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Having worked as desktop support technician for quite some time I’ve seen my share of dead hardware. But what happened yesterday just blows my mind. My workhorse laptop had decided to have a sabbatical for the few days, so its main hard drive got that notorious “click of death” sound. What was even worse is that the secondary hard drive (where all the data stored – exactly in expectation that two drives can’t die at the same time) was dead too. Lost about a month worth of work (since last backups) and about three months worth of e-mails (no biggie, everything important is saved in three Gmail accounts).

While definitely not having a best evening of my life I’ve called Lenovo and asked for a replacement hard drive. However, the second hard drive would still need to be ordered separately, as it wasn’t in the original configuration. Since I also own a very small X61s, I have decided to treat myself to a little better option. I ordered 30GB MLC solid state hard drive for X61s, while the hard drive that’s in there now will become a secondary in my main laptop.

Of course, it isn’t the fastest nor the best drive out there, but I am just not ready to spend $600 for a hard drive. Going with a cheaper drive would not yield an ultimate speed boost, but should help with productivity.

So far I am running fine after half a dozen tweaks and adjustments for Windows XP to get more “solid-state friendly”. There’s usually plenty of resources available, depending on the make and model of the SSD. However, the following have been observed:

• reading is lightning fast. Ditch paging file – and system boots and shuts down in less then 30 seconds.
• writing is slow. Get rid of writing, set up a RAM drive or secondary HDD for browser/system caching or page file.
• no more worry about shaking. I used to be worried about opening laptop on the bus – no more!
• extended battery life. Depending on your usage and initial battery state you may get some boost in battery life. My X61s reports an extra hour on 9-cell battery.
• less heat, less noise. There are no moving parts, so there’s not much to get the noise from. Might get a little hot, but I hear fan starting a lot less now.

Overall, I can state that I am very happy with the replacement. Recently I’ve added more memory to my laptop (so that I am running 3GB under Windows XP SP3 32-bit), then gave up 1 gig for RAM drive for paging and cache.

Using cheap SSD in servers, desktops or general purpose laptops isn’t, probably, worth a hassle, but for my “on-the-run” checking e-mails/logs/sites it is more then adequate.

It looks like the manufacturers for ultramobile PCs, oversized phones and ultraportable laptops are struggling with a dilemma. They have manufacturing capability but they don’t know what to manufacture. Will there be a demand for overly smart phones? Or ultraportables? Or laptops with phone headsets? What is it they have to jump on?

Well, I have a solution for them. It’s easy. I have a solution for every one of you.

Let me build my ultra portable, over powered, uber-universal but still very personalizeable computer. Make it modular. Make it Lego blocks sticking together. Stop thinking Apple all-in-one, start thinking Microsoft one-for-all. It’s a great concept, if you only think about it.

Let me have a CPU/RAM unit/module where I can plug in a screen (24 inch when I am at home, touch-sensitive 7 inch when I am on the go, 12 inch when I am at the conference or on the plane and so on), keyboard and storage unit. Let me plug in media unit when I need to burn couple of CDs or DVDs, audio unit for high-quality audio output, external monitor or projector for presentations, beefier video for gaming and throw larger battery with that.

Make parts interchangeable – when I need to upgrade CPU everything else still works. If I need a larger screen – it’ll just stick. Replace the hard drive? No problem. New video? Just stick it in and have fun.

Need more incentive? Take hotels. Create a set up with large screen, keyboard, mouse, media bay and high-speed network. Guest just plugs in his CPU/RAM module and he’s good to go. Sell this to colleges and doctor’s offices. Sell this to rental office space owners and travelers.

We have the technology. We have the people. We have demands on the untapped markets. Let’s put it all together. This idea, as far as I remember, pops out in one form or another, every year. Just get to it!

About every two months one of the computer magazines – be it ComputerShopper, PC Magazine, PC Wworld or any other publication – comes out with this flashy and attractive idea of “cheap computer”. Whether it’s a cheap laptop or cheap desktop – it’s always a good thing, you should save a bunch of money and feel good. Right? Right?

Not so fast. The cost of your computer is not only that number on the receipt or a credit card statement. At least – not for a small business owner. While it is widely perceived that small businesses should live on a shoestring budget and (widely used example) reuse old home computer for their businesses, the idea isn’t quite perfect.

The reason in a so-called “cost of ownership” that most starting up business people have no idea of. If you know what that is – skip to the next paragraph. In layman terms the “cost of ownership” is how much you spend (or loose) by owning that specific tool or service. For example, if you have an old car that you use to deliver widgets to your customers, the cost of ownership would be all the money spent on repairs and parts to make sure your car will be running tomorrow.

But what’s the cost of ownership for an old PC? There aren’t that many parts to replace and no oil or gas to refill. However, what that old PC would probably hit the most is your time – because it’s old and slow. Sure you can upgrade it – add memory and new hard drive, but the old thing would still be a bit sluggish. So instead of booting up in less then 45 seconds it will boot up in three minutes. Add another minute to start your inventory app – be it something proprietory or plain old Excel. Add some more time on number crunching and some more to process your accounting sheets. A minute here, a minute there, just a little slower saving or loading – and you’re looking at an extra hour or two for a day. That’s about 6 working hours wasted for a week – if you have Sunday off. Bad news – now you have to work on that Sunday, since you are loosing 6 hours of productive time from Monday to Saturday.

So what now, does every small business enrepreneur should rush off and buy a shiny new laptop or speedy new desktop? Perhaps, but only if you feel like your system could be more responsive. It’s hard to give any kind of specific advice here. My guess is that even if you bought your PC (desktop or laptop) only two years ago – you didn’t purchase the latest and greatest piece that was out there. Most likely even then it was a low or medium level PC with only enough RAM and hard drive space to make it worth purchasing. Upgrading it won’t really improve your situation – so maybe a little research on the internet and extra couple of hundred dollars will buy you a much better rig that will save you more then just money – your precious time.