Taking "The Backup" to the Next Level

Last time I wrote on this blog, I was going on about having the computing work version of a "full-sized" spare. Today, I'm going to discuss this concept at a whole new level..... more along the lines of having a back-up vehicle!

If you were to use the vehicle analogy for the computing world, I'd say that my Xeon powered desktop workstation to be along the lines of a 3/4 ton heavy duty pickup truck. Since that time, my ThinkPad T540p has served well as a backup the few times that I needed it; such as during our move this summer.

Since I picked it up a couple of years ago, it's original spec has been upgraded to include an M.2 SSD boot drive, display from TN 1366 x 768 to IPS 1920 x 1080 panel, and most importantly, the i5 2-core processor to an i7 4-core/8-thread one. However, there was always an itch that I couldn't quite scratch: that of a "mobile workstation". When the T540p came out, there was a W540 workstation version, but a few months later Lenovo launched the W541 variant which came from the factory with the corrected touchpad....

In 2013, Lenovo bravely went where no ThinkPad had gone before which turned out to be a horrible design error; that of removing the mouse buttons from the Trackpad. It was so poorly received, that they immediately reversed course and restored the buttons. It was such a disaster that they didn't even wait the full year, creating a mid-cycle model (W541) with the singular change being the restoration of the aforementioned mouse buttons! So, not only did my "workstation" itch include the usual more RAM sockets, better displays etc, but also included the now corrected Trackpad. Oh, don't get me wrong, I've long-since replaced the hated "clunkpad" on my T540p with one from the "x50" series, but that whole scenario makes the W541 even more interesting and desirable.

And last week; it happened.... I ran across a partially stripped W541 for less than $100! It was more than the "save it from the landfill" part of me could stand and I bought it! Although it didn't come with the correct 135w (or 170w) power adapter, this one came with 16Gb of RAM already onboard in 2 modules (making it ready to take the full 32Gb) and the optional 9-cell (99wh) battery, which turned out to have less than 10 cycles on it! I was able to pick up a 170w charger on Facebook Marketplace for $25 shipped the next day. What am I going to do with it, and another almost identical to my T540p machine?

To be honest; I'm not really sure. I do know that I'll spec it out as a full-on "workstation" with maxed out RAM at 32Gb, lots of storage including multiple SSDs. From there, I'm not sure....

It might get the ThinkMods ExpressCard adapter or......

an ExpressCard to eGPU adapter! Probably though, a better question might be; what am I going to do with the T540p?Server..... maybe!?!

If that is the use-case, then; what OS?

As you can see; lots of scenarios and lots of options!

The "Backup" Computer

 

Virtually everyone knows what this is, but did you know that there are vehicles out there that doesn't have one!?! SHOCK! DISMAY! DISBELIEF! Yeah, I know.... A few weeks ago, a friend of mine had to cancel a visit because he got pulled into a disaster due to a car without a spare! Anyway, what does this have to do with a "backup computer". Well.... I'm glad you asked. 

Some of you are probably aware that my main computer at home would probably be considered a "workstation" and all that that implies. It's powerful (Intel Xeon 8/16 multi-threaded cores, 32Gb of RAM, 1Tb M.2 SSD boot and 5.5Tb of storage drives) and running multiple displays (1-28" 4K, 2-22" 1920x1200) etc. It's been dead reliable since it's last rebuild to this spec (other than a weird speaker issue), then yesterday.....it "blue-screened".....

..... but it wasn't this....

It could have been! Ya see.... I was online grading AP essays at the time and will continue through tomorrow! So, why wasn't it a bigger disaster?

When people say "backup" in the computing world, they think this:

Not me! When I see something like that as a "back up", it gives me images of those little "donut" spares that car have in their trunks. I want a full-sized spare, "in the trunk"; that's why I think a back up in the computing world should look like this!

What I call the "trunk" is on my side desk, ThinkPad T540p loaded up ready to go. So, let's look at this practice in the form of a personal little fun project. The machine is one of the last of the ThinkPad "T" series of laptops that were "end-user" upgradeable. It and it's brother, the T440p were the last of the mainstream machines with a socketed processor. They were Intel's Haswell (4th gen) of the Core family. By the following year/gen, Intel forced manufacturers to move to the "U" or "UltraBook" processors which were way lower TDP and WAY lower powered. On top of that, you couldn't replace the processors because the "Broadwell" (5th gen) CPUs were BGA (ball grid array) and soldered onto the motherboard! On top of that, these machines not only had the traditional 2.5" drive bay, but an M.2 socket capable of taking a 42mm SSD (SATA, not NVMe) plus a replaceable optical drive as well. This gives it an option to hold a boot and 2 storage drives if necessary. Why did I do the T540p vs. the T440p that's more common? The bigger 15.6/15.5" (more on this later) vs. 14.1" screen for my old eyes and a keyboard with a num-pad since I can "10-key". And.... I got it CHEAP, like $125 cheap!

What did I actually do to upgrade it since one of my reasons for buying it was it's "upgrade-ability"? 

• 1st was the RAM from 4Gb to the max of 16Gb.
• 2nd was to replace the mechanical spinning boot drive to an M.2, 256Gb SSD. Then a 1Tb/7200rpm mechanical HDD went in to the 2.5" drive bay as "mass storage".
• Next was the rather tedious replacement of the infamous "clunkpad" of the gen with a trackpad with true mouse buttons. This was a big deal for me!
• It also got a blacklit keyboard at that time.
• Then last to replace the 15.6" 1366 x 768 TN screen with a FHD 1920 x 1080 IPS panel. On this machine it means replacing the entire screen housing and signal cable as well.  

Then it moved into it's spot of the side desk next to the last of my workstation monitors.

Right where it was needed when the "big-boy" had it's blow-out.... So, here's the thing on the concept. You can't just have a computer that's going to be "OK", but it needs to be something that you can jump on and not lose a beat. Which is exactly what happened. Sure, I spent a few minutes trying some things including using a W10 bootable USB stick to try and do the W10 "repair", but when it didn't look like I was going to bring it back immediately, I was able to jump on the T540p and work without a hitch. Sure, I had the computer up and running a few hours later (because I had a clone of the boot SSD), but this allowed me to not loose several hours of work!

In today's world, can you really afford to not have a computing backup?

Gaming Laptops? ....... Really!?!

It's the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. If you've followed my writing at all, you'll know that I don't do gaming laptops. It's just not a part of my ethos, particularly buying them new. Yet, here I am talking about not only a gaming laptop, but a current model as well. So what's the deal on this? 

The last time (the only time) I delved into the gaming laptop world was back several years ago when I got my hands on a Clevo D900 era machine that was in stripped and in bad condition for next to nothing. It didn't turn out to be a big win, but I did learn a lot about gaming machines of that time. Clevo, if you didn't already know is an OEM builder and doesn't really sell much under their own brand. Back then, gaming laptops were well and truly a niche product. Even Alienware OEM'd their machines from these guys! There was a lot of desktop or desktop derived hardware in these things and they were big, super-heavy and generally ran for less than an hour on battery power. And they were all like this....

Of course, this was back in the days of the HP HDX "Dragon", and the Dell XPS M2010 which were true "beast"; less laptops or mobile computers, but desktops that closed nicely! My, how things have changed!

Oh, don't get me wrong, big and crazy hasn't gone away. There's The Acer Predator, and the MSI Titan lines. But mostly today's gamers don't have to go to extremes to get excellent performance. That's where I arrived recently. What was I doing here? This is the story..... My daughter's boyfriend is a graduating senior and intends on being a computer science major. And since our school district has provided students with devices so he doesn't have his own up till this point. So.... what does a future CS major need in terms of a computer for the next several years. As it turns out, a decent gaming machine will be just fine for that. It will have enough memory to run virtual machines so that any OS necessary for coding can be accessed and have a monitor panel with enough resolution to see a good number of lines of code. However, for a college student to go to class and meet for group projects, they sure don't need/want something huge and difficult to carry around. And to survive the next several years of work and being carried around, he'll need something well spec'd and built.

And that's where this comes in; the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. Small enough to be decently portable, with a Ryzen CPU and other very decent specs to last awhile. So, with modern hardware and nice design, gaming machines do have other uses.

The World of Mid-Range Cellphones of 2020-21 and a Belated Admission

A few months ago, as 2020 came to a close, it became obvious that it was "that time" again. Time to move on, in the every-changing world of cellphones. Our 2 year contract with Sprint was up, which meant that we needed to make a decision about whether to: 

1. Stay with Sprint (now T-Mobile), or go with another carrier.
   
2. Keep our phones or move on. 
3. Some combination there-of.

 As nothing has changed in Terrell and any carrier NOT-SPRINT still didn't have good coverage there was nonexistent; we stayed with Sprint/T-Mobile. Another question was easily answered (or so we thought) with me staying with my "paid-for outright" Moto G6 phone, but everyone else was up in the air. My wife of course wanted to stay with Apple's iPhone, and daughter is also in the "ecosystem", but my son wanted to jump ship and move to Android. So this is where things start to get interesting..... 

This state of affairs set me off to do research on the current crop of "mid-range", "unlocked", Android phones. My son seemed uninterested in my long-standing use of Moto (Motorola of Lenovo manufacturer) phones such as my G. After a bit of research, it looked like much of the teens and twenties seem to be interested in the Google Pixel phones. My original belief was that they were higher-end, but my newer info indicated that Google had moved decidedly mid-range in the last 2 years beginning with the Pixel 3a. And that the Pixel 4, leaned in that direction as well. But I wanted to cast a wider net, so I looked at most everything.

This is the cast of characters as I began to do serious research into a replacement for his iPhone Xr and my aging phone G6 as well (more on that later). The cream that rose to the top ended up being the One+ Nord, the iPhone SE (which ended up being my daughter's replacement phone) and the Pixel 4/4a. So, we chased down a used Pixel 4 for him locally for $200 in good shape and it even came with a nice Spigen case.

Then we got to spend a joyful 3 hours at the formerly know as Sprint store. In the end, my wife got her traditional near-top-of-the-line iPhone 12, my daughter the iPhone SE (because they were out of the 11 and not getting any more), and my son switched to the aforementioned Google Pixel 4. He was overjoyed as much as any 17-year-old teenager could be, meaning he talked about it a bit. What about me?

I left with the same Moto G6 that I walked in with because it's me and I hate limiting myself to what the store has and I don't like to pay their retail price. .....but I was already looking! My G6 was decidedly long-in-the-tooth! Running out of storage (16Gb), slow and stuck on Android 9. What did I want to do?

I was looking at the Moto Z4 pretty hard, because I'm used to Motorola and like it's adaptability. And since it was a top-of-the-line phone, it had been available with up to 128Gb of storage. After looking at it a bit, I realized that it was getting old, I really didn't want to run around with a bunch of "Moto Mods" parts to do things with and it was still expensive while push 2 years old.

While I was looking at the Z4, I had to decide on a price level I was OK with for a replacement phone. That came down to $250 plus or minus a bit, and within the upper end of that range, sat the Google Pixel 4a. The $350 de-featured, 6-8 month younger brother of the Pixel 4. I had become suitably impressed with my son's 4 and didn't care about the features Google took out, so I started looking. These things are less than 6 months old so the prices are usually still above $300, but I was able to find an unlocked one locally in mint condition for $275.

So, after decades of use and 8-10 Motorola phones used, what made me jump? First and foremost, Lenovo hasn't done a good job of competing performance-wise with the competition in the mid-range phones. Their strategy seems to be to move down in feature-set and price, as well as performance. They are simply not part of the conversation when reviewers talk about the better mid-range phones. The other part, is the Pixel 4a is everything I want without anything I don't want (such as being an iPhone). The most important of these is a nice small size (sub 6" screen), fast for what I do, 128Gb of storage which is way more than the 16Gb that I came from, and an excellent camera. Although it doesn't have it's back covered in lenses like the iPhone Pro or Samsungs, it does have the single camera from the top-of-the-line 4XL This is a bit step for me who thought that I didn't care about the phone camera since I'm a real photographer who uses real cameras! I've finally given in and admitted that I use the phone as a camera way more than I a purpose-built one!

Yeah..... I'm Thinking I'm Back.

 

Back when I was born (1960), the U.S. aerospace community was probably in it's heyday, where speed and altitude records were exceeded on a seemingly yearly if not monthly basis. It seems like, we are in a similar place  with computing and most especially, mobile computing. I've been out of the game a bit for the last 2-3 years partially due to coaching swim at my school and the addition of another hobby which has consumed the lion's share of my time, attention of disposable income (such as it is)!

To borrow and work off of a question I was asked about my renewed participation in tech, to which my answer was pretty much as above....

The thing that symbolically represents that is probably my participation with the Thinkpads Forum on which I was (and am again) a "moderator". What caused this change?

Yup, just like lots of things this last year, even my hobby time has been substantially changed by COVID-19. So, this is what happened. Firstly, this last year, I had reach a natural fulfillment point in my other hobby and there wasn't really any more goals that I truly hadn't achieved. Then about a month ago, I started feeling not quite normal, and was very tired a lot. I had thought that it was the norm for being in the later part of the season and the accumulated fatigue along with some typical winter allergy issues for this part of the country. Turns out, it was much worse! On MLK Day, my wife took me over to a Clinic and got tested. For the next 2 weeks, I WAS DOWN, and quarantined in my office which has a daybed in it and a bathroom just outside. I found that the only thing I could really do (other than to fall asleep constantly) was to watch videos. One of the weird things about my experience with COVID was I didn't lose my smell and taste like everybody else, but also to not be able to read either, or I'd get a terrible "migraine" type of headache. I ended up watching a lot of history and technology videos. The history stuff for obvious reasons given my vocation, but the tech videos led to 2 things.

One led to an item that should have been obvious, but was curiously absent from my life. Home automation. I came across a pair of Lenovo Smart Clocks for $20 each and jumped in. It turned out that my thermostats were already system friendly so there I was. I soon added some cheap addressable light bulbs and it's clear that I'm pretty much hooked!

As I sit here writing this post, I'm also impatiently waiting for the arrival of my first true hub, which is the Lenovo 2nd Gen "Smart Display". It's very similar to the Google Nest Hub, but can much more often be found discounted. It's job will be to live in the kitchen, and control the various devices of the system as well as fetch recipes, display weather and anything else we want Google to tell us. Apparently, it can also do Google video calling for numbers that are set up for that. I can't wait because, it'll be the controller downstairs in our house for a while. It was supposed to be here on Tuesday, but the regional distribution center for USPS here in the Dallas area pulled one of their patented tricks..... send it to a completely different town from where it was posted! Rant over. 

The other thing that occupied my time while quarantined? Yup; the current state of computing tech. Over the course of the last 3+ years while occupied with swim and being the dad of 2 teenager, I have kind of lost track of the ongoing state of the computing world. When I last was "on it", Intel was dominant, Skylake was new and NVMe was just coming on the market. So, I've got some catching up to do.

Another reason is my daughter's significant other is a graduation senior who's going to major in one of the computing sciences. He like most folks really don't know much about computing hardware. It'd be one thing if he and his family had the money to throw at the problem, but he/they don't. So, they need to get the most for their dollar. Obviously, in order to advise him, I needed to get myself "up to date" on the state of the industry.

So, again, back to the John Wick analogy, I feel a bit like this scene where he goes to his basement and breaks into the concrete floor digs out his old life to do what needs to be done.

A Connected Wife Is A Happy Wife

 

Its so common today that I'd bet most of you didn't notice that everyone in this image has a phone or tablet in their hands. All we see if a bunch of friends gathered together and having a good time. Of course, having worked in IT for some time, the infrastructure of how this happens is implicit to me. That in the background unseen and probably not conscious to most people is a connection to the internet. 

The fact is, that as much as we use and depend on "broadband" access to "the cloud", it something like this working in the background of every home that allows it to happen. Most homeowners don't give it a second thought and probably haven't looked at it since the Internet provider came and connected everything up years ago. In 2004, when we built our house in the Dallas suburb of Forney, these panels were standard, however, in 2003 when the first owners of our current house in Terrell had it built, apparently it wasn't! Yup, crazy! One year difference and despite having had speaker wire run all over the house, they didn't put in Ethernet!

What's the big deal you say? If you didn't already know this, let me enlighten you a bit. In the world of data, it's the wired networking (or infrastructure) that does the heavy lifting keeping us connected to Youtube, Amazon Music, Instagram...... streaming everything. What about wireless? That's what delivers the end product, but without the wired apparatus delivering the data, wireless is pretty weak. Ask anyone who lives in a 2 story house trying to use a Wi-Fi access point! Better yet, ask anyone who lives a bit in the country and struggling through using one of those wireless services for the entirety of their content delivery. It's better than nothing, but it ain't good....

So, what do you do with no Ethernet infrastructure in a 2-story house? PLC of course! What the heck is "PLC"? It's powerline connection. Or, What the..... as my brother-in-law would say. It's where you borrow the electric wiring in your house and pass data back and forth over it. If that sounds highly dubious to you, it did to me too. But it works, after a fashion. How fast is it? Ignore what the specs say. It's roughly the speed of 802.11b Wi-Fi. That's 11 megabits per second friends! You remember that old Wi-Fi router from 3 or 4 generations ago that's in a box in the attic? It came out in 1999! Wi-Fi history for consumers went something like this: "B" 11mbp, "G" 54mbp, "N" 300mbp, and "AC" 433mbp. That's theoretic speed of course. Real world is roughly half that, and you also have to have the same standard on the receiving end in order to get that speed. So, in short form, it's not very fast, but it's faster than trying to get Wi-Fi throughout a 2-story house with 1 access point. 

So, that's been the state of affairs in our house for the last 4 years....... Then Covid-19 happened...

When we BOTH started working in the house regularly, then we had a problem! I was fine working in the office on a desktop machine plugged up directly to the router, but she was in a different part of the house entirely that was dependent on Wi-Fi being delivered by an access point connected to the PLC system...... on a different floor! Yikes! And these days, virtually all applications are connected to through the Internet somehow. So you see, it's not a good situation and certainly not up to regulary Zoom meeting at all.

So, yeah.... the solution has been to run a looooong Ethernet cable from the office across the hall through the dining room into the study...... since April!!!

Therefore I talked to lots of people to examine possible solutions. The answer pretty much was to bust holes in the walls of the office and my son's room upstairs and run the cabling into the attic and then down the wall to where the upstairs access point/switch lives. Ahhhhh, NO! Actually, I even considered it..... briefly.

Then this occurred to me. The office has 2 outside walls at the rear of the house. Why can't I run cabling out and up the side of the house into the attic, across the attic to the appropriate wall and drop it down? The distance isn't really and issue for Ethernet, I just needed to put it in conduit to protect the cabling. A few weeks ago, my father-in-law came by and helped us get the wire up to the attic. Saturday, my son and I pulled it across the attic and dropped it through the wall and pulled it out. And yesterday, I pulled it into the office and terminated it! Let me tell ya; AC Wi-Fi speed is pretty good!

I would say that my wife is happy, but she was actually fine with the Ethernet across the floor. I was the one that was bothered by it. Of course, she'd rather it be gone, but really she's just happy that I finished the project.