And my Thinkpad T60 is at it again. When I got to work this morning, I plugged it in, opened the lid, swiped my finger on the fingerprint scanner, and tried connecting to the office network. Nothing. I “repaired” the network interface. Nothing. I disabled and enabled it. Nothing. So I rebooted. And I get a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). I tried Safe Mode. Works. I tried Safe Mode with Networking. BSOD. So I know now that the problem is networking related. I was not in the mood to fix it myself so I asked Jon if he can fix it. After an hour or so, I checked on it. It’s been fixed. The solution? A simple restore to a previously known good configuration. Still it was irritating.
Notebook Malfunction
Encountered a malfunction with my new Thinkpad T60. When I got to work this morning, I plugged it in and opened the lid. Normally, this should wake it up from standby mode. Nothing. So I pressed on the power button to power it down. Nothing. I unplugged it, removed and reinstalled the battery, plugged it back in and pressed the power button. It started up and started making beeping sounds. Not good. Jon and I thought it’s a memory issue, so I opened the notebook up, removed and reinstalled the memory but to no avail. I called up the supplier and they, to their credit, immediately sent in a technician to fix it. Apparently I didn’t try hard enough, because it turned out that a loose memory module was indeed the culprit. How it got loose (bumps? vibrations?) I don’t know. I certainly expected more robustness from a notebook and a Thinkpad to boot. Is this a deterioration of quality due to the handover by IBM to Lenovo? I certainly hope not.
The Soul Of A New Machine
I finished migrating all (I hope) of my data from Selene, my personal Thinkpad X22, to Ilsa, my new office Thinkpad T60. The migration itself was rather painless but then again, I’ve done it quite a few times already.
So far everything seems to be running well and I don’t seem to be missing any data. But to be sure, I’ll be monitoring the data next week before I completely sanitize the copy on Selene. We don’t want anyone finding incriminating evidence now, do we?
I actually much prefer carrying and using the smaller and lighter Selene but I’ll be lending her to a dear friend of mine who will be going to the US for a month. He doesn’t have a notebook and being the nice person that I am I volunteered to lend him one. Hahaha.
I, of course, I have another, more pragmatic, reason. I’m again dabbling into software development and the X-series was not really designed for such things. The T-series, on the other hand, is a real problem-solving, number-crunching, data-processing machine so it should help things go faster.
New Trackpoint Cap
A week ago, my friend Drawde finally delivered the Trackpoint caps I asked him to get me a few months ago during one of his not-too-infrequent trips to Japan. Unfortunately, he had misplaced it and only found it last week. He gave me the tiny plastic bag and there they are: three perfectly-shaped Trackpoint caps. These are the textured flat-headed caps, not the easily worn down eraser-head caps that I have been using (there is a third type: rimmed flat-headed caps). I immediately replaced my current cap which I had just installed not too long ago. The new cap fit snugly in place and definitely improves control by providing a bigger point of contact and better traction. And although it looks pretty durable, the insurance provided by two spare caps is very comforting.
IBM Thinkpad X20 Series Battery
It’s a new year and Selene, my Thinkpad X22, has a new battery!
The battery that came with Selene is already 3 years old and it is showing: It only holds about an hour’s worth of charge. They say Li-Ion batteries only have 3 years life so I guess it will be downhill from 3 years on. I therefore decided to get a new battery.
After quite some time searching through Froggle, PriceGrabber, etc, I finally ordered it online from KeyBattery.com. They don’t ship international so I had it shipped to my friend Billie who was in the US and she eventually got it to me through various means. Thanks Bill! ;)
The battery is your normal IBM spec Li-Ion battery with 10.8V and 4000mAH charge for an effective usage time of roughly 3 hours. There are batteries that have 4400mAH (notably from BatteryRefill.com) but unfortunately the online shops that carry those do not accept my credit card. Too bad since you could do quite a lot with an extra 10% charge. But then again, 3 hrs vs the old battery’s 1 hr is already quite a lot too so I shouldn’t be complaining.
Rating: 4/5