Consequences, shmonsequences...

[denny]

On Friday night I updated the BIOS on libellum's PC, in an attempt to make it recognise that her 80GB hard drive was in fact 80GB and not 32GB as it currently thought. I say an attempt because the dreaded occasion arose - a failed BIOS update. Her PC is now a near-inert lump of plastic and metal which refuses to POST. Not quite inert, as it does a nice line in flashing the optical drive lights sporadically, and occasionally letting out a plaintive little beep. Cute, but not much use for word-processing or web-browsing, and so a solution was needed. Fairly urgently, academic deadlines being what they are.

Fortunately I remembered a second-hand PC shop in Cambridge (Computer Resale on Mill Road), and a quick glance at their website on Saturday morning indicated that they had reasonably cheap low-end base units for sale, so off we went. The guy there was really helpful, and we picked out a PIII-866 with 384MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive, for £75 (with 90 days warranty), which seemed reasonable to me. We also picked up a new keyboard for a tenner, as the current one was on loan anyway. When we got it home I stuck the 80GB drive and a 128MB stick of RAM from the old machine into the new one, and it all seems to be working okay *.

Oh yes, and while the invoice for the base unit was being printed, I glanced at the shop's current flyer with a few selected deals on it, and got sucked in by an entry at the bottom of the laptop section... a few questions and a quick test-drive later, a Dell Latitude C810 was being added to the invoice. It's a PIII-1.1 with 256MB of RAM and a 1600x1200 screen ♥♥. It weighs a tonne, but my main reason for wanting it is so that I can spod work from bed after my surgery next month, so 'barely portable' is fine by me - Screen Real-Estate Is God :) It cost me £280, which again I think is reasonable for something with a warranty. Shame it's only got a CD drive, I would have liked to have the option of using it as an in-bed DVD-watching machine, and I'm not sure my 11Mb/s wireless card will be up to that. Assuming I can get the wireless network working here, anyway... must look at that this week. Once I've installed Linux on the laptop. And picked a name for it. The new desktop is 'serenity' (yes, I'm a sad little sci-fi geek, sue me), and it's just occurred to me that a policy of using sci-fi ship names for my PCs could keep me amused for quite a while. Maybe the laptop should be 'starbug', it looks similarly rugged :-P

So anyway, pay attention kiddies... I'm here to tell you that soft fixes lead to hard fixes. And that hanging around with people while they're getting their hard fix may very well lead to you getting a hard fix of your very own. Be warned.


* Except the Belkin USB wireless network dongle thing, which is having a driver crisis... I installed the (latest) drivers, it said there was a problem and to try uninstalling and reinstalling them. I uninstalled them, tried to reinstall them, and it says they're already partially installed and refuses to have anything to do with them... I can't figure out how to get them either properly installed or properly uninstalled now. I hate Windows.

Comments

[mr_magicfingers]

Can you run a cat5 to the laptop in the bedroom. I've happily streamed video from my server to my laptop for playing on the tv. vlc as the player and just select the remote server drive with the file on it. Would work fine.

Alternatively you could just rip the dvd and transfer it to the lappy in a similar fashion.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking cat5 might be the answer... it's not exactly a big flat.

H says can you call her please? She's planning to avail herself of your magic fingers :)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

A DVD drive for your laptop might be more standard and cheaper than you think... :)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

That is a particularly good point. *googles*