hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1731.txt

Episode: 1731
Title: HPR1731: Upgrading an old laptop
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1731/hpr1731.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 08:20:13

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This is HPR episode 1,731 entitled Upgrading and Old Laptop.
It is hosted by Swift 110 and is about 12 minutes long.
The summary is, I put brand new parts into an old Fujitsu lifeboat 4,215.
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Hello everybody, this is Anthony Venable, I'm pretty sure by now some of you have
seen my blog, which is Anthony Venable 1100.wordpress.com, the link will be available later on.
Just thought I'd go ahead and do a video version of how I upgraded my laptop and I did this
way back.
I'd say in December of 2010, that summer actually I had gotten this laptop from one of my
friends who decided I didn't want it anymore and I was trying to figure out what did
you do to it.
Even on the desktop you try to click on different applications and it will be an issue.
We wouldn't do anything but try to go to Windows Media Player.
There was nothing that would happen when you click on the Windows Media Player.
We ended up being really an epic fail for quite some time.
I got so mad at the laptop that I just kind of put it on a shelf and just forgot about
it for months.
In December, I knew I was about to go on a trip to go see my older cousin in North Carolina.
I was like all right, well let me go ahead and get this laptop together and see what I
can get out of it before we can make happen and went over another cousin's house because
he knows more about computers than I do.
We ended up finding out that the hard drive was bad.
The hard drive in this laptop, which by the way is a Fujitsu Lifebook T-Series 4215, it
came out in about 2006-2007, something like that, so it's been around the world if you
catch my drift.
What I always liked about it early on was the fact that the screen, it has a screen that
is able to convert it into a tablet pretty much so I can turn the screen around and show
people in front of me, if I'm sitting at a desk or a table or something like I've done
it, barbs and nobles so many times, borders.
I was able to kind of show off with it and be like, haha, this is what's on my screen.
I go, oh my god, really?
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, this is what's up, this is what I have.
So I ended up being pretty cool.
So like I said, going back to about late December of 2010, the hard drive was bad, it was
only 40 gigs, so I figured okay, no problem, 40 gig hard drive, all right, fine, the hard
drive is bad.
The operating system that I was on here initially was Windows XP tablet edition, like 2003,
yeah, it was going back pretty far, 2003, 2005, something like that, it was just annoying.
Initially, I was going to just put Windows XP, but then I decided not to, I was like, well,
how would it go if I actually put Windows 7 on here?
And so I decided to go ahead and put Windows 7 on the laptop.
Which worked out pretty well, getting off, getting me going.
Something else I knew also was I was going to need more RAM.
There was only a 512 megabytes of RAM installed on this machine initially.
So I decided to kind of up the ante and put it up to, yeah, I put it up to about 3, then
one of my RAMs, Dix went bad.
So it's dead about, it's about 2.5 gigs of RAM in here now.
But I ran to my local micro-center in Rockville, Maryland.
And I decided I was going to go ahead and upgrade a hard drive.
I saw that they had 500 gigabyte hard drives available for about 60 bucks, which was awesome.
So I decided to go ahead and do that.
And then when it came to doing a RAM, I ended up just getting another 2 gigabyte stick.
And I had a 1 gigabyte stick, but it stopped working like I mentioned a little earlier.
So I just put the original 512 in there.
So that's why I'm at 2.5 gigabytes of RAM right now.
Which runs Windows 7 really well.
I can't recommend using anything under 1 gig for Windows 7.
It's not nice.
In school, we did it a little less, and I just don't recommend it.
It's ugly, tedious, and all that.
So I just don't, I really can't recommend you doing that for a lot of reasons.
Yeah, the RAM.
So everything got going pretty well.
As I mentioned, this laptop is able to be converted into a tablet.
I've toyed around with it using the stylus.
In fact, the stylus works pretty well with this particular laptop, but that one acted up.
So anyway, when it ended up happening, was I decided I wanted another laptop to kind of
back up in case that one ended up having an issue or something happened to it or what
happened.
So I go, I go on to Amazon.com, I looked at eBay as well.
In fact, was it eBay?
Yes, it was eBay.
It was eBay.
And I decided to go ahead and bid on the laptops that I wanted, the exact model, and I bid
on it, kept messing, listening, over and over and over.
Other people would kind of bid on it, and then I would lose it, and then I'd get upset
and be like, come on, seriously?
Seriously?
I can't get this laptop?
All right, fine.
So one day I decided, well, how about I go ahead and bid on, too?
So I bid on, too.
To my surprise, I ended up getting both of them.
I was like, oh, there are $88 a piece, plus tax altogether came onto about $224, $224.
It was my tax money, so it was cool.
I got two, three laptops now that I can use for various purposes, whatever, and just
go from there, and that's what I did.
What I ended up doing, not so long after I installed Windows 7 on this particular device,
was that I put a bunch of 10.010.04, Maverick Miracat, it worked out well, but I decided
I wanted to go upgraded to 10.10, which was, no, it couldn't have been Maverick Miracat.
See, Ubuntu has code names for different releases at the air, so anytime you start talking
about, for instance, 10.10, being Maverick Miracat, 11.04, being Nadi Narwhal, 11.10, goodness
gracious.
I forgot what it was.
I do know the 12.04 is precise pangolin, good for me, so that's pretty cool.
What else I want to say?
I'm sorry, but I'm putting Ubuntu 10.10, which is in fact Maverick Miracat, I'm right,
on here.
And it works out pretty good.
I like the wildly Windows, and one of the things that ended up happening was it went,
they ended up changing something about the desktop interface, previously it was called
No, No 2, and they decided to go to No 3 with the Nadi interface, and I wasn't exactly
too cool with that, so far I've hung out with Ubuntu 10.10, I'm sticking with it.
I'm going to see what happens when precise pangolin comes out 12.4 release, and I'll probably
install it on my computer as well, and we'll see how it goes more or less.
All right, well, I told you what I did to my laptop, talk to you later, bye.
Thank you very much for your time, and I'll see you in the next video, bye, bye, bye,
bye, bye.