Should I repair my old laptop?

[DoYouKubuntu]

CNN.COM:

Kubuntuforums admin advocates violence against laptop.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Take it outside in the driveway and beat the shopt out of it with the biggest, baddest sledgehammer you can lift. It'll feel sooooooo good.

Oh, no, Steve!! I LOVE my old[er] laptop. And now that I've got its repairs down to [probably] just its fan, it doesn't even seem that daunting to fix it.

[SteveRiley]

bwahahaha

[SteveRiley]

I'm wondering what to do with the HP dv7 the new laptop was bought to replace.

Take it outside in the driveway and beat the shopt out of it with the biggest, baddest sledgehammer you can lift. It'll feel sooooooo good.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Replacing a (the) fan should be reasonably easy.
Even getting one for a 4? y/o laptop should be possible.

I guess we'll see!

How sure are you it's actually broken and not just unplugged or stuck due to dirt or so?
I once had a Toshiba where the fan got noisy, by putting a drop of WD40 near the bearings it would be quiet again for several months.

I can't say I'm 100% sure. I'm just going by the fact that it's running very, very hot AND there's that warning/error message when I power on the computer. The HP URL...with backslashes in its pathname.

[DoYouKubuntu]

The fan and the HDD surely will have to be replaced

I feel like I'm missing something. Why would the hard drive need to be replaced? As far as I can tell it's still perfectly fine.

on the network card issue, you could use an external one pcmcia or express card depending on the mobo available slots. Just a thought...

Yes, I like that idea. *IF* I end up repairing it, right now I'm thinking I will only replace its [dead] fan, then live with the flakiness of its network card--which has been 100% fine for, shoot, I don't know, a week? two weeks? now. So I think I'll gamble on that until it craps out on me.

So it's looking like it's just the fan that NEEDS to be replaced at the moment. That can't be that hard...right?

[DoYouKubuntu]

I'm curious. Assuming your other machines are on the same 192.168.1/24 network, how do you access them? SAMBA? NSF? SSH? FTP?

Samba.

They're all mounted in each computer's fstab, so as long as a computer is powered on, its hard drives, printers, USB drives, etc., are all available across the network. Now if I could just figure out how to scan something from a different room, I'd be all set!

[GreyGeek]

...
Exactly. Really, I never use any of my desktops any more. I mean actually sit down in front of them and use them. They're all accessible to me via my network, so I do access files on them and also backup files on them, but never by actually sitting at one. ....

I'm curious. Assuming your other machines are on the same 192.168.1/24 network, how do you access them? SAMBA? NSF? SSH? FTP?

[MepisReign]

The fan and the HDD surely will have to be replaced, on the network card issue, you could use an external one pcmcia or express card depending on the mobo available slots. Just a thought...

All the Best

MR

[DoYouKubuntu]

Duh!
Yes that spoils it all

Surely, that's still available?

Oh, I'm sure it is. The laptop is only three years old. Of course, I haven't actually LOOKED for it yet.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Hello,
Not to rip this thread apart. Since is an old machine you could install something "lite", Ubuntu server with Openbox as WM, it will FLY....

No problem! I love ideas and input.

The thing is, it still flies as it is! It's running K 12.04LTS and is as fast and wonderful as the day I bought it. It was starting to have some issues with things dying--its fan, its network card, its battery--so I debated repairing it or replacing it. I ended up buying a new laptop to replace it, but now I hate to just dump the old one because it's still perfect in terms of its performance. So NOW I'm debating if I really want to plunge in and try to repair it myself...or not. I'm pretty sure I don't want to spend money on having it repaired, but I have no experience repairing laptops other than replacing hard drives.

Here as an example my old T400 running Crunchbang. Tint2, Conky, Openbox...

Nice!

[MepisReign]

Hello,
Not to rip this thread apart. Since is an old machine you could install something "lite", Ubuntu server with Openbox as WM, it will FLY....
Here as an example my old T400 running Crunchbang. Tint2, Conky, Openbox...


Best Regards,

MepisReign

[DoYouKubuntu]

I have a very old Toshiba lappy that has been just a workhorse.... the battery is completely gone and I foud that I could purchase a cheapo Windows metro tablet thingy for somewhat more than the cost of replacing the battery! :0

Sooooo because I got a new honking tower for my main work machine.... and a new monitor...

The Toshiba lappy is now a dedicated word processor, with the screen rotated to portrait (using xrandr and hooked into the old monitor which is standing in a " wire book stand" in portrait mode and I can now see the full "sheet of paper" on the monitor!

Nice!

Since it is working my next project is to SOMEhow.....remove the stand from the monitor! :0

I've never needed to do that, but can't it just be unscrewed? or...BROKEN OFF?!

[DoYouKubuntu]

Your imageshack pic won't load up for me.

It does for me.

[DoYouKubuntu]

I would see the flaky network as the only problem, replace it with something ExpressCard or USB and it'll be fine.

That and the broken fan!

By the way, here's a shot of the error message [regarding the fan] HP gives me when I power on the dv7:

Because of its size it's a decent desktop replacement so the battery is not an issue.

Exactly. Really, I never use any of my desktops any more. I mean actually sit down in front of them and use them. They're all accessible to me via my network, so I do access files on them and also backup files on them, but never by actually sitting at one. The HP dv7 and the new System76 are exactly the same as far as screen size and keyboard size. I'm so spoiled now by laptops as big and comfortable as desktops...well, who needs to sit at a desktop?!

Would you stick in an SSD you might have a real winner...

Since its current hard drive is fine, I don't think I'd do anything with that--right now. Maybe down the road a bit.