Device Lifespan

You may recall the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone died a few days ago.  It was purchased back in 2013 along with the Asus laptop when I was working in Saudi Arabia.  I managed to get both of them at a very competitive price and also stuck to my computer strategy of purchasing two rungs below the latest technology.  The laptop needed tweaking and I replaced the wifi card with one more powerful and also managed to replace the 24GB cache SSD with 256GB of mSata storage.  Roll the clock forward seven years and the laptop is also dying. A number of the keys on the keyboard stopped working whilst we were living onboard Waiouru which resulted in me buying a small wifi keyboard.  Now the USB 3.0 port is dicky along with the SD card reader.  The back of the laptop is held together with duct tape and more recently the screen has started to intermittently go blank. 

Perhaps seven years is the most you can expect from current electronic devices?

I have been searching for a replacement laptop and eventually settled on a Lenovo Thinkpad E14 (AMD).  It’s two rungs below the latest budget laptops and was superseded in December.  I managed to purchase one directly from Lenovo Australia in the Boxing Day sale for half the retail price.   Like the Asus it has very limited storage capacity but I think I can resolve that.  It doesn’t have an SD Card Reader slot but I do have an external USB card reader.  It only has 8GB of RAM but that should be more than sufficient for my needs.  In an effort to minimize the amount of times I plug and then unplug USB devices into the laptop I’ve bought a powered USB Hub.  This means the hub can stay plugged into the laptop and our various USB devices (mouse, keyboard, hard drives, card reader, etc) get plugged into the cheaper Hub.

They are almost the same size but the Lenovo is thinner and lighter

The Lenovo Thinkpad comes with Windows 10 whilst the Asus has Windows 8.1.  I want to avoid re-installing all my programs and applications onto windows 10 and to be honest I don’t like the Windows 10 format.  My plan is to

1. Boot the Lenovo using a live distribution of Linux using a USB thumbstick
2. Clone the Windows 10 on the new Lenovo laptop to a spare 250GB hard drive using Linux.
3. Book the Asus using the same live distribution of Linux using the same USB thumbstick
4. Clone the Windows 8.1 on the old Asus laptop to a second spare 250GB hard drive
5. Clone the windows 8.1 from the 250GB hard drive back onto the Lenovo using Linux
6. Disassemble the Lenovo and install a second solid state drive into the spare slot
7. Clone the 2nd drive on the Asus to the 250GB hard drive and then clone it back onto the new drive in the Lenovo. 

The result should be the Asus windows 8.1 and stored data being replicated on the new Lenovo.  I should also have a cloned copy of Windows 10 on a spare hard drive. 

I wrote the above three days ago and I'm still endeavouring to configure the new Lenovo laptop.  There have been two major issues.  The first has been Windows 10 which managed to stuff up the Lenovo by locking out the internal storage drive with something called Bitlocker.  This required a 16 digit code to unlock and I didn't have the code.  Eventually I managed to get into the laptop BIOS and reconfigure the system to boot from a Live USB Stick version of Linux.  I completed Step 4 above and then attempted to remove the back off the Lenovo. This became my second problem.  However I persisted eventually removing it to remove the laptop innards.

[A] is the existing 256GB of solid state storage.  [B] Under the plate is 8GB of RAM with an additional spare slot for more RAM.  [C] is the spare slot for more solid state storage.

I'm not going to add more RAM as 8GB is plenty for my needs.  However I need more storage.  The new Lenovo has a different type of storage to the old Asus.  The latter has mSATA storage whilst the Lenovo uses NVMe storage which is a different format and six times faster than mSATA.  I bought a 512GB NVMe storage stick from the local computer shop opting for 512GB because it was only slightly more expensive than 256GB.  The brand is Silicon Power, which I'd never heard of, but some online research suggested it was OK.

The additional storage was then installed.  Interestingly it's about the size of a stick of chewing gum.  On reflection I remembered my first computer electro-mechanical computer hard drive has a capacity of 10MB and was physically huge compared to the NVMe stick.  The NVMe stick is tiny in comparison but has 5000% more capacity.  Technology!!!

Before securing the base to the laptop I checked the new drive was being recognized by the BIOS.   Yes; I have two NVMe storage drives.

On to Step 5

 

 

I’m Fine

A farmer named Clyde had a tractor accident. In court, the transport company's fancy hot shot barrister, was questioning Clyde. "Didn't you say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine,'?" asked the barrister.

Clyde responded, "Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favourite cow, Bessie, into the..."

"I didn't ask for any details", the barrister interrupted. "Just answer the question, ...please. Did you, or did you not say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine!'?"

Clyde said, "Well, I had just got Bessie into the trailer behind the tractor and I was driving down the road...."

The barrister interrupted again and said, "Your Honour, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the police officer on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."

By this time, the Magistrate was fairly interested in Clyde's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his favourite cow, Bessie".

Clyde thanked the Magistrate and proceeded. "Well, as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favourite cow, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my John Deere Tractor right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting, real bad and didn't want to move. However, I could hear old Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans.

Shortly after the accident a police police car came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning, so he went over to her. After he looked at her, and saw her fatal condition, he went back to his car an got a gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the police officer came across the road, gun still in hand, looked at me, and said, "How are you feeling?"

"Now tell me, what would you say?"