.....same thing.....then another......same result. To say that I was a little stunned would be putting it mildly. In fact, I got onto the ThinkPad Forum and had a prolong discussion with other members about why Lenovo would even sell a crippled machine like this, customers' wishes not-withstanding! My contention is that just in our district alone, there are over a thousand people who will have the belief that ThinkPads are horrible computers and would never buy another Lenovo product!

OK; I know that so far, it sounds like a "rant", but it's not really. Although, the "professionals" who's jobs it is to purchase those machines are clearly idiots (yes, I know that a little strong, but they are being paid for their expertise), this is a common issue among most computer users today. Most folks simply don't understand what makes a computer "feel" fast or slow. Yes, corporate (or school district) security is an issue, but you can talk memory with people all day long and the vast majority wouldn't know the difference between RAM and storage to save their life. The fact of the matter is that most any computer made within the last 3-5 years will happily run a modern OS (eg. Windows 7) and it's basic apps if given the correct amount of RAM. My "rule of thumb" is to double whatever Microsoft lists as recommended.....then double that every time they come out with a major service pack. 

 

A good example was what happened with Windows XP. It was originally designed to run on 256Mb of RAM. By the time that Service Pack 3 came out, it needed to have 2Gb to run well. So it basically went like this: 

1. Windows XP- 256Mb of RAM
2. Windows XP SP1- 512Mb of RAM
3. Windows XP SP2- 1Gb of RAM
4. Windows XP SP3- 2Gb of RAM

 

With Windows 7, I've set a 2Gb floor and have really only run 4Gb or better on our own machines. However, within the last year, another dynamic has come on the scene. The all-conquering solid state drive (SSD for short). This along with a adequate amount of RAM has become the main ingredient in making a machine feel fast. Boots happen within 15-20 seconds, programs launch instantly and files are accessed almost immediately.

  

The correct combination of these devices can make the sweet-spot of the 3 year-old notebook computer a perfect storm of functionality. Take any corporate level computer of this vintage, ranging from the Dell Latitude E6400 that I've been buying up for clients to the X61 that's destined to be my daughter's replacement for the aging X30 (yes, that's right.....a PIII-M machine). Combine these computers with 2 to 4Gb of RAM, an SSD (stirred, not shaken), add Windows 7 and anyone can have themselves a very nicely functioning notebook for around $250, or less.

Which gets me down to my last point. Our school district finally got it's wits about itself and started buying machines with adequate RAM. The L420 that was issued at the end of last year has 4Gb of  RAM on board. However, this machine is far outperformed based on "feel" day-to-day by my 3 year old X300 and the 4 year old X61 equipped with the same amount of RAM and a SSD!