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Laptop for £500?

I guess that Mike can't follow simple instructions! I have umpteen Thinkpads going back to the T.2x. All my friends are on T.4xx machines as they are so simple and work fine.

If he can't even cope through very very very simple instructions then he has no hope with any Linux distro has he? We don't even know what he actually did do we? Did he really do as I asked?

What a waste of my time.

Never again,

DV
Followed your instructions. Did as I was told. Repeated exactly that 4 times. Tried variations just in case. I had a great incentive to get it working but after the hours I spent I had to call it a day.

I have watched IT guys sort problems over the years. I ran a business with 15 PCs. I want to know what to do next time and for general interest at least.
Very often they do 'something'.
I ask what and why.
It comes from their general IT and PC knowledge that I don't have.
I added that experience to my knowledge for next time. Even made notes in case it was months away.

If I were to watch you doing this there would be something that I have no 'general' knowledge for.
That tickbox, that partition, "that shouldn't be greyed out", this needs formatting first, that's not right, etc.

Write me off if you like.
Spare a thought for others you can help though.
Finally. Thank you for your time. Much appreciated
 
For those considering a laptop to replace their desktops
My W7 desktop will have to be replaced soon.
Stumbled across a docking station that could be very useful, especially if it allows me to connect an IBM clicky keyboard, decent mouse and 2 monitors or some mix

Thinkpad Mini Dock Plus Series 3 433815U Lenovo T530 T520 T430 T420 T410
https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/113269304405?ul_noapp=true
which I will find out
 
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Mike
See if you can download/access any manuals to guide actions for your laptop. In particular exchange the hard disk.

With that guidance attempt to replace the original drive with the SSD. If you can then you probably will need to at least check or adjust the BIOS for the Boot/Startup disk settings, because the disk will have changed.

Having done that there is a slim chance the machine will work. Please cease from repeatedly telling us how useless you are with technology. I think we appreciate that but willingness to try, curiosity and will to get there works for many, why not for you?
 
No chance.
I can be 99% certain that would not work for me

Nonsense! Much, much easier than installing Windows if you choose a user-friendly version like Kubuntu/Ubuntu. If I can do it, with no IT training or technical knowledge whatsoever, I'm sure you can.
 
Mike
See if you can download/access any manuals to guide actions for your laptop. In particular exchange the hard disk.

With that guidance attempt to replace the original drive with the SSD. If you can then you probably will need to at least check or adjust the BIOS for the Boot/Startup disk settings, because the disk will have changed.

Having done that there is a slim chance the machine will work. Please cease from repeatedly telling us how useless you are with technology. I think we appreciate that but willingness to try, curiosity and will to get there works for many, why not for you?
The Thinkpads are very easy to service needing little more than a screw driver and the service manual available from the Lenovo web site shows how using just pictures.

The Thinkpad was originally designed by IBM for their own workforce so its operation was kept very simple and foolproof. The average user doesn't need to go into the BIOS unless they need to set security settings such as a power on password and locking the HD. As I mentioned in my post above during the BIOS splash screen you hold down F12 and you are given a list of boot options e.g, HDs, optical drive, USB drives and sticks.

To remove the internal HD in its caddie is one screw. To remove the HD from the caddie is 4 screws. If using a UltraBay HD caddie there are no screws. Pop the disk in slide out the optical drive and slide the caddie in. Quicker to do than read this.

Dead simple to work on. I have just had to replace a HD in an HP laptop for someone. There were 14 screws to remove 3 of which were hidden. Then extract the optical drive and carefully prise out the plastic keyboard without breaking it. Then holding the keyboard at an angle remove 3 ribbon cables. Finally to get at the HD another ribbon cable that ran over the HD had to be removed. I do these repairs for fun.

Cheers,

DV
 
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Nonsense! Much, much easier than installing Windows if you choose a user-friendly version like Kubuntu/Ubuntu. If I can do it, with no IT training or technical knowledge whatsoever, I'm sure you can.
A computer is a logical device and does what it is told. When you need to do something I always ask myself 'surely I can't be the first and this has already been covered so where can I find the info'. If thousands of others have been there it can't be that difficult its just a case of finding out

A stepwise methodical approach works wonders. Only the other day my wife called me over complaining that the printer didn't work. Show me I said and her hands were all over the keyboard. I sat down in front of the screen and just looked at it. "You have selected the wrong printer".

Cheers,

DV
 
Mike
See if you can download/access any manuals to guide actions for your laptop. In particular exchange the hard disk.

With that guidance attempt to replace the original drive with the SSD. If you can then you probably will need to at least check or adjust the BIOS for the Boot/Startup disk settings, because the disk will have changed.

Having done that there is a slim chance the machine will work. Please cease from repeatedly telling us how useless you are with technology. I think we appreciate that but willingness to try, curiosity and will to get there works for many, why not for you?

I'll grab someone who knows this sort of stuff hopefully fairly soon.
Digging into the laptop and BIOS are not for me.

Not so useless with tech. I get some odd things happening and don't have an IT support background
When I had to and with guidance I went into BIOS and DOS, messed around with Novell, programmed in FoxPro and a few others not least of which was a Xerox Docutech, RIP and workstation

My most important tech tip ?
Turn it off and on again. Works for so many problems
:)
 
I was so fed up of PCs and their bios nonsense that I was relieved to move to Macs back in the 90’s.

Do you remember interrupt conflicts? Oh dear.

PCs are better now of course, but still lag far, far behind.

Of course my job is to run and maintain PCs at work, so I do the awful job. But PCs remain so uselessly fussy compared to Macs.
 
I was so fed up of PCs and their bios nonsense that I was relieved to move to Macs back in the 90’s.

Do you remember interrupt conflicts? Oh dear.

PCs are better now of course, but still lag far, far behind.
Just to be clear a MAC is a PC. You can run Windows and Linux plus other stuff like Volumio on one.

I well remember the days of DOS and building the autoexec.bat and config.sys files (they still exist within Windows). In those days adding an audio card and CDROM was known as multimedia and us gamers had to know how to configure the computer IRQ, DMA etc. Networking was even more fun building the stacks.

My earliest 'proper' computer I built (3000 soldered joints) didn't have an O/S! Just a monitor (sort of a more complex BIOS/EFI) and data was saved/loaded on cassette tapes and I had to key in the OP codes manually so when CP/M arrived it was a boon especially after Lotus 123 was released.

Its amazing how all that complexity has been hidden and has made these complex devices available to the general public and at such a low price for what you get.

Cheers.

DV
 
What about the equally awful registry? Probably one of the oldest and worst part of Windows.
Nothing much has changed.
Cloning on a Mac (or within Linux) is also much simpler. And no silly serial numbers.
 
To me Windows is under the hood an inelegant O/S due I think to its history. It was originally based on DOS that Mr Gates acquired and changed it to MSDOS. The Windows GUI was originally Presentation Manager from the joint IBM/Microsoft OS/2 Warp project. Somehow the two companies separated and Microsoft was able to hold onto the PM GUI which became Windows. Remember version 3 and 3.1 they still had the IBM blue background and even Win 10 today still sports some of the blue. Oh BSOD!

These O/S all have advantages/disadvantages but boy do we have a lot of processing power today.

As for cloning Mikes situation was found to be a bit more complex as he wants to xfer the system from a 500GB disk to a smaller 120GB and from what I gather his HD was full of a lot of Windows crap left behind after many updates so this lot wouldn't fit. So we cleaned it out and found that only about 70GB was actually in use. But then it was found that Windows could only shrink to around 220GB and that wouldn't fit on a 120GB SSD. Now why the conflict of 70GB of disk in use but Windows hanging on to 220GB? I am not there in front of the computer so must guess and that guess is that data/code that Windows needs has become fragmented i.e. instead of contiguous data it is in chunks spaced out over the disk with empty spaces between them from where the crap was removed so I recommended that the disc optimiser be launched as this would show up the degree of fragmentation and we could then kick it into action to squash out the empty space. Dunno whether this was done nor what happened next.

You would have been faced with the same dilemma whichever O/S was in use.

Its possibly academic now as by default Windows 10 Pro schedules optimisation weekly and the disk may now be contiguous.

This is all he had left to do


Cheers,

DV
 
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Which means that the cloning software was unable to retrieve data only? Funny that. There should be a box to tick somewhere shouldn't there?

BTW I too remember 3.11 well. You had to install MSDOS first - 11 disks! Still have them in a box.
 
So many memories! First DOS, then Win 3.1 on top! I well remember Arabs in street markets in Rome selling Win 3.1 on CDs with licence numbers on stuck-on labels, along with copied music CDs. And the nightmare of "defrag" every few weeks! And I remember sending texts from Rome to London, through the telephone line, with a programme called, I think, "Telyt" "Telyx" or something.

I think Mike found himself in a nasty, "unclean" situation which I'm sure would have led me to give up. But I'm absolutely sure, since he is getting a new computer, that he would have no trouble doing a "clean" Linux install by formatting his HD and erasing all trace of Windows. In Roman slang, by the way, this is known as "piallare," which literally means "planing" as when you pass a plane on a piece of wood.
 
Good news is that I am now using a Lenovo T440 with much more screen. 1600x900
Had I known this was available I would have upgraded some time ago.
Having a spare laptop will come in useful. May even be grabbed by the boss when she gets teed off with her magic, wonderful iPad not connecting to t'interweb

<later>
Now I have 2 laptops I can have a close look at DV's video above and try that
Seems to have some actions I didn't know of
 
You can always re-install Windows if you don't like it. I'm not saying "if you fail" because it is impossible.
 
Even I can install Linux. Ubuntu something, works fine on a desktop pc that I want to set up as a media server. I've only had it 5 years. Or 6. No rush.
 


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