Home
|
The Great eBay Laptop Experiment - Part 1 |
|
|
|
|
Written by Michael Salsbury
|
|
Monday, 15 October 2007 |
Given that WiFi seems to be proliferating throughout the areas
where I live, work, and vacation, I thought it might be nice to
have a laptop I could keep in the car with me and pull out whenever
I happened to be stuck somewhere bored and do some blogging,
writing, or whatever. My requirements for the system would be the
following:
Total expenditure: $100 or less. That way, if someone breaks in the
car and steals it or I smash it in some way, I'm not going to be
too devastated since I will hopefully have gotten my $100 worth out
of it.
Technology: Needs to be WiFi capable. Needs to be able to run
something "reasonably current" in terms of operating system (e.g.,
Windows 2000, Mac OS X 10.3 or later, Linux 6.x kernel). Needs
enough storage to hold a basic set of applications, including but
not necessarily limited to the OS, an Office Suite (probably
OpenOffice.org), web browser(s), GIMP, and other apps useful to me
in blogging and writing.
I began searching eBay for used laptops. The ones listed as being
in actual working order were all close to $200 when they sold. That
was way out of the budget for this little experiment. Eventually, I
settled on a Fujitsu LifeBook S-4546 that was listed without a hard
drive or power adapter for about $40. I managed to win the auction
and receive the laptop. Unfortunately, it's either dead or I
haven't found the right power supply for it. I put it aside when I
found that it also was missing a hard drive interface cable.
I searched eBay again, and managed to get a Dell Inspiron 3800 for
around $50 shipped. Like the Fujitsu, it was missing an optical
drive, battery, and AC adapter.. However, unlike the Fujitsu, it
happened to use parts I had on hand from an old Dell Latitude CPxJ
750GT that I once used. I slapped a battery and DVD-ROM drive into
it. Unfortunately, some idiot left an admin password in the BIOS
and I couldn't convince it to boot from an operating system CD.
Since I work with Dells a lot, I know that they have a "master BIOS
password" that can be used to unlock a system if you forget the
password you (or someone else) has set. To get that password,
however, you have to be able to prove ownership and possession of
the laptop. I started a chat session with a Dell tech and managed
to convince them to have someone look the password up for the
system. Unfortunately, the techs who did that particular task were
gone for the day.
The next day, I chatted with another Dell tech. They went to get
the password for me, but found that their internal communication
system was down and they couldn't reach the appropriate person(s).
Later in the same day, I chatted with another tech, who told me
that they were having internal communication issues and she
couldn't get the password either.
In the chat log she sent me, there was a reference to an address I
could email to get help if the chat system wasn't doing it for me.
I compiled all the information Dell's technicians had previously
asked me into simple paragraph and emailed it to that address last
Friday. It's late on Monday and no response yet.
In the meantime, I borrowed a Dell Latitude CP laptop (which is
very similar to the Inspiron) and swapped hard drives with the
Inspiron. I planned to load Ubuntu 7.04. Unfortunately, something
about Ubuntu 7.04 just didn't get along with that laptop. It
literally took 5-10 minutes to boot (from multiple copies of the
CD). I then tried Linux Desktop XP 2006, which worked fine but I
decided I didn't like. I then tried the new Vixta.org
distribution, which loaded fine and looked great, but wouldn't
install for some reason (even though the system met the specs). I
pulled out an old Ubuntu 6 CD and booted from that. It installed
without a hitch. I put the drive back in the Inspiron and it was
once again functional as a laptop.
Ubuntu had appropriate video drivers, keyboard drivers, mouse
drivers, sound drivers, etc. Everything seemed to be working
properly when I went to bed last night.
The next step will be to plug a Dell wireless card I have into the
machine and see if I can make it "speak WiFi". If so, I'll move on
to working with the software configuration on the machine.
|
|
|
|
