Administrative, Technology and Society

My Five-Year-Old Laptop

43 Comments

…has finally given up the ghost. It won’t boot, or even bring up a POST screen. It just lights up for a couple seconds and dies. I’ve been planning to replace it for a while, but now it’s urgent. I only use it to travel, and not for entertainment, so I don’t need a high-end machine. I’ve been toying with the idea of tablet/keyboard, but don’t know if it will meet my needs.

[Friday-afternoon update]

This look like a pretty good deal to me. Basically, a new version of what I had.

43 thoughts on “My Five-Year-Old Laptop”

  1. I have a high end laptop that I then modified with a SSD. However, now is a good time to buy. You can buy cheap laptops with touchscreens and some even have up to 128GB SSDs.

    As you tend not to use Linux, I don’t really have advice on a particular item. I’ve been looking at an HP Envi 2X for my daughters, but that’s because they are interested in a tablet or laptop, and that’s essentially both. However, I don’t think it has 3G/4G capability such as a iPad might have. I assume a Surface would have 3G/4G but have not verified myself.

    If you are into a Windows platform, get prepared for the Win8 learning curve. I like it now, but awkward at first.

        1. Originally draft had the line “as you tend not to use Windows”, but I do not know if that is true. I do know you “tend to use Linux”, so I made the edit not so cleanly. That is where it came from…

  2. Have you tried removing the battery? I had a shorted battery (or something) “kill” a laptop a few years ago. Removing the battery let it run on 110V.

    When it actually did die, a couple of years later (bad imbedded graphics card failure) I just put Win7 on a Bootcamp partition on a laptop I used for iOS programming. Works great.

    1. Yes, that is what worked when my Laptop acted the same way after about 5 years. I just got a new battery.

      But given how cheap laptops are its probably not worth buying a new battery.

    2. Yes, I replaced the battery, with an older one that I carry around. I’m pretty sure it’s not the battery. The machine’s been flaky for year with regard to booting and sudden shutdowns and batteries, and I’ve decided that this is the end. I have some data on it, but I think it’s backed up. If not, I can probably pull it off the drive with a different machine.

  3. Sounds like the perfect case for a little netbook…except that the tablets have decimated that market…not sure you can even find one these days. Amazing to me that people flock to devices with (in many ways) less functionality at a price point 2-3x higher…

    1. Used netbooks with 1 GB of memory and a 60-150 GB hard drive sell for about $100 retail (I got the Inspiron Mini 10 I’m currently using at Laptop Exchange – a retail franchise up the street).

      A few weeks ago I accidentally jerked the power cable when I was getting up from the patio (which is not well lit) so my power jack now has a flaky connection to the motherboard. I’m thinking of replacing this netbook instead of tearing it apart and soldering.

      I might upgrade to something with 2 or 3 GB of memory, though, and better sound.

  4. Strange – I saw the comment counter at 3 and clicked the post, but there appear to be none here.

    I am getting pretty good results from my iPad. Had it about three months, I can run a remote desktop app that lets me log onto my other machines and work them remotely. But, if you need to access data files, I think you still need a laptop with a file-oriented OS.

      1. I’ve seen the same thing a few times. I’ve also had to refresh the page to get comments to load (IE 9). It still sometimes reverts to mobile comment display. Sometimes a refresh will fix that but often not.

      2. I think it’s the site. I’ve noticed strange post counts on the main page lately, as well. Most recently, this post showed 6 comments on the main page, and 5 when I clicked through.

        My last Mac laptop lasted right around 5 years, and I never properly conditioned the battery, so even though the battery kept having worse and worse off-power life, it was the graphics processor that finally actually gave up the ghost.

        I’m hoping this Mac laptop lasts longer, but considering how much faster it is than the old laptop, and how much less I paid for it than the last one, I’m not concerned if it lasts “only” 5 more years.

        My friend has a work-issued iPad that he is supposed to be able to use to do some remote work. Unfortunately, it’s still not as useful as an actual laptop for those sorts of tasks (or he hasn’t found a way to get as much work-related usefulness out of it as a laptop). Ultra-thin, ultra-light SSD notebooks (vis a vis MacBook Air, 13″ or 11″), paired with a decent monitor and keyboard for home desktop use, make a rather robust package that avoids some of the limitations of tablets.

    3. Ditto two thumbs up for the iPad. Really really happy with its capabilities. I only use the laptop now for some work-related projects, or when I need the CD/DVD reader.

  5. Tablets are great. Haven’t touched my laptop since I got one but I don’t do “work” on it, just read.

    If at all possible, see if you can borrow one from a friend for a few days to test out. Some have poorly placed buttons that are too easy to hit accidentally and you want to make sure you get one that lets you do the work you want to get done.

    But a good tablet with peripherals could cost more than a low end laptop.

  6. Personally I hate typing on a tablet and tablets with a bluetooth keyboard are only a little better than screen typing. For real work I’d stick with a laptop.

    1. I have a Zagg keyboard for my iPad. Not only is it a nice keyboard, it doubles as a clamshell for the iPad. Rand, next time you visit I’ll be happy to let you play with it, so how you like it.

    2. Yeah, me too. My problem, I guess, is my fingers are too thick and clumsy. I can’t do fine placement or cut and paste on my iPad. It’s basically a high end e-book for me.

      Not sure why it is different with a touchpad, though I don’t particularly like those either. Probably because the motion on the touchpad is not 1:1 with the screen.

  7. It’s hard to beat a refurbished Asus Eeepc (can get for ~$200), but fill it up with memory. A real computer with a keyboard, Win7, very light, terrific battery life. My wife and daughter both have them (I borrow my wife’s when traveling). It’s not exactly zippy in terms of performance, but you can run Office and actually work on files.

      1. The older Eee PCs run Linux perfectly; I think ours is a 1005HAB and it all just works in Ubuntu. The newer ones have Atom CPUs with unsupported graphics chips from PowerVR, which apparently don’t even work properly in Windows.

        The problem with buying a used one is you’ll probably also have to buy a replacement battery. Ours seems to be down to about 50% capacity after the three or four years we’ve owned it.

  8. I bought a ASUS netbook a couple of years ago at the Naval Exchange at PH. I use it mostly on trips since it’s light and I usually have to lug around the work laptop too.
    I’ve been happy with it but would get a tablet if I was in the market now.

  9. My old laptop was doing this, and I’m damned if I can remember what cured it. It gets stuck part-way through booting up now if I try to boot on battery power, but works OK when plugged in.

    I wouldn’t get a tablet if you’re thinking of doing anything serious on it. I have an Asus Transformer and thought it would be handy, being both a tablet and a laptop, but that just means it’s an OK tablet and a bad laptop. Most of the weight is behind the screen so you can use it as a tablet, which is precisely where you don’t want it if you’re typing on your lap.

    A number of our customers switched to iPads a year or so back, but most have now switched to Macbooks because the tablets just suck for anything more productive than posting tweets or Facebook updates.

    The problem is that finding a good, cheap laptop is now hard because most are either the lowest of the low with worse keyboards than our netbook, thin designs that overheat if you try to use the CPU power, or loaded up with touchscreens and other nonsense that increase the cost even though I don’t want them. I had a hell of a time trying to find something to replace our netbook when it stopped responding to the keyboard recently, and was glad to find a $12 replacement keyboard fixed the problem.

  10. My opinion is that it kind of depends on what you want to do between two things:

    1) Primarily a media consuming device, meaning reading the internet, listening to music, watching movies, etc.

    2) Doing “real”work, basically using office programs, real photo editing (Photoshop), and so on.

    For example, I have an Asus Transformer TF300T. It is a decent Android tablet, and has a specific keyboard for it that contains a battery, so I can get around 13 hours or so without charging if the tablet is attached to the keyboard, but I always go back to my Windows laptop if I want to do any real work.

    One of the things to keep in mind if you are going to get a tablet is how Android works. I don’t know about iOS, but I would assume it works similarly. Android apps are started and then just go into the background when you navigate away from it, by pushing the Home button for example. At some point when Android needs more memory, Android will kill one of the background programs (for ease of discussion, let’s say the oldest one). If the application isn’t built to handle being notified when Android is about to kill it, the program will lose its state.

    http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/android/application_fundamentals/activity_lifecycle

    This is important, because with the version of Android that comes with Asus tablets, Asus tablets come with a small office program named Polaris Office. This particular office program is obviously not programmed to deal with when Android is going to kill it. This comes into play if you have written some paragraphs and then want to go look some things up on the internet. So, you go load up the internet browser and start using the internet. If your browser uses too much memory (you open too many tabs) the Polaris Office program gets killed, and because of this you lose the work that you have not yet saved.

    So, with this program I always have to be extra careful to save before I navigate away in case Android decides it wants to kill it while I am doing something else.

    For a phone, this kind of architecture makes sense because you are just opening a program and then going back to the Home screen all of the time and loading up something else to look at. But for office work where you can be switching back and forth between the internet, an office program, and other things, it’s kind of annoying to have to manage your work because you never know when the OS wants to free up memory by killing your things.

    Perhaps some of more popular Android office applications are programmed better, but I use Windows for office work, so I have never bothered to buy any of the more popular Android office applications.

    1. Oh yes, I forgot: printing support sucks in Android tablets. Again I don’t know about iPads.

      On Android it is not that each app can just print to the “Android printing system”, which knows about some installed printers. There is no such thing.

      Instead, generally what happens is that each printer manufacturer makes their own separate Android printing app specifically for that brand of printers (HP, Brother, etc) that supports a number of file types that the app can print. So, you can use your office software to write a document. And then you have to switch over to the printing app and hope that it supports that file type for printing. If it does, then you use the print app to open the document and then send it to the printer. If the print app doesn’t support your file type, you are screwed.

      And usually it has to be a printer that supports being on a wifi network. There really isn’t support that I have seen for connecting an Android device over a USB connection to a printer.

    2. Well, I got curious.

      Based on some preliminary testing on my phone, it seems that both OfficeSuite Pro (trial version) and Kingsoft Office, which seem to be among the more popular Android office apps, will deal correctly with Android killing off the processes. At least, when I created a test document that I didn’t save, and then went over to the browser and loaded up many tabs with large images, and then went back to the office program, I could tell the office programs were reloading the documents into memory. There was a delay in bringing up the document window instead of it being rather immediately available.

      Well, at least those are my preliminary hunches.

  11. Avoid purchasing anything new from ASUS. Their customer support is rotten, and they’ve eliminated third-party options in order to skin their customers.

  12. If you’re not totally wedded to Fedora, Amazon has the ASUS 1015E-DS03 10.1-Inch Laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 (long term support) preloaded for $228. Real keyboard and decent screen resolution. About 2.5 lb.

  13. You might look into the Lenovo ThinkPad X-series … A local department store had some of ThinkPad X120e laptops (new) on extreme closeout for $250 a couple of months ago. I can’t say enough good things about these. They’re rugged and have a great “feel.” ThinkPads run Ubuntu with no problems, and the X120e is absurdly easy to service and upgrade. The successor is the ThinkPad X130e; I hear it’s just been replaced by a newer model too, so look around for closeouts. Amazon has used x130e laptops for $325.

  14. I replace 2-3 laptop motherboards a month. I can definitely tell you your system board is shot. Should be able to buy a replacement off eBay. If you’re able to use a phillips screw driver then it’s just a matter of keeping track of where all they screws go to do the swap. Some manufacturers, like Dell, are even so kind as to provide a service manual with directions on how to take it apart. You’ll also need some heatsink compound for the CPU. A little alcohol swab will clean the old junk right off.

    1. The machine has always been flaky (it’s an HP Pavilion). The wireless is intermittent on it, so that I always carry a USB one, and the battery has been problematic since day one in terms of life and charging, and the machine occasionally just dies with no warning (it’s been doing this for years). Maybe a new mobo will fix those things, but it’s also missing the “J” key on the keyboard, which it wont. I’m not inclined to invest any more time or money in it.

      1. Sounds like the power supply module on the motherboard. I’ve seen some where it was literally fried and I could see scorch marks on the PCB. Pretty much everything in a laptop is on the system board — except for the wifi module. Though it could be your voltage issues were giving the wifi module fits. But I hear ya, it’s old and busted and time for something new and neat.

        I’ve got a little 7″ Nexus tablet and pretty much all I’ve used if for is Twitter, internet, and games. I got a little bluetooth mouse and keyboard for it and realized I might as well be carrying around my little Toshiba r830 if I was going to use all that stuff. The latest laptops we’ve been getting in have SSD drives. Jeez, I can’t tell you how much faster the SSD drive makes new laptops run. Booting up, logging in, and user profile loads are like lick, slap, done, thank you maam’. Adobe Acrobat Pro used to take upwards to 20 minutes to install and now it just blows through in about 5-10. Only thing I gotta warn about with SSD’s is that you need to keep current backups. I’ve seen far more failure to boots with this new stuff then I feel comfortable with. Booting up to a nothing but a flashing cursor in the upper left corner sent one of my customer’s blood pressure rising just earlier this week. But it’s really the risk versus reward aspect to consider. SSD’s have data transfer speeds that are twice as fast and access times 8 times quicker than hard drives. But hard drives are proven technologies that have decades of maturity behind them and offer large quantities of cheap storage.

        Really though I think a SSD is a better fit for a laptop. Conventional hard disks are mechanical devices and don’t really like being bumped, vibrated, and moved around while they are running. Even with the latest laptops that have accelerometers that detect unsafe movement and put the hard drive into a safe mode. I’ve had customer’s come back from trips with crashed hard drives despite having these safeguards. SSD’s have no moving parts so your portable device can actually be portable without risk of causing a hard disk crash.

      2. “The machine has always been flaky (it’s an HP Pavilion).”

        Oh god. I bought an HP Pavilion on January 2, 2011. By August it had begun failing to boot with (the equivalent of) a BIOS post code indicating a CPU failure. Between then and the end of December, I returned it three times, and they claimed they replaced the CPU twice and the motherboard twice but the problem kept coming back. When the warranty ran out I was damned if I was going to pay to extend it for them to continue to dick me around.

        So now I won’t buy HP products and I disrecommend them to everyone.

  15. Oh I should add to not mess with the heat pad for the graphics processor. Its already molded to the chip surface and can be reused. Hell I’ve even just left the heat compound on the CPU as is and had it work.

  16. Rand, for what you say you want to do, that system from NewEgg looks like an excellent deal. And we don’t even need to warn you not to use Windows 8!

    I’ve never gone wrong with anything sold by NewEgg, and they’re good people as well.

    1. Oh, come on with the Windows 8 hate. The start screen is on balance somewhat better than the Start Menu, after it was crippled in Vista by being forced into a little box instead of expanding out, and the ability to rearrange items was removed.

    1. Well, apparently you haven’t been following the conversation, because whatever I get, the Windows version is irrelevant, since I will be installing Linux on it…

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