The ThinkPad T61 Pickup Truck

So, the $90 T61 came on Thursday. My original thought while I waited for it to come in was to fix it up a little and sell it. Then I thought about it some more and realized that there's so little money tied up into this, I could make it into a do everything random machine. Kind of like a pickup truck of laptops. Among the things that this machine could do was to set up to test out uploading video directly to an internet service. 

Let me explain myself.... in a former life, I was a coach. I know, weird huh? Chinese guy, born in Hong Kong, coaching football, basketball and track (hurdles)! Toward the end of my football coaching career, I was able to work a trade that allowed me to "film" (actually video, but coaches still call it film) the game instead of going out to scout upcoming opponents. That was an easy decision. Go every week with the Varsity team and be with players that I've coached, vs. driving all over "hither-and-yon" to random places like the "Tomato Bowl" (don't ask) in Jacksonville, Texas and spend 3 hours diagramming plays..... this is known in the trade as "scouting". Don't get me wrong, there were benefits! I know where every Dairy Queen is in most towns in North Texas, and I was able to hook my sister-in-law up with my scouting partner and they have now been happily married for 8 years!

In that time (about 7 years), I've become somewhat of an expert on the electronics end of "filming". Asian man, electronics and cameras; natural fit! Anyway, we got new equipment this year, so I got involved in the process of working with the new gear. In the hi tech world of 21st Century football coaching here in Texas (it's a religion here), we upload our videos right to a "cloud" service where it's viewed and shared with whoever needs it. What we decided to do was to start working with these capabilities to upload directly from the digital video cameras through a laptop directly to the service, thus saving the coaches the time to do it later after we get home from the game.

And this is where the T61 came in. I needed a machine that could experiment with to do these uploads. I didn't want to play around with my X301 and risk messing it up. The T61 was perfect..... well, actually my son's T61 was perfect, with it's descrete nVidia GPU and high resolution screen (1680 x 1050). So he got the $90 machine with the Intel X3100 integrated graphics and I got his machine. I doubt that a 10 year old who mostly uses his computer to play games and watch Pokemon' videos will notice the difference!. Sure, the machine got a little upgrade: 4Gb of RAM, 80Gb Intel SSD, DVD+RW burner, but it was all stuff that I had anyway so it didn't cost anything. I just had to find a way to get it off of the Advanced Mini-Dock that it was locked to and missing the keys! That, of course was accomplished through a YouTube video and now I have my pickup truck.

 

Today's Sweet Spot in Daily Laptops

Yesterday, as I was discussing updates it occurred to me that I haven't updated that which this Blog is pretty much all about! ...... What's the best technology deals out there right now for the average "Joe". A few posts back, I had briefly discussed the Dell Latitude E6400 and how it was a really good deal for my clients, but even then I didn't get into the nitty-gritty of the specs and what-all that means. 

In my opinion, right at this moment, there's not a better deal than the Intel Core 2 Duo processor'd machines. We're at a point where many (if not most) mainstream software can take advantage of more than one processor core. And the ones that can't, can run on one, while the machine can continue to do other tasks. Now this is anecdotal evidence of course, but on a fairly regular basis, I work on people's machines (as well as our stable of them too). As far as doing things on them, I can break them down into 3 groups. Single core, P4/P4-M, and Pentium M machines. "Core" Duo/Quad machines, and newer i3/i5/i7. Although, I don't deal with the latter much; I do, on occasion end up working on them as well. What I've found to be the case is that there's a huge difference between the 1st and 2nd group, but little between the 2nd and 3rd. Now before you get yourself into a twist, let me note that, we are talking about, a decent amount of RAM (3 to 4Gb), running an operating system that won't bog it down, meaning XPP for P4/P-M, and Windows 7 for Core Duo/2nd Gen Core machines, AND doing typical tasks, like downloads, Internet, etc. NOT, Photoshop and transcoding video! 

The big factor is this; an adequate amount of RAM that isn't going to kill your budget. Not only do P4-M/P-M machines run slow, single-core processors, they use the older spec DDR (or DDR1) RAM in them. Sure, you can get 1Gb sticks, and get those machines up to 2Gbs total, but the cost of 1Gb DDR is pretty much the same as 2Gb DDR2! So, the irony is that the cheaper machine to buy is more expensive to upgrade. Besides which, the chipsets typically limit them to 2Gb total anyway, even if you could afford to buy bigger modules. So, here's how it works out in $$. You can go buy a T42 for say, $50, then you want to max out the RAM so it'll run decent with XP/SP3. That'll cost you about $70, making your total $120. Whereas on any given day, you can buy a T60 for about $75, or better yet, the T61 that I just bought for $90. You and put 2Gb of RAM into it for anywhere from $25-30 making your total somewhere around $100, or if you want to spend as much as you would have on that maxed out T42, you'd have a T60/T61 with 4Gb of RAM in it. Plus it'll have a Core Duo, or might even have a Core 2 Duo in it which is WAY faster than your P-M. ....And I haven't even gotten into the cost to size differential between the PATA that the T42 uses versus, the SATA that the T60/T61 uses!

The thing that made it jump out at me was that last week, I had a client who asked for a decent laptop to use for the next 2-3 years. They had a $200-250 budget, so I started looking around in the C2D type of corporate machines which are about 3 years old. Within minutes of each other, I was able to find both a Dell Latitude E6400, and a ThinkPad T61 for less than $100 shipped. Both were fully equipped, with hard drives, at least 3Gb of RAM. The ThinkPad had a bigger 15.4" screen and the dell had the bigger hard drive. I got them the Dell because it was smaller and lighter. If it hadn't been someone who was expecting to travel constantly with their machine, I'd have probably done the more rugged ThinkPad with the magnesium skeleton, instead of the Dell with the Magnesium outer casing. These are both "business class" machines that sold for between $1500 and $2000 originally. They'll certainly be tougher than the typical notebook that they'd been able to buy at Walmart for $400-500!

These are the computers I recommend because they offer the most "bang-for-the-buck" and they are what I have my family using. Both my wife and son use the bigger 15.4" ThinkPad T61. Granted they are the higher end ones with discrete graphics chips, high resolution screens and have upgraded SSD boot drives, but the guts of those machines aren't any different. 

I have my daughter on the X61 from the same generation. Similar technology, but in a smaller package that's easier for her to handle. These things are also great deals, in that they are often found in the sub-$100 range as well. Yes, I have her RAM maxed out and an SSD in there as a boot drive as well, but those are pretty cheap upgrades if you know where and how to buy.

In the meantime, I'm already scouting out what we are going to do when it's time to upgrade. There'll come the day when DDR2 won't be worth it to buy compared to DDR3, so it pays to be prepared! But for right now: this is the Sweet Spot!

B.Y.O.D. and Me

Let me catch you up with the rather prosaic end of my technological life, and that's as the "support tech" of my wife's burgeoning classroom computer lab. 

If any of you have been in a college classroom lately, this is about what it looks like. And that's aside from the classes that students are taking online or coursework that they are doing in an electronic format. 

So yeah..... if you aren't either taking advantage of what's available, or better yet getting the students used to (and ready) to do work in this idiom, then you probably need to wake up, 'cus this is mostly how people work these days. 

Which is why "B.Y.O.D.", or bring your own device is the prevailing trend in schools today. What happened to school providing computers? Well; two things..... shrinking budgets, and web-delivery of content. Say what? Yeah, with the trend toward content being delivered via browsers through the Internet (the Cloud), content has become more and more platform agnostic. Meaning that the hardware and operating systems are largely irrelevant! These forces have combined to make institutions create an infrastructure for the student to get to the information, and allow the students themselves to get on there with whatever device that they happen to have.... kind of like the government building roads and letting you drive on there with whatever car you want to buy.

This is all fine and good at the high school (or even middle school) where I'm at. Parents can generally see the need for them to have a computer to take to school, but what about the little ones? Here in the Bermuda Triangle of education, just above the poverty line, rising expectations, and public pressure, we have a little problem. The schools in our demographic don't qualify for the mass of grants and government aid, or corporate PR programs that are out there. Parents are having a hard enough time to buy big brother or sis a tablet/laptop, much less one for 8-year-old. With the typical budget crunch, classrooms are looking more and more like my wife's which, as of yesterday has 23 kids assigned to it. In case you didn't know; that's A LOT for 3rd graders who need WAY more individual attention than my 14, 15, and 16 year olds! Meaning that she has a far greater use for a computer that she can put a student on to do independent practice while she's working with others, than I, who's students are far more likely to have them! This is the conundrum facing us in these last few days of summer as we get closer and closer to school starting.

Although, I've talked a little about it before, but I don't think I've completely discussed my brother's role in this little adventure. So here goes: as it got closer and closer to school starting and me facing the prospect of having "BunnyNet" (our name for her computer workgroup) looking more like last years poor little collection and any real improvements. Meanwhile my brother and I started having a back and forth about some old cameras. Any of you who read me regularly have probably figured out that he and I have the same hobbies. So briefly, since I don't want to go on at length about earlier posts, I asked him if he had any old ThinkPads that he needed to clean out (since he's cleaning out anyway). As the last post discussed, these machines arrived just in a nick-of-time to save the day. Pretty cool, although, he's probably less like a super-hero than Lucius Fox who invents all of Batman's cutting edge gear! Here is how it changed our situation.

Yup. This is it. It isn't the most exciting thing in the world, but it sure does make my life a lot nicer. You say; REALLY!?! .....Windows 7! Here's the deal: 

Twelve? That's the magic number! My wife has 23 students and 24 is pretty much the most that she could have period. So half of that is 12! She figures that she can divide her class in half after a concept has been taught, and work with 12 in "small group" while the other half can practice using laptops and any number of math programs, or the kids can pair up to use them as well. 

However, my number was 6! As the summer was winding down, I had about 6 machines, most of which were the old A31, mobile Pentium 4 ThinkPads that are pretty much limited to Windows XP. Nothing on XP, but it's really old and you can't run it now without Service Pack 3 if you expect to get updates, PLUS support ends next Spring! Some of you might being saying; why can't you run Linux on them? Great! I'll just have a bunch of low SE kids most of whom don't get on a computer regularly with a teacher who has never used Linux do THAT..... Yeah, that's what I thought.... which is why that group of machines from my brother became so important.

Although most people would turn up their nose at a 7 year old computer running a single core processor, these things are a life-saver to me! They'll run Windows 7! They use DDR2 ram (read much cheaper). They use SATA hard drives (read much cheaper). They're 6-7 years old (read much newer than 10 or 11)! Just to give you a run-down, before the reinforcements showed up, I had 3 A31s (one was partially working), 1 T30, 1 T42p, 1 Z61m, and 1 T60. The "Z61" series has essentially the same guts as the "T60" series. Now, BunnyNet has that plus 2 T43p (hardwarewise, basically between the T42 and T60), another T60 and another Z61. This gives her 10 laptops, plus the 2 school provided desktops allowing her to hit the magic "12", but more important to me, I'll have 6 of the 10 running on Windows 7 (once I get that T42p reloaded)! There are still a few machine here in "the shop" awaiting various parts, and those will allow me to replace the aged A31/T30 machines before XP support ends next Spring! The world is now as it should be..... at least, until the next techie emergency hits.

Just In A Nick-of-Time: ThinkPad Reinforcements!

There is of course no pejorative attach to our native American brothers (I'm married to a "card-carrying" member of the Cherokee tribe), but this is how I've felt for about the last week or so...... surrounded by hostiles! If you aren't aware already, this next week, pretty much all the teachers in Texas go back to work. As if that wasn't bad enough, I'm the person responsible for getting my wife's little computer lab (BunnyNet) ready to go! What started out as a few out-of-date ThinkPads that had been given back to me by family members, has turned into a full-blown computer lab!

How many? At the moment, seven: the goal (my wife's) is to eventually have 12.... one for every 2 students. This kind of takes me back to my IT desktop support days. My first job at University of Illinois @ Chicago's Housing Department had about 70 computers of probably 12 different types from 7 different manufacturers. Then my next position with the Texas Tech University Libraries had about 700 computer of close to the same number of models and manufacturers as well! This was tech support chaos. In both cases, by the end of my tenure, I had gotten it down to 2 manufacturers (Dell for desktops and IBM ThinkPad for Laptops). The number of models of each in operation was about 8 or so, but that couldn't be helped since I didn't have the budget to replace them all at once. 

 

Anyway, the situation with my wife's classroom is similar. Although all the laptops are ThinkPads (with the lone exception of the Mac), they range in vintage from the 10+ year old P4 powered A31 series to the newest Core 2 Duo powered T60/Z61 series. In between, there are some Pentium "M" powered T4x machines as well. This not only gives me two operating systems to look after (XPP/SP3, Windows 7/SP1), but also 2 different voltage A/C adapters, 2 different types of RAM, and 2 different types of hard drives. The worse part of it is that the balance fell on the bad half of the equation: P4-M, Windows XP, 16 volt adapter, PATA hard drive, and DDR RAM!

Things were getting dicey when one of the A31s had a screen fail (along with it's video subsystem), and another steadfastly refused to take a BIOS hack to allow me to use a newer WiFi card (faster than 802.11b). Oh yeah; it also does this high-pitched whining noise when there was a battery in the machine! 

Then, while discussing random things with my brother via email, I got the bright idea to ask him if he had some unused old machines laying around. After a few back-and-forth emails, 5 (!!!) ThinkPads..... all of which were newer than all but one of my originals were on there way. 

 

Like a phantom, while I was mowing the back yard, a box arrived via UPS (who oddly put it in the garage instead of the front porch). Although, I unpacked them last night, I didn't look at them till this morning, knowing full-well that once I got started, I'd be doing what I'm doing right now...... adding RAM, finding A/C adapters, and loading the OS! Despite the fact that 3 of them are in need of batteries and 20 volt adapters (which I don't have spares), I sure feel like the proverbial settlers in the wagon train watching the arrival of the cavalry! 

Yes, there's work to be done on them, aside from the batteries and power adapters. One came with 1Gb of RAM spread into 2 modules, making them useless 512Mb sticks, but I had 2, 1Gb spares in my RAM box.That same T43p spit up it's hard drive when I tried to install the OS. It turns out that it was a drive that triggered the infamous "2010 error" anyway, meaning that the drive wasn't on the a approved "whitelist" in the BIOS. Even that turned out well since I found (in the hard drive box) a Fujitsu MHV2060AH HDD that had been taken out of a client machine when they upgraded to a large drive. Oh yeah, did I mention that, this particular drive is ON the "whitelist"!?! I'd better run out and buy a lottery ticket while I'm on a roll! So, now that machine has been loaded with Windows 7 and well on it's way to finishing it's updates and misc other software. Then, all I'll need to do is to clone it to the other T43p and they will replace the two bad A31s. 

This will get me up to 9 working machines of which one is the Mac running OS X Tiger, but the other 8 are ThinkPads. 4 of them will be Core Duo or better machines running Windows 7, and with any luck, I should be able to get the P-M, T42p to run W7 as well. So, when I find the necessary parts to get the other 3 up and running, I will have met the royal goal of 12 machines, but better yet, only 3 of them will be the old P4-Ms that still run Windows XP. That should give me close to 6 months to find replacements for them by next March when M$ ends XP support. That makes me one happy frog!

 

Homemade "Tech Station" Part 1: A $3 Dollar Case and 2 New Tools

After spending days watching YouTube and staring at my new acquisition, I've finally gotten started on the homemade tech station. All this time, I had thought that these things were called "test benches": apparently, I was mistaken! Above is an image of the Top Deck model by High Speed PC. It's about $80..... which as you've probably surmise, is just too much for me. So, I've been dreaming, plotting and planning for the better part of the last month since this has become a "front burner" project. About a week ago, my wife gifted me with a "day off", from all fatherly/husbandly responsibilities. This is no small thing in the later half of the summer when the kids are driving you a little crazy! There are a few places I really like to go in those times such as the big Half Price Books, Micro Center, but at the top of my list is an out-of-the-way place called Discount Electronics in the middle of south Arlington in a run-down strip mall. It looks like it was once a Gibson's or something. They have all manner of the most random and downright old electronics. Basically, it's the kind of store, I'd own if I got into retail. They literally have racks full of old computer cases from $3 to $300, that range from the dingiest micro-ATX Acer, to 4U server cases. My plan was to spend my morning there, from 10am when they opened till I was done or hungry. Doesn't hurt one bit that a great Vietnamese Pho place is diagonally across the street. 

To make a long story a little shorter; here it is.... the $3 case. It was marked down to $3 because it was completely empty, which was not only fine by me, but preferable since it meant less to feel bad about throwing out! 

 

I didn't want this one because it was $3, I wanted it because it had a pull out motherboard tray! I'd been more than happy to be a "high roller" and spend up to $10 for it!!! In this picture, I've already drilled out the rivets, and removed one of the supports as well as the drive cages.

This is where tool #1 comes in. A couple of weeks ago, I was trolling one of my favorite pawn shops when I saw a Dremel 300 (in the box complete with bits) on their "as is" table. It was marked at $40, so I ignored it, knowing full well that I've wanted one of these things since I was old enough to know what one was (16); way back in my model railroad days. During the ensuing two weeks, I researched them and found that the Model 300 is almost current, and sold for $80 bare; meaning without a kit of bits. A few days ago, I went back, it was still on that table and I offered them $35, which they took. I bought one of the Dremel EZ Lock cutting sets from Lowe's and now I have one of the essential "modder's" tools. 

Twenty minutes of sweating in the garage and one significantly smaller metal cutting disk later, I have this. Here's the concept: I'm not trying to outdo the big manufacturers.

The fact is, that mine is unlikely to look anywhere near as good as the Lian-Li workstation pictured above, or even as nice as the HSPC one.

I'm actually shooting more along the lines of this homemade rig that somebody built and put on a website. I want to do my own, because:
A. I'm cheap, and have virtually all the necessary pieces on hand.
B. I want it the way I want it, because I'm a stubborn old cus!
C. I want to see if I can do a halfway decent job.

Along the way, I'm going to see if I can learn to use tool #2 a little bit. Yup; Google's SketchUp that I just downloaded. I keep hearing and reading about it and it just looks cool! I'm going to try and use this project as a testbed. So, you bet.... there's going to be updates as I move along on this thing. It'll probably drag out a little bit, as you guys are undoubtedly aware that August is not the time that anyone sane wants to spend much time in their garage down here in Texas! But in the meantime, you should get on YouTube and do a search for Tech Stations, particularly ones by CyberDruid. He does really cool work! Since you are reading this, you'd be the type to be entertained by it.

Mana From Heaven..... or at Least San Jose

A couple of weeks ago, I came home to find this on my porch. My brother, who's going to be working for an extended period of time in Taiwan for awhile decided he needs to "clean out" before he leaves in October. I suspect, this isn't the first box I'll be getting from him. Now, as far as that weird camera goes.... if you are wondering; it's a Topcon Uni, a leaf-shuttered, interchangeable lens, SLR introduced in 1964. It came in the original leather "ever-ready" case, along with a 100mm/f4 lens as well as the standard, 53mm/f2, and other random stuff like a Topcon, waist level finder (most likely for a SuperD), and a Scheider-Kreuznach, Retina-Curtagon 35mm/f2.8 in one of those cool "bubble" containers that lenses used to be sold in...... whew! And that was just the beginning! Here's a link to a guy's blog that I read regularly, that discusses this model of camera:

http://mailch.blogspot.com/2012/02/users-review-wink-mirror-camera-topcon.html

Also in the box was this Sekonic Type L-VI selenium meter that I really like (even though it doesn't work anymore). I have a bit of an old light meter collection, so this one, which is small, fits in perfectly. You'd think that this would be enough, right?

No, not close...... next out was a Nikon 995 (my second), but this one had a FC-E8 Fisheye converter attached! That'd make the camera's built-in lens have an angle of view ranging from 8mm to 32mm as related to a 35mm camera. That's right; 8mm! I don't know where he got it, but, it's huge.... as you can see. There's a scratch on the front element, but hey, it was free. 

Then out of the bottomless box, came this: a Nikon CoolPix 8800. That's right; the same model of camera I bought when I went digital "whole hog", then subsequently sold to jump into the D70 DSLR. It's an 8 megapixel "Super-zoom", where the lens goes (35mm eq.) of 35mm to 350mm.... hence SUPER ZOOM. It had the battery grip attachment as well, so it was like my original rig just came home! I had forgotten how compact it was, and I think it's really going to be nice to have as an "in addition to", camera. Yes, they are slow compared to a DSLR, and the buffer takes forever to flush when shooting in RAW, but really, when will it ever need to shoot in RAW when it sits on a shelf next to a D300!?! It'll be really great to just hand the kids when they want to go some place and need a camera.

Last, but not least, was this: the Nikon CoolPix 8400, which as the companion model to the 8800. It's 35mm equivalent zoom range was an unusual (at that time) 24mm to 85mm range. Perfect for those inside affairs like birthday parties etc. where the D300 just isn't necessary and really, just too bulky. 

Both the 8800 and 8400 have the fold-out and twist screens which allow you to use it at virtually any angle. Again, perfect for informal affairs where there might be a crowd to shoot over, under, around or through! 

So, what am I saying? Am I going to back-track? I'm sure most of you have figured this out already that I'm just going to add them to my arsenal, and use whatever is the most convenient and sensible at the time. We'll start off with this: as you can see, there's quite a size (and you can imagine the mass) difference between the two. This image is of the CP 8800 compared to a D70, so you can imagine the difference with the D300 which is even bigger and heavier. That part is obvious. What is not obvious is that both of the CoolPix cameras use a compact sensor.... meaning about the same size as the one your wife carries around in her purse, which has many limitations, most of which are exacerbated, not alleviated by a high mega-pixel count. So the CPs are "noisy" cameras if you try to use them at or above 400 ISO, therefore, they aren't for low light use without flash. However, they both have Nikon's advanced iTTL technology so can take advantage of my SB-600 and SB-800 Speedlights. Also, there's the "advanced amateur" bugaboo, that almost all manufacturers are prone to in that there's just not enough memory buffer to allow continuous shooting when dealing with large files (eg. RAW), so they are certainly not for fast action shooting where you might want to blow up or manipulate the image later. JPEG is the order of the day! 

Are there any benefits other than weight and size? You bet! Here you see the aforementioned Speedlight compatibility at work. Yeah, it's a bit ungainly, but it works great. Then, there's the memory card compatibility. Yes Martha; that's a full-sized Compact Card in the CP 8800 there. I only have about a dozen of those things ranging in size from 128Mb to 32Gb. 

Overkill? Probably. But you know; not only would I never wear a shirt like this, but these camera will keep me from carrying around a bunch of camera like this poor guy!
 

E-Waste and the Frugal Propellerhead

I guess you could call me an E-Waste recycler, and really, I suppose I've been doing this for a long time going back to the mid-90s when I was buying up IBM PS/2 machines to learn server management. Of course, there was no noble intent back in those days (not sure whether there is in these days either), since I was just buying what I thought was interesting AND could afford. I will have to say that I've always been abhorrent of "waste" in general. And that goes for leaving the bottom few ounces of drink in a cup all the way to having to have the newest clothes (or game system) every few months. Not only is it not sustainable resource-wise; it's downright stupid. This is especially true in the technology field where actual performance changes happen so fast, but we humans only ever use a very small percentage of it. So, we buy new and literally throw out old (or 18 months old, according to Gordon Moore).... which leads to this:

....and that's the nice view! What it ends up looking like when it arrives in China, India, other random place is this:

No, this is not my garage, although the bottom picture does bear a bit of a resemblance. The unfortunate thing is that this is the better scenario, as compared to the folks who just throw this stuff out with their garbage and it ends up in a landfill where the chemicals from these devices are able to leach into the water-table. Probably the worse of the products are the old CRTs which have a LOT of dangerous products in them, but actually have the potential to kill you long after they've been unplugged:

 

This is what the problem looks like on a global scale:

So, back to me (because you know it's all about ME). I'm sure most of you are familiar with my rantings regarding the "Walmartization" of society, right? Where, we buy the cheapest possible, then just throw it out when it breaks? This of course, is probably all due to my Mom drilling into me to buy quality products that last. I'm certain the reality has as much to do with the Chinese cultural's need to be competitive show-offs, but that's beside the point. At any rate; the die is cast, so I'm just "hard-wired" this way now. What brings on this little soapbox oration today?

?????! This 11 year old computer came to live with us a few weeks ago. One of my long-time clients, bought a "new" ThinkPad from me, because she's going back to get her Master's degree, and the R52 that I did for her about 4 years ago is getting long in the tooth. So, she got an X300, the R52 was updated and reloaded for her daughter, and she brought me the daughter's T30 for retirement. I didn't remember that the machine was that "new" till it arrived, thinking that it was a PIII-class A2x machine. The T30s were the smaller, light-weight executive laptops of their day and were a match for the A31 workstations (hardware-wise). Actually, I had used one of these many moons ago before the T4x, and X300...... but I digress. Anyway, it ran "dog-slow" on the 512Mb of RAM and needed a reload in the worse way with all kinds of junk-software installed on it. This morning as I'm here babysitting the 109 updates after having gotten the OS up to SP3, AND installed 1.5GB of RAM and a wireless card, I realized that the vast majority of it's brethren have gone to live in the great briefcase in the sky. 

It really doesn't have to be, or should be this way. Right now, my dining room table looks about like this. There are 4 A31s, 1 T42p, 1 T60, 1 Z61m, ThinkPads and 1 HP LaserJet 4000n out there. Oh, there's also a first generation PowerBook G4, 12" as well. What the *#&# am I doing!?! Here's the thing. My wife moved to a new school district last year and although, we aren't talking about starving kids without textbooks, they aren't as well-endowed (technology-wise) as her former district (and 3rd graders are loooow on the techology-totem-pole), so there's one small computer lab in the building and two desktops in each classroom. As you can imagine, this wasn't a very workable solution for my, MBA trained, former Ernst & Young consultant wife, so she kept asking me what I was going to do with this or that "old" laptop. And when the answer would be that I didn't have any plans since it had been replaced by old-so-and-so, she'd get a gleam in her eye. About a year ago, things came together when various relatives whom I had set up with laptops, grew out of their 1st machines and brought them to me when they got replacements. This amounted to 2 T4x, and 3 A3x computers. Around that time, I had upgraded my wife from a Z61m to a T61, so there was a number of computers cluttering up my office. 

One day (I'm sure after, much cogitating), she wanted to know if maybe kids could get onto some learning games with those old laptops. My distracted answer was "of course", and there you have it: BunnyNet. By the last half of the spring semester, we had a little group of 3 A31s, the T42p, and her old Z61m working in her classroom. Over the course of this summer, I received some random donations, ranging from a T60, to the truly random PowerBook G4, and now the T30. They all needed work of one kind or another; some hard drives, others, wireless cards and almost all of them, RAM. This in combination with the prevailing educational trend of B.Y.O.D. (bring your own device), we'll be able to get them all on he school's network. 

Is this going to end E-Waste..... no. What's the point then? If we can prolong the use cycle, we can slow it down. Especially if there's a need out there for it. Why can't we divert some of those containers and retask some of this old technology? Yes, I get that there are practical considerations to make it work, but does anyone think that it's something a good "non-profit" can't tackle? Right now, I'm busy with my one classroom-worth, trying to turn E-Waste into something useful for a little while.