For those (few) readers who have noticed that I haven’t blogged lately, the reason is this: my laptop died. Yes, the Dell T5510 in which I had just invested about $100 to replace the screen and power cord decided that it was time to give up the semiconductor ghost. I used it in the morning, took it into the office but didn’t use it, and when I tried to use it that night at home it was just flat out dead. Wouldn’t turn on.
Panic.
One of the side effects of a life lived on the road, in an RV, is an increased dependence on one’s computer. Jett and I are, of necessity, nearly paperless. All of our financial records, along with emails and various supporting applications (e.g., GPS map downloads) reside on the laptop’s hard disk. Losing the use of the laptop brings many aspects of RV life to a grinding halt.
I am not a complete idiot. Of course I back up that hard disk regularly, but the most recent backup was about 10 days prior to the crash. Losing even 10 days of records is not a great option. I suspected that the problem did not involve the hard disk and that the data were probably recoverable. So while I looked for a new laptop, I asked Jett to stop in at Best Buy and see if they could transfer the disk to an external drive. But, for reasons I still don’t understand, they were either unable or unwilling to do that; instead they wanted to download subsets of files based on some utilitarian categorization. They asked questions like “what email client do you use?” I tried to get through to them that they shouldn’t care; I just wanted the entire contents of the disk transferred. They tried to patiently explain that I would need to reinstall software (which I knew) and I tried to patiently explain that I didn’t care. We never did get to a point of understanding, so I instructed Jett to walk out and I proceeded to find an independent contractor to do my bidding.
For the cost of a 2TB disk ($103) and a disk-to-disk copy job ($75) I was able to successfully recover the contents of the disk. Then the real work began: reinstalling and reconfiguring the software. Fortunately, I had the foresight to save the downloads of the most recent versions of Quicken and Thunderbird (or perhaps benefitted from my failure to clean up the Downloads directory) and was able to reinstall everything that I use regularly from the recovered disk. The hardest part was reconfiguring the folders on Thunderbird. That took some research and hard work.
All told, I probably spent over 20 hours, spread over a week, on recovering my files and getting the new laptop (a Toshiba) into a functioning state. There are probably a few things that remain to be done. For example, I just recovered the Garmin GPS update software today. But I am once again up a running and this post is proof of that.
One thing I decided to not recover was my Windows 7 operating system. The new Toshiba came with Windows 8 already installed. I probably could have overwritten it with Windows 7, but decided to get with the program and “upgrade” to Windows 8.
It isn’t much of an upgrade, folks. I had to spend several hours figuring out how to disable some of the Windows 8 “charms” which I found to be less than charming. They were so annoying that I was contemplating returning the laptop and finding one with Windows 7 instead. But now that I have de-charmed Windows 8 it is tolerable, though still very unfriendly. I am beginning to understand why Apple is so successful.
A lifetime on a laptop
For those (few) readers who have noticed that I haven’t blogged lately, the reason is this: my laptop died. Yes, the Dell T5510 in which I had just invested about $100 to replace the screen and power cord decided that it was time to give up the semiconductor ghost. I used it in the morning, took it into the office but didn’t use it, and when I tried to use it that night at home it was just flat out dead. Wouldn’t turn on.
Panic.
One of the side effects of a life lived on the road, in an RV, is an increased dependence on one’s computer. Jett and I are, of necessity, nearly paperless. All of our financial records, along with emails and various supporting applications (e.g., GPS map downloads) reside on the laptop’s hard disk. Losing the use of the laptop brings many aspects of RV life to a grinding halt.
I am not a complete idiot. Of course I back up that hard disk regularly, but the most recent backup was about 10 days prior to the crash. Losing even 10 days of records is not a great option. I suspected that the problem did not involve the hard disk and that the data were probably recoverable. So while I looked for a new laptop, I asked Jett to stop in at Best Buy and see if they could transfer the disk to an external drive. But, for reasons I still don’t understand, they were either unable or unwilling to do that; instead they wanted to download subsets of files based on some utilitarian categorization. They asked questions like “what email client do you use?” I tried to get through to them that they shouldn’t care; I just wanted the entire contents of the disk transferred. They tried to patiently explain that I would need to reinstall software (which I knew) and I tried to patiently explain that I didn’t care. We never did get to a point of understanding, so I instructed Jett to walk out and I proceeded to find an independent contractor to do my bidding.
For the cost of a 2TB disk ($103) and a disk-to-disk copy job ($75) I was able to successfully recover the contents of the disk. Then the real work began: reinstalling and reconfiguring the software. Fortunately, I had the foresight to save the downloads of the most recent versions of Quicken and Thunderbird (or perhaps benefitted from my failure to clean up the Downloads directory) and was able to reinstall everything that I use regularly from the recovered disk. The hardest part was reconfiguring the folders on Thunderbird. That took some research and hard work.
All told, I probably spent over 20 hours, spread over a week, on recovering my files and getting the new laptop (a Toshiba) into a functioning state. There are probably a few things that remain to be done. For example, I just recovered the Garmin GPS update software today. But I am once again up a running and this post is proof of that.
One thing I decided to not recover was my Windows 7 operating system. The new Toshiba came with Windows 8 already installed. I probably could have overwritten it with Windows 7, but decided to get with the program and “upgrade” to Windows 8.
It isn’t much of an upgrade, folks. I had to spend several hours figuring out how to disable some of the Windows 8 “charms” which I found to be less than charming. They were so annoying that I was contemplating returning the laptop and finding one with Windows 7 instead. But now that I have de-charmed Windows 8 it is tolerable, though still very unfriendly. I am beginning to understand why Apple is so successful.
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