The "Cascade"

 

When I use the term cascade, I'm sure most people envision something like this, or at most a high waterfall. Generally something peaceful and beautiful. Actually, what I meant by the word is nothing of the sort. I'm sure others in managing IT have used the concept, if not the word, but in my application; I invented it for my own use...."back in the day." The Y2K days, when I was working my first real IT job at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I was a departmental IT guy, but I was the guy. There was no one else. I had a boss, but she mostly worked on the application end of the software that ran our departmental functions. For hardware, or software support, I was it. We had roughly 60-70 computers that I was responsible for in our area. They ranged from regular desktops, to laptops, to servers. Since I was it (my job title was Area Coordinator for IT), I also handled digital cameras, PDAs, Printers, setup and maintenance. I had 1 student who worked for me. My one minion was a long-haired Mac lover. We had no Macs! Since we were a lone department at a public university, we didn't have a ton of money, we had some, just not a lot. Every year, I could buy anywhere from 10 to 20 machines, which basically calculates to me being able to replace them all on a 3 to 4 year cycle.

Although we weren't exactly a cube-farm, everybody used computers. From the department head who was a university Vice President, to front desk workers of the various building who were students. Some like my buddy Scott was the graphics professional who needed LOTS of power, others, like the aforementioned "desks" just needed to access records. Some like, the big boss (who was a New Yawker), needed to look good while he sat behind his big desk, in his big chair. After sitting down and looking at what I needed to do (machine-wise), and comparing that with what I could do budget-wise, I realized the corporate way of doing things where I put everybody on a cycle and got a new machine every so many years isn't going to work very well. We just didn't have the resources to do that.....eg. buy dozens/hundred of computers every year. So I came up with "the Cascade".

What I had to do was to go around and figure out what everybody does on a computer. How they use it, where they use it, what software they run, yada, yada, yada. Then, I had to figure out how much computer they needed and if there were any other considerations. For instance, my immediate boss needed lots of computer. She got into our databases, and the server software that the department ran on, on a daily basis. The graphics guy needed lots of computing power as well for obvious reasons. The other "executive" type people ranging from the "Big Boss", needed to do the routine office type stuff and didn't need the latest greatest, and so on down to the folks that just needed to access the "front-end" of one of the applications. Once I got that handled (it took a while), I had to break everyone down into groups that fit generalized categories of PCs relative to their capabilities in easily configurable buying specs, and make sure there weren't too many different models to support well. I didn't want to make the mistake of my predessor who had 5 different brands of computers, which God only knows how many different models!

 

I bought 2 brands: Dell for the desktops, IBM for notebooks. Within those 2 brands, I had maybe 2, sometimes 3 models during any given buying cycle. There were sometimes small variations within the specific models such as a bigger screen for some particular worker who was looking at giant spreadsheets all the time, or more powerful/dual processors for the graphics guy, who also got extra/giant hard drives. Actually, his stuff was almost always special because of what he did. I can't even begin to tell you how much of a difference this made in everything from setup to support, by my second year. Of course, I only spent a little over 2 years there, but this was the testing ground for my IT ideas.

.....But what about the others? Oh yeah, them, the proletariat. I almost forgot.... It's actually they who allowed me to conceived of the cascade. I realized pretty quickly that by virtue of what they did on their PCs, there were some folks who didn't need to have a new $2000 machine every 2, 3 years, or actually.....ever. Some like a the cadre of administrative assistants, only ever looked up certain data, and wrote memos. Their computers were glorified word processors. Then there were even some workers who only occasionally did things on their machines. Maybe an hour or two a day at most, but they needed a machine to complete those tasks. Therein lies the function of the cascade. If I could eliminate them from the new machine "cycle", then I could use my finite pot of budgetary funds each year, to speed up the cycle so that my high-end users got new machines! I would just take their old ones, and push them down to the next level, or whichever level that the specification of machine was appropriate for their job. In the end, they didn't really care, because they still got "new" machines every 2 or 3 years and that kept them for having to use the antiquated 486s that didn't pass the Y2K utilities!

What did that do for me? It caused me to do more work! If you think about it a little bit. This meant that not only did I have to set up just the number I bought that year; I had to reload all the ones that they displaced for someone else, and maybe do the same to the machines at the next level as well! Holy Cats!!! It's financially efficient, but it almost tripled my workload! At UIC, that wasn't so bad, but when I moved on to the Texas Tech University Libraries with the 700+ PC (and Macs) that were my responsibility, it was daunting. However, I did it. Every spring when the orders would arrive, and through the summers when we did the bulk of our update work, I was stressed. Over a period of several weeks, I'd have to refer to my cascade spreadsheet to make sure we got the correct PCs to the correct workers.

What does all that have to do with a home propellerhead like me? Well; when I pulled the old guts out of the "old" Blackbird, I started a cascade! You see, in our house, my desktop workstation is at the top of the food chain. It has the most powerful, the biggest, and the fastest of everything. It's parts are more advanced than every other computer in the house. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Over the course of the next several weeks, the various parts taken from the Blackbird are going to replace parts in maybe 3 other machines! So stay tuned; we've only scratched the surface!

Propellerhead Gear: Blackbird Mk II, Part Deux

Yesterday was "Skunkworks" day. If you aren't up on aerospace lore, it's the highly secret Lockheed design and construction facility outside of LA. This place goes back to Howard Hughes and his work for the government during WWII..... and also where the SR71 "Blackbird" was birthed.

Beginning last Thursday (good timing huh?), the last of the stuff for the Blackbird rebuild started coming in; the Intel i5 3450S processor and the Kingwin FPX-004 Front Panel, cardreaderUSB3.0portsfancontrollercasetemperaturereadoutmicheadphone-thing. Oh yeah, the X300 screen, but that's a different story. Confronting me was; Thursday night, one child going to a "real" basketball game with her team, and the other child's Open House/Music Program. Then Friday night in the lovely village of Crandall with Soccer and overlapping Valentines dinner-date with my very patient wife who happens to teach there, which caused me to get home at 10:30, so no build. Saturday, I had kids' basketball, pretty much all day, cleaning the garage, spraying the yard for weeds and pulling the stack of old computer parts I promised to another ThinkPad Forum member....so yeah, wiped out. Then Sunday, of course there was church then grading two stacks of essays from my Advance Placement World History class. However in between the two sets of papers, I took a break by pulling and starting to disassemble Blackbird. Then finish grading the second set of papers. However I got nothing else done since it was now time for my son and I to go see "Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit", which I highly recommend for all you aging Tom Clancy readers out there.

After dinner at Wendy's (son's choice), it was time for........ no, not The Little Mermaid!?! Nope, that's there, because that's where mom and daughter had gone, about the time we got home! Slick planning huh? I took the boy to the late afternoon movie so that when we got home, the mother-daughter event was just starting in downtown Dallas! Two plus hours of solitude, otherwise known as SKUNKWORKS TIME!!!

Now, finally, I got the chance to put the "new" parts back into the old case. I moved all the drives to their new location since I was putting the new "avionics" (Kingwin Superpanel) into the top bay of the case. I had already swapped out the new (Sandisk Extreme) 240Gb SSD in the drive cage, so that went in as well. The Z77 board was bigger than the old one so I installed new stand-offs. Then it was board-time; the CPU got cleaned and went in, then I tackled the big CoolerMaster 212 EVO heatsink/cooler and let me tell ya, it's a huge chunk of copper and alluminum! The Corsair RAM went in next, then the board was installed. It was now time to connect ALL the many cables, followed by the cards. After that, comes the part that I hate. Crawling under the desk to connect all the various peripherals, in positions that make it hard to see and uncomfortable to be in.

I was rewarded by.....this.....a black screen, and the computer going through repeated loops of trying to P.O.S.T. I tried all kinds of stuff. Usually, a "black screen" is a sign of bad or loose memory. Not this time. Then I remembered that this board had a 2 digital diagnostic panel on the MB, which emphatically said "15". The manual said that 15, was Pre-memory Northbridge Startup. WHAT THE!!!! Off to Google, which said all kinds of things that didn't make sense until the end of the 3rd article I looked at which talked about a backside short on the motherboard. A-Ha, I said! I had noticed that it looked like the backplate of the 212 might have been touching the MB tray. One disassembly/couple of layers of electrical tape/reassembly later, the machine booted normally.

 

 And I got to see that wonder of modern computing....the UEFI! From here the load proceeded as normal, except much, much faster. I felt like some sort of Geek-Spy-Superhero who had just saved the world/western civilization by hacking into a secured computer system. OK, that was the Jack Ryan character from the movie, but still......

We are now in "test flight" time. Which basically means loading basic software, updates, and more updates. Then I started getting some errors on a few utilities I use. After more Googling, I learned that if you use a machine with UEFI, and GPT instead of MBR, you'll run into the problem I did (whatever the &^%^$#% all that stuff means). Anyway, the fix, is to repair or reload after having preformatted the drive before the Windows load occurs! Of course that means, 2 hours of work wiped out! In the mean time, the wife and child came home which as good timing since was a little frustrated and needed a break!

 

11 O'Clock, back to work and magically everything loads as it should. A couple of M$ updates rounds later, it's off to bed at 2:55 AM. Yeah, the sides are off. The cables are all over the place. My office looks like craziness happened there and I haven't gotten monitor 2 working right, but hey; that's why we crash-dummies get paid the big bucks, right? If there's a cautionary tale in all this; it's to never so a build without another fully working computer beside you which is hooked up to the Internet! In the end; the cat got to play in the boxes, and that machine? It's seriously faaaaast!

Watch Out for Falling Objects!

Sometimes things (obvious things) just come falling out of the sky and they hit you square on the head! Last week, it happened to me. I don't even really remember what I was looking for, but I ran across an X300 ThinkPad. It was listed "For Repair, As Is", with a cracked screen, no hard drive or cover, and no A/C adapter, but with 2 batteries. Fully working otherwise! I'm not even certain what the guy wanted for it, but there was a "make offer" button on it, so I figured..... what the heck? I offered $45..... and he took it!

Let's be clear here: a working X300 for $45 ($55 after shipping). Came with 2 (1 OEM, 1 Aftermarket) batteries which routinely sell for $40 ea on eBay. Turns out, after I messaged him asking about the drive cover, he not only found it, but agreed to include an A/C adapter that he was also able to find. OK, I get that I have an X301 that I just upgraded to, but here was a functioning unit that I knew for a fact was worth more than twice the price in parts alone! On top of that, I have one more 1.8" 64Gb SSD sitting around somewhere, and although I knew the unusual WXGA+ LED screen was expensive, I figured I'd be OK to wait for a good deal on one. 

After a little bit of research on said screen, things didn't look very good. I was seeing prices ranging from a low of $175 to a high of over $300! This screen is different than most others. When the X300 was released in February of 2008, it sported one of the very few LED lit screens, and at 13.3" (unusual size), with a high resolution of 1440 x 900..... we'll just say that not a lot of companies rushed out there to adopt it. In my mind, I thought: hey, at least I got a couple of batteries and a power adapter out of this deal, and prepared to leave it sitting on a shelf for a while. 

Apparently, things were not through falling on me. The computer came, I examined it, and sure enough, there were 2 good batteries (about $60 worth since one was not OEM), there was 4Gb of RAM in the sockets (another $40 worth), and an A/C adapter (worth maybe $25). At this point, the value to me was already at $125. Then I checked that the machine did indeed work, so let's just say the parts value would be a conservative $125, making this things value at around $250. But you know me. Can't leave good enough alone. So, over the course of the next several days, I'd periodically scan eBay for a screen or a dead X300 with a good screen. I even considered giving/trading it to my friend Kym who has a severely "bowed" (don't ask, but I'll just say it involved UPS) X300. He could swap in his screen and be in good shape. Then something small fell on me. I saw a screen that the guy wanted $115. A little quick math puts a working X300 at $170. That's not too bad! But I decided to look around a little more. That's when the "big object" fell out of the sky and smacked me! A listing for a "working pull" screen for $59, with my friend, the "Make Offer" button! It had an issue in that there was a little "bloom" in the lower left corner, where the backlight is a little out of whack. It looks like somebody is shining a tiny flashlight from the corner into the screen. It's about a quarter of an inch long. After picking myself up out of the floor, I made an offer.... for $50. I got confirmation in about 5 minutes that he took it! 

The screen came today, and I got it out of the box, and swapped into the X300 in record time. I'd say that I got it done in about 10 minutes. We had my son's school program to go to, so I didn't get to finish till just a little while ago. It did take me a little while to realize that the original 64Gb Samsung SSD from my old X300 was still in the daughter's dead X61! I pulled it out, simply plugged it straight into the "new" computer and it booted! It didn't like it, and wanted to know if that's what I really wanted to do, but sure enough, it when right on through the boot after I told it yes! It was a rough start up, but it worked. Now, I'm getting updates done since, as you can imagine, the drivers are a mess. The total comes to $105.

Sometimes, it better to be lucky than to be good!

Propellerhead Gear: Blackbird Mk II

I love my computer, I really do. However, it's time for the old girl to go in for an overhaul. In this case (literally), I'm going to rip the old guts out and start over. Not that the "Yorkfield", Core 2 Quad isn't doing it's job. It's just time. In Frugal Propellerhead-speak, that means that the cost of a significant upgrade has dropped to the point where I can do it inexpensively.

You might remember a few ramblings about gathering parts for this build that began with this; a Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H motherboard that I picked up locally for $60. It got RMA'd back to Gigabyte for a broken PCI-e slot and came back as a replacement. The socket 1155 and Z77 chipset on this board allows me to install i Series, 2nd and 3rd generation CPUs in it, more commonly known as "Sandy Bridge" and "Ivy Bridge". Being a mid-line board, it gives me lots of nice features that are common at a $200 pricepoint. This 2 generation jump will allow me to go, not only a whole new series of CPUs, but also SATA II to III yielding a doubling of the critical throughput on storage, and the jump from USB 2.0 to 3.0 which is huge as well. Of course, there are other areas of upgrade like the jump to DDR3 and UEFI BIOS. 

One of the first things I had to get sorted out was storage. I had an OEM Samsung 256Gb SSD in Blackbird, and although, the capacity was fine for me, the SATA II interface was not. Which led to a series of machinations that produced this drive...... the Sandisk Extreme, 240Gb SSD that was in my wife's T61. Last month, when I upgraded her to a ThinkPad T500, it started a chain of events that would give me the correct drive without costing anything. First of all, I had bought a Dell E6500 for a client who wanted a 1Tb mechanical drive in it. The Dell, came equipped with a Samsung 128Gb SSD. That drive went into my desktop, which gave me it's 256Gb SSD that went into my wife's "new" T500. The T61 which had the nicer nVidia graphics went to my son replacing his T61 with Intel graphics. His SSD went into mom's old machine. His machine got a 80Gb mechanical drive and sold off. All that work yielded me a free 240Gb, Sandisk Extreme SATA III drive for free! Actually, that's not completely accurate. The sale of that T61 actually made me money on the whole thing, but I'm not going to bother trying to compute what the actual net profit ended up being out of all that; let's just say that it didn't cost anything.

In the last post I talked about mining Craigslist and this was one of the products. A pair of Corsair XMS3 DDR3/1600 RAM for $50, bought from the same guy that I got the motherboard from, so I also have the added benefit that of knowing it'll work on that board. The configuration will fit my philosophy on RAM. Which is: 

•  Adequate (4Gb) is not enough.
• When a major upgrade happens. Keeps the same amount for that OS, but cut the number of modules in half. I have 8Gb in 4 modules, so I need to drop down to 2.
• Leave yourself room to upgrade. The point above gives me 2 empty slots for future upgrades.
• Buy mid-line from a reputable manufacturer. For Corsair right now, that'd be XMS vs. the uber-expensive Vengence line. You still get lifetime warranty but half the cost. 

At this point, my Blackbird upgrade is up to $110. 

Now, I'm in the "home stretch", and just need a processor so I can start building. This turned out to be the most time consuming part of the whole process. Originally, I had thought I'd get my brother's old 2390T that he replaced in one of his computers. Unfortunately, he recently has taken a new position in Taiwan and hasn't been home to sent it to me. On top of that, it's the world's only non-Quad Core i5. I'm not really thinking I want to take a step backwards at this point. However, the concept of using a low-TDP (Termal Design Power) processor was intriguing. My current C2Q 9550 has a TDP of 95 which isn't too bad, and the typical Ivy Bridge chip is around 77 TDP is even better. When you look at Intel's list of 22nm processors (Ivy Bridge), you see lots of "S" spec chips that have a TDP of 65, with the current "T" spec chips down at 45 TDP. I'm all for that! If you've ever been in my south-facing office in the summer, you would be too!

This led to LOTS of contemplation and sleepless nights. Power vs. Efficiency? I knew I could get a really nice processor that would do everything that I wanted between $150 and $175. I had just done a machine with an i5 2500K, "Sandy Bridge" chip and it was flat-out, FAST. In the end, I knew that I didn't need, "nose-bleed" speeds; I just don't do that much "high-end" stuff. So I focused on "S" spec, Ivy Bridge chips. I started out looking at the commonly seen 3330S, then realized that the faster, yet just as cool models costs about the same. I even looked at the 3450P with the disabled GPU and all the way up to the current 3570S which sells for around $160. After reading reviews and benchmarks till my eyes crossed, I decided that the few percentage points between the chips weren't worth the $25-35 to me. Maybe it'd be different if I was a gamer, or did a lot of video editing, but then, I'd be looking at i7s, right? The other thing that I found out was that the "S" spec chips are generally sold to big OEMs....the Dells and HPs of the world. They use them in the "small form-factor" desktops that are sold by the thousands to corporations. When they are replaced, these machines are almost never sold off as whole computers, but are commonly "parted-out"/recycled. This means that there are lots of these chips appearing on the "secondary" markets (read eBay) as the first of these machines are being pulled at the 2 and 3 year mark. All that means: just be patient and wait for the right deal to drop in your lap. On Sunday, I caught a 3450S that sold to me at $133 with Free Shipping. That puts me at $243 and I'm starting to make plans to build.

One more thing. I'll have to admit, it's a bit of an extravagance. Although, it's just a $40 extravagance. This is a Kingwin FPX-004. I always wanted one of these, since the first time I saw one a number of years ago. A full (5.25") bay multi-function panel. This one has a card reader (one less thing on my desk), 2 fan controller with temp/rpm readout, eSATA, mic/headphone jacks, AND most importantly, USB 3.0 ports. That was my rationale. The new MB has a USB 3.0 head, so I really would like to be able to connect those devices without crawling under my desk. The final total? $283 for a total upgrade to Ivy Bridge. 

So, a week from now, the old Cooler Master Centurion 590 case will be completely new machine inside. Do I loose anything? The new board doesn't have an IDE header, so the Fujitsu 640Mb, Magneto Optical drive will probably bow out. But this thing is going to be one FAST AND COOL CAT. 

 
 


 

Mining Craigs List

Another year, another Super Bowl. They go by so fast, and in the modern league created by the salary cap, it's no longer interesting to me. So, what did I do on Super Bowl weekend?

I played my game....... but I play on a bigger field. It looks like this! If you live in the vicinity of a metropolitan area, Craigslist is a wonderful thing. For computing equipment, it's especially fruitful. In the last few decades, many corporations have moved their headquarters to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and that means, lots and lots of computing equipment of all kinds. And of course, quite often, this stuff makes it's way onto Craigslist, or our famed "1st Saturday" flea market, although that's not what it once was due to the Internet. However, you can't just go running around willy-nilly all over the place. That's counterproductive in both time and gas ($$$) expended. It takes strategy. Sometimes, the planning takes the better part of a week! Here's how this latest effort went......

It started with a ThinkPad T500. I had a client who wanted something of this type and spec, after searching for several days on Craigslist, I was able to find one for $100. This price was excellent, and would give me the ability to put in a small SSD in it as well, then sell it for the $200 price that they typically sell for "retail". The seller of the machine was in the far northern part of Plano, which is the far northern part of the Dallas suburbs. 

I'm also constantly on the look out for SSDs in good shape, for a good price. Where do you think I get the 64Gb one that I put in the T500? Anyway, a guy had an OCZ Vertex 2, 120Gb model for $60. But it's a 3.5" form-factor drive you say. It is. So it's going into my HTPC machine which has a nice 64Gb Mushkin Callista in it and I'll move that into the T500. Instant upgrade for the HTPC and a SSD for the T500! 

In the middle of all that searching, I came across a Dell Latitude E6400, complete with dock, and 2 power adapters for $85. Since I sell these on a regular basis for $150-200 (depending on the size drive I put in it), it was a no-brainer. I don't want to belabor a topic I've written on before, but these laptops are just excellent deals right now and can be found anywhere if you pay attention. Plus they are way easy to work on, even when compared to the ThinkPads. Virtually all of the typical parts that need to be replaced, such as RAM, WiFi cards, etc. and be access by pulling one screw which secures a plate that cover the entire bottom. And they are darn-near as rugged as a ThinkPad as well!

The last item that needed to be secured was a pair of Corsair XMS3 RAM for my Ivy Bridge new-build. I had talked to the seller earlier this week about getting them this weekend from him since he lives in Arlington well west of Dallas. These are good, not great sticks of RAM that would fit into the concept of what I wanted to do with this new machine. First of all it was $60, and in today's world, that's a very good price for a pair of 1600, 8Gb x 2 DDR3 RAM. Although, not high-end gaming RAM, these could be tweaked a little bit if i want at some point in the future. As it turned out, I got a bonus when he had all kinds of trouble getting out to meet me and took $10 off for making me wait. So yeah, $50...... I can live with that!

Many of you who are older will recognize this from the Family Circus comic. It's known as the "Billy Path" which would periodically appear to show the circuitous route by which their son Billy would take to do some particular thing. By now, many of you might be thinking that my Saturday of picking up parts all over the DFW area looked about like this. In fact though, this is the art of Craigslist mining. 

Here's how it worked. We live about 10 minutes east of Mesquite which is one of the far eastern suburbs of Dallas. So I arranged to meet the first guy who was in far northern Plano first. This allowed me to make the best time by taking our very own PGBT (President George Bush Tollway) almost right up to the doorstep of his location, and pick up the T500. This was followed by a 25 minute run down Central Expressway (U.S. 75) to the 2nd guy who was basically due south. I had to wait for this very sleepy seller to wake up and bring me out the SSD, but by 9:30 I was a few miles to the south at a Target to meet the IT guy selling off the surplus Dell E6400. This put me right next to downtown Dallas and allowed me to run over to the 1st Saturday computer flea market to pick up a few odd-and-ends. From there, I picked up I-30 west head to Arlington by 11:00am. I was at my favorite "store", Electronic Discount in less than 30 minutes. In the meantime, I contacted the seller who had the RAM. Although he had problems and couldn't meet me at the store as planned, I spend an hour in that place perusing all manner of old electronics, go across the street the a favorite Vietnamese Pho place for lunch, then meet the guy on the way home. 

In the end, I was able to get all of the above done, and get home by 2:30 at which point, I grabbed my son and took him to his basketball game! I was gone a total of 7 hours. I spent $305, and about 3 gallons of gas (I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid). I sold the T500 for $200 while at the same time upgrading my HTPC's SSD from 64Gb to 128Gb. I sold one of the 2 Dell power adapters for $20. This all leaves me with $85 of expenditures not yet recouped, but I still have the E6400 which will bring at least another $150. Also, this whole escaped was funded by a sale of another E6400 from the night before, for $200. So, I had a great time, playing, will make somewhere between $70-100, after getting RAM for the new-build and upgrading my HTPC. 

That is now we mine Craigslist!




 

Mid-Winter's Day Off

It's mid-winter and guess who got sick? Yup, those familiar with this blog are probably also familiar with my daughter who occasionally gives me a day off. As she gets older though, it involves less and less intervention from me other than just being there and making lunch. So, pretty awesome, other than the first part of the morning rushing around and making arrangements at work. 

As you could imagine; tied down at home, no responsibilities other than to be at daughter's "beck and call"....... I'm pretty much working on computers all day. Although, much of it was "grunt-work" that I've been putting off; things such as checking through and marking my drawer full of various ThinkPad batteries. I know; mind-numbing, right? I did have two computers that I was finishing for clients, but those were in their Windows Update stage, so not big deal. 

Was there any fun, a "silver lining" in this dreary cloud of computing drudgery? Yup, there sure was! I found a computer that I had forgotten about. I know, I know..... how on earth does someone forget about a laptop!?! OK, here's what happened: a few months ago, my brother was cleaning out and we were in the process of scrounging around to computers for my wife's classroom. A marriage made in heaven! So, he sent us a couple of boxes of his old computers that he wasn't using.. There was variety of them, in varying states of disrepair and missing parts, but for the most part, they worked. They ranged from the relatively antiquated T43, to a Z61t, and some T60s. The vast majority of them were set up quickly and have gone right to work helping 3rd graders get on the Internet.

However, out of the pile, I decided to keep one of them. Yes..... like I need another computer. This one is special though. Of the 3 T60s there was one T60p. That's right, as in professional workstation. In this case, that meant, not only all the normal, top-of-the-line "T" series business-class goodness, but also, the ATI Mobility FireGL V5200 GPU, higher-end duo core processor, but most importantly the 15" IPS high-res screen with a 1600 x 1200 resolution! This is an awesome workstation, even by today's standards. I knew with just a little bit of tweaking, I can make it a pretty nice machine.

A few of you might remember the big to-do about my getting the "Ark", the ThinkPad Z61m with the titanium lid. I love that machine, and yes, your right..... a Z61 is essentially T60 in another form. And yes, there is really little to no difference between the two. The reason(s) for the switch? Two, the Z61 has a BIOS password that I don't want to spend the money to clear. But most importantly..... that 1600 x 1200 IPS screen. If you haven't used a machine with a IPS screen...... it's pretty much computing Nirvana. Oh yeah, the Z61 has it's wireless shut down, and of course the BIOS is locked so I can't get into there to see if the problem is a setting. So, it's a "no-brainer"! At some point, I might end up having that issued cleared, but here's this fully working T60p that has fallen right in my lap, so, what's not to like?

What am I going to do with it? I need one of these in my classroom. What is it? It's a Corsair Voyager Air portable wireless drive. Essentially, it's a portable drive combined with a WiFi access point that allows computers within it's range to access it's files. As connected as my school is, students often are unable to access my classes' file from their various devices. I'd really like to have a device that I can put those files on, so that makes the access easier. Since I don't want to spend the $200 right now to buy this, I can put an extra drive into the modular bay, and just take the T60 to school and set up an Ad Hoc network. It can also do random other tasks, like trans-coding video while I'm working on the main machine. It's become my latest fixation. Ripping and trans-coding my DVDs into MP4s so they can be generically portable. I'd have to say that finding that T60p was a nice little surprise.

 

Propellerhead Gear: Suits Me To A "T"

The IBM (now Lenovo) ThinkPad "T" and I go back a loooong way. Actually, back to the beginning......Y2K. Remember that? Anyway, it was my first real full-time IT job and the responsibility of making sure that my department's technology, at the University of Illinois-Chicago was Y2K compliant. It was a poke in the eye, but hey, I got to make the call on, and order up my very first laptops. I replaced the aging ThinkPad 380ED with brand new T20 for our mobile workers. Let me tell ya; I was the IT guru/hero immediately! I learned to love that machine and almost every "T" thereafter. By that point in my mobile computing life, the ThinkPad roots already ran deep. I had bought a legendary 701c a few years earlier, which was followed by the phenominal 600. When the "T" (for titanium) came out in 2000, I understood that in order to get under the $4000 price-point, IBM had to do away with some of the little refinements that had always been there, like covering the ports, and many of the rubberized surfaces, etc. Remember the old days when every ThinkPad came with a form that the owner filled out and mailed in so they would send you an engraved little plaque with your name on it? Be that as it may, the new "T" was an amazing performer and extremely well put together. And in IBM tradition, it was filled with innovations ranging from the titanium infused casing (hence the T), to the "Thinklight" to give you just a little bit of illumination when typing in the dark. At right around 5 pounds complete with optical drive, this computer defined the "Thin and Light" category of mobile computing. I was able to use the T20 at work for my 2 years at UIC, but later would personally own every model of that series, T21, T22 and finally the excellent T23. The later machines introduced me to the world of "high resolution" at 1400 x 1040 (SXGA+) in a 14.1" screen and I've been addicted every since.

Then came the T30 of 2002. I owned it, I used it, but unlike my other "T" ThinkPads; I did NOT love it. Let's just say that the smoking hot P4 was just not a good fit for the "T" Series philosophy.......as witness by the "big butt" on this machine as compared to the T23 which came before and the T40 that came after! This model is probably responsible for me diverging and getting involved with the "X" machines.... but that's a different post.

I think IBM recognized it's mistake and replaced the T30 the following year with the T40. With it, the design went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Kinda like the supermodel in the little black dress. Don't get me wrong; it looked great, and I loved carrying it, but they made it so thin that the chassis flex, combined with the hotter GPU begat the infamous ATI, BGA failure issue. I never had it happen to me, since I was ultra-careful not to stress the bottom of my T40, T41, T42p, or T43, but it was a common failure and gave IBM a substantial "black-eye", although pretty much every manufacturer in the industry suffered similar failures. At this point, I'll have to admit that I personally jumped ship and went with the X300 for my next personal laptop (which I've already written about).

Although, I had already personally moved on, the T60 and T61 of 2006 and 2007 were important machines in several ways. Sadly, 2005 brought the sale of the ThinkPad brand by IBM to Lenovo. Although, many of us loved our ThinkPads, IBM was basically loosing money on every computer it sold, so the hand-writing had been on the wall for some time.

Business aside; what about the machines? Those of you who are sharp-eyed, might have already noticed that I put the images in reverse order. Why? We bought them that way! Before I had gone over to the X300, my wife had been using ThinkPads out of the lower-end of the corporate line; the "A" Series, the "R" Series and the "Z" Series. So instead of the T60, she was using the Z61m which was essentially a widescreen version of the same machine. So a couple of years ago, I picked up a T61 for her, installed a big (in those days) 240Gb SSD and she was set.

I really like this series of machines (T60/61). While not as thin and light as the T4x, neither did they suffer from the same chassis flex and heat issues of the T4x. Lenovo went to a rigid internal "roll-cage" design which made these some of the most rugged laptops ever designed. The only real "black mark" were the high-end models' use of the nVidia GPU which often failed leaving a completely dead machine. Of course, this was an industry-wide issue and that video chip manufacturer would end up paying settlements in the billions over it! Up until recently, we had 3 (2 with the nVidia GPU), outfitted with SSDs and 4Gb of RAM. They've been excellent machines for us. Last year, we finally got into the T60 game when my brother sent me some of his old machines for use in my wife's classroom. Yup; they are older and somewhat slower, but they are just as rugged and serviceable on a day-to-day basis.

2014 dawned a new age in our house, when the T500 came to replace my wife's T61. If I hadn't told her about the switch, she probably wouldn't have noticed the difference! The machines are almost identical in looks and performance..... at least for what she does with it. The screen resolution is the same, although I think the newer panel is a little bit better than the old one, but the new keyboard isn't quite the equal of the old one, so it's a "wash". I do like that the newer chipset uses the current standard DDR3 RAM which makes upgrades cheaper. So now, both she (T500) and I (X301) both use the same spec of memory, which I prefer. I have a single 4Gb module in her machine which will allow me to easily get to up to 6 or 8Gb in the future.

For the better part of 15 years, between myself and my family, we've used/owned all 12 models of the "T" series from the original T20 to the T500. I'm certain that we'll get around to the newer T510/520/530 as well, when the time comes!