Category: Notebook Computers

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Upgrade Hard Drive with Free Tools from EASEUS

We recently helped someone in Adams Morgan upgrade their laptop to a larger hard drive. It was for an old Dell laptop running Windows XP (32-bit) that had an ATA (IDE) drive instead of one of the newer SATA drives.EASEUS

Here are the steps to upgrade a hard drive. The EASEUS software is free for personal use.

1. Buy a new drive. Currently the largest ATA drvies are 320GB and SATA drives are 500GB. 750GB SATA drives are anticipated in 2009 and 1TB drives are expected in 2010. We typically buy hard drives from Newegg.com.

2. Buy a USB laptop hard drive adapter or USB drive enclosure for the new drive. Again, try Newegg.com.

3. We recommend first running the Windows Disk Defragmenter so that your new drive will start out with the files well organized. It is located at Start – All Programs – Accessories – System Tools – Disk Defragmenter. In order to run Disk Defragmenter, you need at least 15% free space. This might mean that you need to run Disk Cleanup or back up and temporarily remove some of your larger files such as photos.

EASEUS Disk Copy4. Download the free EASEUS Disk Copy. This will provide you with a .iso file that you can burn to CD as a disk image.

5. While the computer is off, connect the new drive to the computer via USB adapter or USB enclosure. Start the computer with the EASEUS Disk Copy CD created above. You might have to go into the BIOS to prioritize the CD drive to be bootable. This will boot into EASEUS Disk Copy and allow you to copy the entire old drive (also known as cloning) to the new drive connected via USB. In our tests, EASEUS Disk Copy was able to move 55GB of data in about 35 minutes. We found EASEUS Disk Copy to be one of the fastest bit-for-bit copying systems. For comparison, we tested Norton Ghost which copied 55GB in over 3 hours.

6. Remove the old drive and replace with the new drive. Boot up the computer.

7. Download and run the free EASEUS Partion Master 3.5 Home Edition. This is needed because EASEUS Disk Copy only copies (makes a clone of) the drive as it is sized. Use the Partition Manager to expand the partition to use the entire drive.

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NASA Astronauts Can’t Watch DVDs

NASA Astronauts

From today’s Associated Press:

HOUSTON — Atlantis astronauts fixed the Hubble Space Telescope so it could beam cosmic pictures to Earth, but playing DVDs on their laptops is proving too difficult.

With an unwanted off day Friday because thunderstorms prevented their scheduled landing, the astronauts intended to pass the time by watching movies they brought on the mission. But when they tried to play them, they found out their laptops didn’t have the proper software.

Engineers on the ground tried to troubleshoot the problem — just as they did when a hand rail almost prevented spacewalkers from fixing one instrument in Hubble. After more than an hour with no solution, the astronauts gave up.

Astronaut John Grunsfeld radioed to Earth that they’d have to wait to watch something at a terrestrial movie theater.

So fixing a giant telescope in space worked fine, but getting their laptops to play a DVD didn’t work. I certainly sympathize as Windows typically needs additional codecs loaded to play DVDs. They should have had a copy of the free VLC media player.

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Netbooks versus Notebooks

Dell Mini 9 NetbookMany DC area clients have asked me whether they should buy a netbook or a full notebook.

Netbooks (small laptops) have become very popular. We have written several articles about them. They started with the Acer Eee PC, followed by the Aspire Aspire One, then proliferating to dozens of models from suppliers including Dell and HP.

Price

Netbooks are typically cheaper, having started out at the $299 price point. Old models can be found for less and new models are now over $500.

This is a decent price for a computer, but keep in mind that 1) the netbook does not have a CD/DVD drive and 2) there are often online deals from sites such as Newegg that will provide a full size laptop for the same price. Dell also has online deals and stackable coupons periodically which you can find out about at Slickdeals.

Size

If you are looking for the smallest laptop possible, then you want a netbook. Be sure to try one though, because typing on a smaller keyboard and using a smaller screen make using a netbook less practical for longer stretches of work. DC area residents can go to Microcenter in Fairfax, Virginia to type on and test lots of netbooks and notebooks.

Speed

Netbooks are typically much slower, using Atom CPUs. A new line of Atoms, combined with the NVIDIA Ion platform, will allow full HD video decoding, so these laptops are getting faster. Still, one of the reasons that these laptops are cheaper is that they are slower. This is fine if you are typically just browsing the web and writing email. But if you need to use a few programs at once or work in more complex programs, the netbooks will feel a little slower.

Operating Systems

Netbooks typically come with Windows XP or a version of Linux, which is free and cuts down the cost. Linux is a great operating system that I use regularly. However, if you have regular software such as Word and Excel that you want to use, you will find it difficult to load that software on a Linux computer. There are good open source alternatives such as Open Office if you are okay using something that is similar to Office.

Recommendation

Laptops are a very personal purchase, depending on your preference on keyboard, mouse, and screen size. While I use netbooks for low-weight traveling, I would not use them to replace a laptop for extended use.

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Wireless Draft N Compatability Issues

There are many flavors of wireless networking. Most common are 802.11B, 802.11G, and now 802.11N (Draft). 802.11N is “draft” because the standard has not yet been formalized, despite the sale of draft-N devices for over a year. For most people, this won’t cause a problem. But hitches do come up.

Draft N Works, Usually

When I was recently setting up a D-Link draft-N router with a MacBook Pro, I noticed that the wireless connection would drop regularly or show a connection but be unable to receive/transmit. This was due to the incompatable N implementations. The solution is to go into the router settings and switch it to only using B/G. In most cases, I have found draft N devices to work without any issues.

Future of WiFi Standards

The 802.11N standard is expected to be finalized by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802) in November 2009. Then all the current draft-N manufacturers promise a firmware upgrade that will make them interoperable. Of course by November 2009, we might be looking at buying new draft wireless standards, as described by PC Magazine:

802.11s, a mesh networking specification that’s been on the drawing board since September 2003. (It probably won’t be final until September 2010.) Laptops and other devices with 11s support will function as mesh points (or MPs) and form links with each other, allowing packets of data to skip from device to device across the network as needed. Mesh has been around for a while in many proprietary forms, and is important not only because it can extend a network’s range but also because it has self-configuring abilities: Mesh devices can move about without impacting overall performance. In such a network, data will hop around from mesh point to mesh point along the shortest path to where it needs to go. Actual 11s is already in use in at least one product: the One Laptop per Child project’s XO laptop uses it to communicate with XS school servers, in some tests over distances as great as 2km with 802.11s data hops from device to device.

802.11u, called “InterWorking with External Networks,” will provide a Wi-Fi device with methods of connecting securely to a network, based on the external network’s type. For example, if you have access to the cellular connection that provides Internet access to the Wi-Fi router on a bus, 11u will keep that connection secure. It will also allow a Wi-Fi device to discover more information about that external network, such as whether it’s free of charge or not. 11u could be published by March of 2010.

802.11z “Direct Link Setup” is the 802.11 Working Group’s take on improving ad hoc connections, at least for business users. It’s entirely unrelated to what the Wi-Fi Alliance is doing for device-to-device communication. 11n allows two laptops that would normally communicate on a secure network to form a P2P connection to talk to one another exclusively. This happens only after they’ve authenticated security credentials through an AP. It’s a super-secure ad hoc that requires the right security setup.

See a full list of 802.11 standards and approval timelines from IEEE.

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MacBook as your Desktop

It used to be you needed both a laptop for travel and a desktop for more power. But nowadays laptops are a lot more powerful than they used to be and the cream of the crop are the MacBooks. With an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, and usb hub, you can easily switch from laptop mode to desktop mode with any MacBook by just plugging in 2 cables.

External Monitor

You can get an excellent big screen LCD for a lot cheaper than you used to.  You can hook it up to your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air with a DVI adapter and the exact adapter varies based on your model.  The original MacBook Air was nice enough to come with this adapter.  The new Airs and MacBooks do not so they’ll cost you an extra $30.  One of the best value monitors you can get is the Acer V223-WBD 22″ LCD (pictured above with MacBook Air).  Macs are smart when it comes to detecting external monitors so you can just plug in and the new monitor should almost immediately become an extended screen once powered on.  When you unplug, the Mac is similarly smart and goes back to single screen mode.

Keyboard and Mouse

Since we’re talking about Macs, the best keyboard to go with is the slim Apple Keyboard.  Pretty much any usb mouse will do but I highly recommend the Logitech MX518 Mouse. It is technically a gaming mouse but I just love it for the precision and extra buttons on the side that can be setup to quickly access expose.

USB Hub

A terrific USB hub is the D-Link 7-port USB hub.  7 ports may sound like a lot but with a keyboard, mouse, ipod/iphone cable, and external hard drive, you’re already mostly full.  With the hub, all your USB devices are plugged into this and then you just have to plug in one USB cable to your MacBook.

External Hard Drive

One area where laptops are still greatly lacking is hard drive space.  If you don’t have much in iTunes or iPhoto, you might be fine with just a 80-250GB laptop hard drive.  If you need more space, you’ll need to get an external drive such as the Western Digital 750GB My Book.  To move your iPhoto Library to your external drive, copy the “iPhoto Library” file from your Pictures directory to your external drive.  The next time you start iPhoto, hold down the option key and you’ll be given a choice to select where your iPhoto Library is.  Once you select the library on the external drive, you won’t have to hold down option again.  The only downside is you will need your external drive hooked up to see the library.  Similarly, you can copy your Music directory to the external drive and then open iTunes preferences and go to the Advanced tab.  There you can change the iTunes Music folder location to point to your external drive Music directory.  You should only do these things if you need to.  Often you might just have to move just iPhoto or just iTunes based on your usage.

Time Machine

If you plan to use Time Machine, which we recommend, you should consider partitioning your external drive into 2 partitions using Disk Utility which can be found in the Utilities directory under Applications.  Select your drive on the left of Disk Utility and then select the Partition tab.  You can slide the separator up and down to adjust the partition sizes.  We recommend giving yourself room to grow for your data such as iPhoto and iTunes and then leave whatever else for Time Machine to utilize.  When you are happy with your settings, click Apply.  You can then setup Time Machine to use 1 partition and put your iPhoto and iTunes data on the other.  The reason you need to setup 2 partitions is because Time Machine will continue to grow until it’s partition is full so you need to ensure your data has a separate area to grow.

Summary

With a little planning, you can have all the benefits of a laptop and a desktop with just one laptop.  Just plug in a USB cable to activate all your USB devices.  Plug in your external monitor to use your desktop sized LCD.  These principles can also be applied to a Linux or Windows laptop although not with such ease.  The performance of the MacBook line is what makes them ideal candidates for desktop-power uses such as photo editing.  If you have a MacBook, you likely don’t need a desktop and just buying an external LCD is a very cheap desktop solution.