Possible Netbook for Clutter?

[securitybreach]

Cool but Sata3 versus Sata6 on an ssd is a bit complicated:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110.html

[goretsky]

Hello,

 

The Middleton BIOS unlocks support for SATA Revision 2.0 speeds, which is 3.0Gbp/s. A few people who have used it have reported odd behavior when resuming from sleep with things like secondary SSD drives installed in Ultrabay trays, though, if memory serves.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[raymac46]

There is also some big window in the side, looks big enough to fit an old audio

cassette or so, I think it's called 'PC card' or something like that? Haven't yet

 

figured out what that is and whether it might be of use to me.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card

 

PCMCIA cards used to be handy if you wanted to hook up a wifi or Ethernet connection to an old laptop but they have been supplanted by USB. Another deprecated piece of hardware like a floppy drive.

[Cluttermagnet]

Thanks, Guys-

A lot of good info here, and I'll need a little time to fully digest the implications.

 

Meanwhile, I had started a separate topic in Hardware where I'm trying to

drill down to what my choices are, going into this experience. Bear in mind

that, to date, I have never had an OS on a USB drive. That is about to

happen now. And I just fired up my first SSD ever about a week ago. I got

a 60G Corsair off of a sale on NewEgg, and was quite impressed at how

fast it made my new Dell box (new to me- Dell Precision T3400). So much

impressed that I'm just going to leave the 60G SSD in the Dell tower and

have just ordered another Corsair 120G SSD to put in the Lenovo R61 lappie.

I just don't want to risk Win7 online, so I'm going to image that drive onto

a USB flash drive and then put it away and stick the new SSD in its place

and put Linux on that. As and when I get back up to speed on how to

properly defend Win7, then I'll consider taking it online.

 

BTW somewhat unrelated question- will my copy of Win7 self-cripple if I

pass the 30 day mark and it has not yet seen internet to 'validate'?

'Cause it hasn't had even the slightest peek at internet, so far...

 

Also- is it a waste of time to take an image of the OS as is, considering

it has not been validated online?

Edited December 10, 2014 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

Did they ever use this type of card for memory? Or only comm interfaces such as you describe?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card

 

PCMCIA cards used to be handy if you wanted to hook up a wifi or Ethernet connection to an old laptop but they have been supplanted by USB. Another deprecated piece of hardware like a floppy drive.

[securitybreach]

Did they ever use this type of card for memory? Or only comm interfaces such as you describe?

 

They were mostly used for addon cards but there were some for storage. Mind you, this was back when 32mb was added storage: http://www.amazon.com/32MB-ATA-Flash-Card-PCMCIA/dp/B0014C81KO

[raymac46]

Yes I don't think you'd find a CardBus card with much memory capacity.

[Cluttermagnet]

Oh joy-

 

Following the instructions in the Lenovo manual for the R61, I removed the one screw holding on the HDD cover.

I absolutely cannot get that cover to extract in any direction! Feels like it is latched in some way at its bottom

edge. Fearing breaking the stupid thing, I will proceed no further until rescued. This is NOT going in accordance

with the seemingly simple instructions in the Lenovo manual.

 

http://support.lenov...docs/MIGR-67760

 

Ideas, anyone?

 

BTW their idea of instructions doesn't include any narrative whatever, just pictorials...

Step 2 shows an 'up and out' sort of arrow. I cannot get it to pull up or in any other

direction, for that matter.

 

Angry enough to chew nails! I hated laptops going into this. My feelings getting reinforced

here. Sooooo disappointed. I was going to get this lappy going with a new SSD and Mint17 so

Betty has something to work with. Not going to happen tonight...

 

Edit: OK, so you just brute force it...

 

 

Edit2: Installed 120GB SSD, In process of installing Linux Mint 17...

Edited December 14, 2014 by Cluttermagnet

[goretsky]

Hello,

 

Lenovo provides a complete set of video tutorials on how to disassemble and replace every part on their ThinkPads.

 

The videos can be found here: Lenovo Service and Support Training.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[Cluttermagnet]

Nice find, Aryeh- I'll definitely save those.

 

I did get the R61 running with LM17 and handed it off to Betty to use while I assess her fallen G570.

[Cluttermagnet]

Siiighhhh... NewEgg lost me as a customer today. I was treated poorly. I'm going to miss that venue. They have a lot of neat stuff. But they lost me today. Threw away a lot of business. Was about to buy a replacement laptop for Betty. We'll take that business elsewhere now. But I'm going to miss them...

 

Lesson of the day: Flunkies (functionaries) have no authority and therefore cannot help you with your problems if those are the least bit out of the ordinary. No matter how nice a person they are, if they have no authority they cannot help you.

 

I'll spend the rest of my life subtly steering folks away from NewEgg. I have a long memory...

[ebrke]

What happened?

[securitybreach]

What happened?

Yes, please elaborate

[Cluttermagnet]

The gist of it is that they must have changed the functionality of their website recently. It kicked out my

promo code rebate of some 50 dollars. In the past, this was no problem. I snuck it by them repeatedly

that I, the recipient of their email special offers, was actually using the credit card of a 3rd party to pay

them. No more. Their site is able somehow to sniff that out now- it did not in the past- over dozens and

dozens of buys including Betty's Lenovo G570. I don't do the credit card thing any more, personally.

That's a whole 'nother subject. But I still do like to buy things online...

 

So they wouldn't give Betty the 50 dollar discount, then after some half hour of wrangling and the

rep going to her supervisor a couple of times, they finally tried to buy me off for 15 bucks, then in

desperation 25 bucks. Nope, I held my ground and in the end it was a standoff. She was nice and

quite civil, nothing against her, but she was just a powerless functionary, ultimately. I wished her

well and signed off of that chat, having made it clear to her that they were throwing a loyal customer

overboard and throwing away a lot of future business. She seemed genuinely remorseful. Nothing

against her- she simply had no power to do anything in the area of 'adjustments'. Company policy,

you know. A nice person, I'm sure, and the discussion was entirely polite, FWIW. And I'm now a

former customer of theirs.

 

So we were not able to buy the refurb Lenovo T420 that they had originally gotten me interested

in- as a replacement for Betty's dead G570, at 309.00 special price. 359.00 regular price...

Ah well, what people sometimes fail to grasp is that I never bluff... I have at times confounded poker

players- although I never personally play that game...

 

I invested a couple more hours researching the T420 on Ebay, learned a bunch of new things about

that model. Ended up buying one from a quite reputable firm for 285.00 It's a better unit with a faster

i5 processor, 2.6GHz and more RAM (8 vs 4G), the better display (1600x900 vx. 1364x768) and on

and on. Betty already likes my little cheapie R61 refurb. With a 1.8GHz Celeron, for gosh sakes.

She is going to love the T420...

 

I had to giggle- I saw NewEgg in the Ebay listings with the exact, identical refurb T420 at 379.00.

Amazing...

Edited December 17, 2014 by Cluttermagnet

[securitybreach]

I personally just use a prepaid credit card when I do my shopping as I do not deal with banks either.

[Cluttermagnet]

I can well understand that preference. Good idea, too.

[securitybreach]

I used one called ReadyDebit and it costs $2.95 to load with no monthly fees. Plus you can load it at any Dollar Store, Walmart and most gas stations.

 

It is just a visa and they send you one with your name on it so noone knows the wiser. It works anywhere online or in a physical store. I have been using mine for about 5 years now.

[ebrke]

Ended up buying one from a quite reputable firm for 285.00 It's a better unit with a faster

i5 processor, 2.6GHz and more RAM (8 vs 4G), the better display (1600x900 vx. 1364x768) and on

and on.

Glad you got a good buy. Hope the seller is in fact reputable.

[Cluttermagnet]

You never know completely for sure, but a feedback record which is 100 percent positive is a very good sign indeed. Also a high feedback number approaching 1,000 buyer ratings. This seller has been on a while. I'm pretty good at sniffing out the questionable ones, and feel confident about this. It's also very telling when you discern that the seller is using a unique photo of the actual item in each auction, and not just a stock photo.

[Cluttermagnet]

They shipped fast and we received it two days later. Pretty impressive. Seems like it is in

pretty good shape. So far I haven't seen much wrong with it. Slight wear but certainly not

a beater. For some reason CTRL + T does not open a new tab in FF. I'm in a live DVD

session when that happens. Running Linux Mint 17 Mate. The copy of Win7 on it woke

right up and had me enter a user and pwd, no key was requested. I was seeing at least

four wireless signals in my neighborhood, BTW but didn't mess with that. One of them

said it was unsecured. I might check into that later... Everything looks good so far...

[zlim]

My network shows unsecure when searching but you have to put in a non-trivial password to use it. A box would pop up to enter the password. I also have limited the number of IPs it hands out and that covers exactly all my gear. So if you guessed the password, you'd get another message about no addresses available.

MAC filtering it on too. I know a MAC address can be spoofed but you have to figure out what mine are. I have disabled UPnP and wireless administration. So it is pretty hard to get into the router and see the MACs I have entered in the router.

 

You'd have to spend some time hacking if you wanted to attempt to hitch a ride on my unsecure network.

[securitybreach]

I keep my network hidden and you have to input the name manually when connecting. There are ways of getting into a network, no matter the encryption, so it is better to keep it hidden from prying eyes.

[securitybreach]

It is also good to use a non-standard channel to avoid interference.

[Cluttermagnet]

All interesting points, guys. Yes, I fiddled a bit and saw password windows for each and

every one of them. What I'm going to do is to lock down wifi and bluetooth in Windows

and use both pretty cautiously in Linux at first. Probaly from a live DVD session at first.

Baby steps...

[securitybreach]

It's actually pretty straightforward. You will want to set an admin password so the settings are secured.

 

When you setup the wifi, first change the channel to 11 (8 is the one most used = interference).

 

Next choose wpa2(most secure) for your encryption type and set a long password. Remember wifi networks are hacked by capturing wireless packets so the longer the password, the longer it takes to penetrate.

 

Make sure to turn on the NAT firewall if offered and configure it.

 

The rest depends on if you want to use port forwarding for open ports, etc.

[securitybreach]

Also if your router supports DD-WRT (opensource firmware), you can turn that $50 router into a $800 router with a ton of features and ssh access. You can also install Linux applications and run servers right from the router or a hardened firewall.

[ebrke]

All interesting points, guys. Yes, I fiddled a bit and saw password windows for each and

every one of them. What I'm going to do is to lock down wifi and bluetooth in Windows

and use both pretty cautiously in Linux at first. Probaly from a live DVD session at first.

Baby steps...

I'm trying to catch up on this thread. Clutter, did you get a new wireless router as well as a refurb laptop? Just curious because I thought you didn't use wireless.

[Cluttermagnet]

The basic flow went something like this- Clutter reached the end of another year with Comcast at 29.99/mo

for high speed internet. They jacked the price to 45 bucks, tried to portray that I was being granted a favor,

getting a bargain, etc. But 30 dollars/mo is my point of pain, so I disconnected Comcast. Again. Not the first

time, probably won't be the last.

 

I'm on dialup only at my place, still have daily access to Comcast cable at Betty's place.

 

Clutter had been seeing a lot of really dirt cheap refurb lappies coming on the market in recent years. Saw

a Lenovo R61 for 135 bucks and couldn't resist at that price, even for 5+ year old tech. The intent all along

was to learn for the first time how to safely use wifi, which I have studiously avoided up to now for security/

privacy reasons in favor of an Ethernet *only* pipe around my place and Bettys.

 

The intent was, and still is, to learn how to grab occasional broadband at wifi hot spots like Tarbucks, etc.

Would and will still need to drag various desktop towers over to Betty's for online Linux updates, etc. but

more on that later...

 

Fast forward- Betty's Lenovo G570 craps out last week, We end up ordering a used Lenovo T420 to replace

the now possibly defunct 570. We now have both Lenovo lappies in hand and I am slowly working my way

through learning the hardware, installing Linux on both boxes to be the main, day to day OS in use, and

gradually learning the ins and outs of wifi operability and security. I am now on the cusp of trying my first

forays with wifi, which I picture as taking place at wifi hot spots like the above mentioned Tarbucks et al.

I do not plan to enable any wifi at either my place or Betty's. I have a lot of Ethernet connectivity plumbed

in already and am perfectly happy with that. I have wifi completely locked down/disabled and plan to keep

it that way. Let me hasten to add, those first experiences will be in a safe status running live-DVD sessions

of Linux- until I better understand the hardware and the OS and how to harden and properly defend them

against wifi hacking attempts. I'm sure there are a few hacker lounge lizzard types hanging out at these

wifi hot spots just waiting for the next sucker to come along...

 

So wifi capability is planned for the two Lenovo Thinkpad lappies, R61 and T420, and that is it. Further,

wifi will generally be kept locked down except as needed. Both lappies have Ethernet jacks... Both have

RJ-11 jacks for dialup, for that matter (Windows), or USB jacks for an external dialup 'dongle' for running

with Linux...

 

Regarding routers, those which are wifi capable are supposed to be locked down for wifi, and I pretty much

plan to keep it that way. I may experiment a bit, but that would be the exception.

 

Now- downloads... while I can't download Linux distros at 700M to 1.5GB plus depending on the distro,

I have found that I can do a fair amount of updates online via dialup. Just recently the 2.8GHz P4-478

box I have currently running at Casa Clutter got updated on line to the tune of maybe 100- 150MB.

It takes a while but is doable. It's been a kind of interesting exercise.

 

Understand that I have elected to keep my POTS line (plain old telephone service) for some years

now when 'better' options were available. I have my reasons. I pay about 25 dollars a month for that

POTS line and would not let it go at present. I pay another 5 bucks for a dialup ISP. For years I've kept

that ISP as I feel that 60 bucks a year is pretty cheap for a good solid backup that would still run if

Comcast got knocked in the weeds for a day or three- by storms or whatever. I looked at the dialup

ISP as a free email account plus solid backup and let it go at that. As you are now seeing, this gives

me way more than average leverage with Comcast (or whoever) as I am much more ready to fall

back on dialup rather than knuckle under to the broadband ISP's. They have obscene monopolies

and have most people pretty solidly hooked. I am a low bandwidth user, and I don't intend to

allow them to frog march me to needlessly higher rates and enhanced (faster) service that I don't

need, don't want, and never ordered. I do not want to subsidize Joe Bloat Boy to stream endless

movies, wage bloody first person shooter wars in active online games, or whatever. I want cheap,

basic, high speed broadband internet access and I want to pay by bandwidth consumed. I would

also order online cable TV *if and only if* I could pay for 'a la carte' channel choices and not for a

bloated package. But don't get me started... Yes, I agree with those who see the broadband boys as

just another common carrier who should be regulated accordingly...

 

So no new routers recently. Of the one I run at my place and the three I run at Betty's, all but one are

capable of running wifi, but are prevented from doing so. One router, given to me by a good

friend on Scot's, is not wifi capable, so far as I understood and remember. I'm using that box as

more of an 'Ethernet distribution hub' for several computers in a room upstairs at Betty's.

So the wireless discussion I have instigated relates solely to the two new laptops we just acquired,

and my learning experience as I work my way belatedly through things most of you folks learned

10-15 years ago...

Edited December 21, 2014 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

Your last two posts above are very information dense for me, Josh- and pretty much represent

most of the learning I'll have to go through to know what I'm doing with wifi. I'll work through all

this slowly.

 

Also if your router supports DD-WRT (opensource firmware), you can turn that $50 router into a $800 router with a ton of features and ssh access. You can also install Linux applications and run servers right from the router or a hardened firewall.

[ebrke]

So the wireless discussion I have instigated relates solely to the two new laptops we just acquired,

and my learning experience as I work my way belatedly through things most of you folks learned

10-15 years ago...

Clutter, I still don't use wireless. Can't afford tablets or e-readers, and don't have any place in the house where I could comfortably use my laptop except where it is now, next to the modem and router on my desk.