My only working1 computer is a used2 Lenovo ThinkPad T400 on which I installed Linux Mint 18.3. It has several issues:
- The battery is pretty much shot. I let it run on battery power alone and it abruptly died after about 10 minutes.
- Originally I had two adaptors, due to a snafu with the company I
got the laptop from.
- The one I’ve been using has what looks like a nick in the cord to the computer. I wrapped it in packing tape(?!?) to keep it from getting worse. Today it didn’t want to supply power to the laptop for a while, although now it’s fine. Don’t know what that’s about.
- The other had a loose connection that I had originally set aside. It started heating up and sparked when I tried to use it today.
- The lower right mouse button no longer works, maybe from overuse. (Hey, I like opening pages in a new tab. So sue me.) The upper one still works, for now.
- The keyboard is filthy. Which is what I get for computing and eating.
- A while(?!?) ago the DVD tray on the side kept randomly popping out. I kept pulling it out all the way and pushing it back in. On one of those occasions the whole tray broke off. I sealed the hole with packing tape, but something’s still rattling around in there somewhere.
- At some point I think Mint 18.3 was end-of-lifed, because all the
little software updates I used to get stopped.
(Except for the Chrome browser, which I downloaded from Google.
They’re always tweaking that thing.)
That’s good in that I’m no longer prompted to upgrade
inetd
or whatever, but bad because I’m probably missing important security fixes. - Part of the right front corner is broken. I don’t recall if it came that way or it cracked soon after I got it. In any case, I keep it together and smooth out the sharp edges with, you guessed it, packing tape.
Today I remedied the first two problems by ordering a new charger and battery from a company I hope won’t sell me the wrong thing or rip me off. The others are harder to fix. For example, when popping off a sticky key I have sometimes broken the little plastic thing that makes it pop up when pressed; I can’t imagine popping them all off to clean out the gunk that’s accumulated there. Plus, I bought the thing for $150, so I don’t fancy taking it to a repair shop to replace the DVD drive and fix other issues because they might charge nearly as much as its worth.3
What I really want is a Galago Pro, which is a neat machine built with Linux4 in mind. Except it’s just under $1000 … or over $1000 with the memory and disk upgrades I also want. Even if I pay for it in monthly installments, that’s a lot of money to replace something I use (currently) to stream cartoons, send resumes, write blogs (and other things), and fiddle around with scripting languages.
Now I say this not because I expect my non-existent readers to buy me my dream laptop5, or because I’d like said non-existent readers to suggest alternatives on the non-existent contact form. No, I’m just complaining to the Internet, and any who might find this post. Lucky you.
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As reported in 2019, my 2014 Mac Mini stopped being usable after I upgraded it to MacOS Catalina. I also have a broken MacBook (video card fried, slightly disassembled), a broken cheap Windows laptop (tea spilled on keyboard, never worked again), and a cheap desktop and monitor that I bought as a Subversion server and test platform that may work but I never took it out of the plastic. ↩︎
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I’ve had it since 2018. No idea how old it actually is. ↩︎
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I used to have a second, newer MacBook Pro than my current busted one until it broke in 2016. (I got the Mac Mini in a panic because every file I had was backed up in Apple’s proprietary Time Machine format.) After taking it to a qualified Apple service center, they told me the motherboard was shot and the cost to fix it was a few hundred less than what I paid for it. I just left it there. Let them use it for parts. ↩︎
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Why Linux? Because I loathe Windows and I’m never entering Apple’s walled garden again. ↩︎
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System76 seems to make the best Linux laptops for their price point, and the only other model I might consider is the Lemur, which is lighter and has longer battery life. But I’d rather spend that money on memory and disk than battery life and portability. ↩︎