Add new life to an old laptop

For my birthday this year, I decided that I needed to upgrade the hard drive in my PowerBook G4/667 that I've had since 2001... At one time, this was the "high-end" machine, so it came bundled with the AirPort wireless card and 512Mb of RAM, along with a 30Gb drive... That was a pretty decent size at the time, but as I've expanded my usage of iTunes and iPhoto, and development tools, etc. the 27Gb of formatted disk space just isn't enough any more...

I had a budget of $200 to work with, and wanted to get an external drive case as well as the drive. I wanted to pick out the case first, to see how much I could spend on the drive. I shopped for price ranges on http://www.PriceWatch.com first, to get a feel for what things should cost. Then I went to http://www.NewEgg.com, one of my favorite online stores, to see how their prices compared. They were close to the lowest prices on PriceWatch, but I was much more comfortable dealing with a vendor that I've had a good track record with in the past.

At NewEgg, I found a nice aluminum Macally drive case for 2.5" drives, with both USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a), that was about $36. That would leave me a little over $160 for the drive, which should be enough for decent drive... In fact, it was enough for a Toshiba 100Gb, 5400rpm drive with 16Mb of cache. This drive is not only three times the capacity of the original, but it should be noticably faster as well.

The total for both the drive and case, including FedEx Express Saver 3-day shipping, was less than a dollar over my $200 budget. I placed my order on Sunday night, and everything was delivered on Wednesday afternoon. After using "SuperDuper!" (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper) to copy the contents of the original drive to the new drive, temporarily mounted in the external case, I was ready to swap the drives. Don't panic, I have a Retrospect backup of the contents, too, just in case...

Using a "take-apart" diagram from http://www.pbfixit.com, I was able to take off the lower panel of the PowerBook, remove and replace the drive, and reassemble in less than half an hour. The only tool needed was a T-8 Torx driver, to remove 8 screws from the bottom of the case, and four screws for the drive mounts. The take-apart diagram includes an organizer layout page to help keep each size screw sorted out.

A few minutes later I had installed the old 30Gb drive into the external drive case, and was ready to go. The Macally PHR-250cc case is durable aluminum, and easy to install. It has room for any 2.5" drive up to 9.5mm tall. There are two FireWire ports to allow "dasy-chaining" devices together, and can be powered directly from the FireWire or USB connection. There is also a USB 1.1 or 2.0 port, as well as a 5v power input if needed. The case came with both FireWire and USB cables, and also has a USB power cable so that the drive can be powered through a second USB connection if needed. It even came with a soft leather-like sleeve for extra protection. Because of the small size, and no need for an extra power adapter, this external drive is very easy to take along in my computer bag.

After confirming that everything on the new drive was working properly, I reformated the old drive as an MS-DOS volume using Disk Utility from my PowerBook. While this has some drawbacks for using with the Mac, such as slightly less performance, and possible complications with long file names or invalid characters in names, it offers lots of flexibility in transferring data with other platforms. I've found that transfering zip, stuffit or tar archives is the safest way to move things... This lets me transfer documents and other files between my Macs and Linux/FreeBSD machines at home, and my Windows laptop from work.

I have noticed that the PowerBook feels faster now, with the new drive, although I don't have a good way to actually measure that. The old drive in the external case will be very convenient. I could have gotten a smaller drive for less money, but I wanted to maximize that amount of stuff that I can carry with me when I travel... Overall, I'm very pleased with my update.

Blockbuster does it again

Well, it seems that "The end of late fees" also triggered "The beginning of harassment" at Blockbuster... We rented a couple of movies two weeks ago, not new releases, but one week rentals. We weren't able to watch one of them the first week, so we held onto it, but returned the other. The day after it was due, we got an automated voice mail from Blockbuster reminding us that we had TWO movies overdue, and that they would suspend our rental privileges until they were returned. We finished watching the movie last night, but before we could return it this evening, we got a second voicemail!

I don't recall ever getting a "reminder" when we had to pay a fee if it was late, but now that the revenue stream has been cut off, the nagging has begun!

I confirmed with the kid at the counter that there was really only one item that was past due. He couldn't explain why the message had said two, when one had been returned before the due date...

My previous experiences with "late fees" makes me worry about the new policy. There have been several occasions that I've returned movies in the slot at the counter, and then rented a couple of new ones. Weeks later when we go again, they try to tell me that the previous movies were late, and I have to pay for them again! I've even showed the kid the date/timestamp on the receipt for the second set of movies that we got when we returned the previous ones, but he still wouldn't believe me. They even showed the two movies that I returned together being check in on different days!

The next time that an actual adult "manager" was there I was able to get a refund, but it shows the flaw in the system. Since you don't get any sort of receipt when you drop the movies into the slot, you are at Blockbuster's mercy that they will properly check them into their system. If they mess up, you could end up paying full retail price for a rental that you returned on time that they didn't check in...

My suggestion would be that every time you return a movie at Blockbuster, go inside to the counter, and make them scan it on the spot and print a receipt...

This is making NetFlix sound more and more appealing!

Karma?

I saw a funny bumper sticker on the way home tonight -- "My karma hit your dogma"

First post

A Google search that I did today took me to a blog, and on a whim I decided to create my own account...