is what this old Toshiba Satellite Pro M10 seemed to scream at me, after its original hard disk quit yesterday afternoon. No thanks to the nut on the keyboard who ran Acronis on it about 5 or 6 times just to get the partitioning right for several Linux-based operating systems to work. Started with DSL or Damn Small Linux desktop just to make sure the machine still works and managed to get a working system after a frugal install (many thanks to ArsGeek), but nooo the nut had to download the latest Ubuntu v 7. 04 Feisty Fawn and install that. In fairness, the Pakluy (eldest son of nut) had already complained about the slowness of the machine two weeks ago, while it was still on pirata WinXP — well technically it wasn’t illegal, as this machine does have a WinXP license sticker smack on its bottom — but the original owner (not the nut) had lost the restore CD and with it all the attendant drivers.

Enter into the picture the portable mini-HD pasalubong by Kumpare Paran, Diony to all his Friendsters, which when un-cased turned out to be a Toshiba laptop HD! Thus the cogs started to turn in the nut’s noggin — would this be a suitable replacement HD? Only one way to find out.

And found out the nut did, via this really truly useful site called Irisvista.com, which features clear photos of what you should be doing looks like, each and every step of the way.

So the nut managed to swap working HD with fried HD. And successfully install Ubuntu on this very laptop that the nut is writing this post with.

The geek details so far:

Machine: Toshiba Satellite Pro M10
RAM: 256mb
HD: 40gb
Built-in WiFi, SD Card Reader, 2 USB Ports, CD-RW/DVD Drive

OS: Ubuntu v 7. 04 Feisty Fawn

What works so far:
DVDs play with Kaffeine (although it won’t play VCDs)
USB Flashdrive auto mounts
WiFi and wired connections
Local Networking / File Sharing
Skype (need to add the debian skype repository in synaptic manager)
Kodak EasyShare CX7330 - plug & play (added May 1)
VPN Connection to Office Network (added May 9)

What I haven’t yet found out if they work:
SD Card reader
Infrared
Bluetooth - just realized machine is “upgradeable” NOT “enabled” so i’m forgetting about this one

Very very useful links:

http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.ubuntu.com/support
http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php
http://wiki.ubuntu.com
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+addticket
http://www.arsgeek.com/
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.debian.org/

The undersea fiber-optic cables that snapped during the quake in Taiwan has screwed us all up here in Makati. I have clients left and right calling me, asking me if there was anything I—bambit, a mere mortal—could do to speed up their connections. I can’t do anything but to answer, as politely as I can, that it is in the hands of the huge fix-it gang currently dragging up the cables with a hook, segment by segment, trying to figure out where exactly was the snap.
The China Internet people have worse problems, from an ISP’s standpoint. And would you believe, there are actually people who don’t know that there was an earthquake in Taiwan? I will not name names — but someone called me last week complaining about the Internet slowness, and that they had called their ISP who said it was because of an earthquake in Taiwan, and so asked me if that was true or just another excuse. Not very good publicity for the ISP (which, of course, will also not be named).

There are utilities that will allow you to download websites at schedules you set, so you can view them locally on your computer. You might wanna try that . . .

hee hee …

On the eve of Typhoon Reming

If it doesn’t flood in your house when it rains, and if your computer and internet connection contraption are at least 4 feet from the lowest level area in your living room, and you still have electricity and phone lines and therefore an internet connection, you might want to discover the utter usefulness of torrents.

I think the next most expensive thing in this country to software are books. And as usual, a utility has been made on the Internet to solve this problem. Torrents.

Torrents, simply put, are segments of files that are stored on several computers and are made available through peer-to-peer file sharing. My son calls it Limewire on steroids.

First of all you need a torrent client. My son recommends uTorrent, because it’s simple and fast. He also recommends isohunt, meganova, mininova and torrentspy. My latest discovery is ebookshare.net.

I have downloaded volumes of e-books in chm format into my barebones computer, which look like the help files that come with Windows programs. Adobe PDF versions of various Dummies books are also available for those who know where to look.

Don’t you just love the Internet …