SSD vs. Rotating Media

On Sat, 30 Apr 2016 21:05:12 -0400, rickman Gave us:

Rotating (magnetic) media wins because of write rate coupled with longevity. A shelf full of rotated daily backups is what we used to use for the on-site stuff.

If you are installing the SSD we aren't talking about the same market. I'm talking about the computers sold on price. Your customers are clearly not buying computers under $500 and then paying you to instal SSDs.

I find it hard to believe retail sellers don't brag about including an SSD. The customers are a different thing. How much did your cleaner pay for this machine? I bet it was over $500 and likely well over. If a seller isn't going to get a higher price why would they use an SSD? To get the higher price you have to offer something over the competition.

Few people need 16 GB main memory either, but it sells computers.

You snipped your post which I was replying to. You were talking about archival storage and ways to mitigate the loss of data on SSDs. Specifically I think you were talking about a start up to make a board to plug the archives into periodically.

mpotential disaster.

I have a friend's Chromebook that seems to display web pages (or maybe just the images on them) in reverse video. I have yet to fire it up.

I'm about to toss this Go.d.mn Lenovo laptop. On top of all the problems it came with, it has lost some of the keyboard LEDs and acts like there is some sort of intermittent in the keys themselves. If I type fast it will start skipping keys. I would think it was my typing, not hitting a key hard enough maybe? But it happens with the space bar that my thumb has NO trouble hitting and hitting well.

I usually go for inexpensive computers, even built a couple myself. But this time I wanted some horse power to do FPGA simulations. Got an i7 with 16 GB RAM, separate video memory and a 17 inch screen so I can see the results better... nearly a kilo buck and I hate using it. A major piece of crap. I've been told some of the problems are standard features on laptops now, like they crapped on the function keys making them laptop special keys and they won't do the job function keys used to do. That is INSANE!!!

They did away with the mouse buttons so I can't use my thumb to press the button while the finger does the steering. Then the keyboard has been 100% less useful with lots of double enters - being so very sensitive and all the keys crowded together with no "white space" around them so I can't find them without looking (like using the arrow keys).

I didn't think a lot of my Toshiba that preceded this one, but now I miss it so...

True. My customers (the one's that actually pay me), generally buy high end machines. Just about everything in the way of laptops that I've recommended or resold recently have had i7 processors and

Please note that all Chromebooks, which are considered low end "laptops" of sorts, use SSD's.

My guess is about $850 plus tax and shipping from Dell. I can get the exact model number and service code on Monday (or Tues).

Of course the seller is now getting a higher price for SSD. The higher price is one possible reason why the retailer hides the fact that it uses an SSD. It will take a while for the recent price drops in SSD's to percolate through the supply chain. As for price, my guess(tm) is a 1TB drive adds about $80 to the retail price of a laptop, while a much smaller 120GB SSD might add $150. Prices will probably converge within about 4-6 months (i.e. before the Christmas shopping frenzy). If the buyer can live with a smaller drive, then SSD is the obvious choice. (Yes, I'm guessing at the prices).

DDR3 RAM is cheap. Most machines come with 8GB or maybe 12GB RAM. A PC3-12800 stick costs about $30 on eBay and roughly $90 from the manufacturer. Where possible, I order the machines with minimum RAM, and add my own.

I've seen machines with 16GB and more RAM. They tend to be owned by power users, such as architects, CAD/CAM users, video editors, and gamers. Most of my customers are business users, who don't need so much RAM. Well, one exception. I have a legal secretary that likes to open about 25 windows and leave them open all day. To keep it from swapping, I bumped it up to 16GB.

No, I didn't snip it. See the above citation. Something about a computah with a USB 3.0 interface.

Oops. I didn't snip it, but I also didn't read it correctly. My fault. Yes, it could be done with a PC and as USB 3.0 to SATA III adapter cable. Something like this: I don't think it would be a major project and could probably be done by a qualified programmist over a weekend. That means someone other than me because I'm a lousy programmer and tend to waste weekends ranting on Usenet. The problem is that as soon as it's finished, there will be dozens of clones for sale from China at a drastically reduced price. In other words, I can't easily make money on this.

Yep, it was the charger again. Nothing wrong with the actual charger, but both the AC power jack and DC connector on the laptop end look like someone jumped up and down on them. Never mind the rubber drop protector for smartphones. I need one for a lousy laptop power supply. I'll probably order a can of vinyl tool handle coating and make a cover. Or, maybe 3D print something.

Weird. It's easy enough to wipe the laptop, reload ChromeOS from scratch, and let Google download and repopulate the apps and user data from the cloud. I've only had to do that the few times that the OS became terminally corrupted by my attempts to install various Linux mutations. I eventually managed to make it work, but I trashed ChromeOS in the process. Good luck on that problem.

Ok topic drift time. Toss the laptop this way. I like most Lenovo laptops. What is the model number?

Backlit keyboards are nice to use but a real nightmare to repair. Offhand, your description sounds like either dirt in the keyboard to motherboard ribbon connector, conductive material (staples, pins, paper clips) floating around between the keys and the PCB with the LED's, or a delaminated low profile keyboard. The first two can be fixed, but the delaminated keyboard tends to be permanently intermittent and usually requires a replacement keyboard.

Did you buy this nightmare new, or did you inherit someone else's headaches? When I see a laptop that has multiple problems, all of which might be connector or connection failures, I tear it apart down to the motherboard, reseat all the connectors, clean off the debris with a paint brush, blow air under everything that might trap stuff, reconnect everything, and tighten all the loose screws. In other words, rebuild it. It doesn't fix bad solder connections but it does seem to fix most connection problems.

Yep. That was really dump. I don't like hitting Fn-F10 to get F10 to activate. However, it would seem that the various shifted Fn keys are more heavily used than just F1 thru F12 and should therefore occupy the unshifted position. I don't like the change, but I can see the rationalization.

Yep, that's been a common complaint. As I recall, it was done in stages, with every subsequent model adding more detrimental changes to the keyboard.

I've had some rather bad experiences with Toshiba in the distant past. However, their current offerings are really nice. I have one on the bench right now. Just some Win 8.1 and malware cleanup. Nothing wrong with the hardware except the usual loose screws.

Good luck.

Because they rely on being connected to the net where the storage is. My understanding is if you aren't connected, it doesn't have apps, etc. Will it even boot without Internet?

That doesn't make sense to me. Using an SSD speeds up the computer which is a selling point to advertise. No one would add a feature that costs real money and not tell anyone. That would be shooting yourself in the foot.

Also, your numbers don't sound right... $80 for 1TB but $150 for 120 GB??? Microcenter has 1TB SSDs from Samsung for $280. Don't know if they are good, but I believe Samsung has a good name in Flash.

The point is that if it *has* 16 GB of RAM, they will tell you loud and clear. Even if it only $30 for the extra RAM, it has to be charged to the customer and so you have to make them want it or they buy a cheaper machine. Same with the SSD. Why would I buy one machine with 120 GB storage when one with 1TB is the same price... if I *don't* know the small one is SSD?

That was *my* reply to your post you snipped. Here...

That was your post.

That's what I figured. I thought I might get away with reinstalling the browser if that is all that is affected.

Ideapad Z710. If I get a new one I am taking a hammer to this one and then sending it to Lenovo for repair.

Not worth repairing. POS flexes up and down as I type. I hated this machine from day one.

Of course it was new. Mine failed a week before black friday and I got this from Tiger Direct who are also SH*T. It was bundled with a "matching" carry bag which the laptop won't fit. Then they wouldn't give me one what would fit, rather they wanted to treat it like two separate sales and refund me a stinkin' $15. The turds!

Try Fn-cntl F4 in excel or I think it may be Fn-shift-cntl-F4 in Libre Office. It closes the window as if you had never pressed the F4 key. Why the hell does anyone need a primary key press to close a G*d D*mn window??? They also have function keys that turn off the display and disable the touchpad! Press one accidentally and see if you can figure out what the hell happened!!! No one would ever build a car that way! You'd get your ass sued!!!

My Tosh quickly developed a broken power jack. But I was able to open the clam shell enough to wedge a piece of leather over it to hold it in place enough to use... for a few months. I got pretty good at taking it apart and rewedging the connector. It eventually "died" meaning it wouldn't power on and I didn't know how to fix it. Likely it was something simple.

Oh, and I didn't like that the Tosh blew hot air out the left side... and I mean really hot. I figured this one would be better, but no... they run the fan so slow it doesn't cool well and the air that comes out is still very hot. It really heats my lap when I use it that way too. Uncomfortable. I haven't yet found a way to speed up the fan a bit while still making it responsive to the load. There are apps that just speed it up, but then it won't run faster when the load goes up.

I've become rather addicted to my Acer C720 Chromebook. Mostly, I use it at coffee shops and meetings to check email and browse the web. With about 4 to 8 hr battery life, I don't bother dragging around a charger. Some of the basics:

1. It boots very quickly without an internet connection. I'm lazy, so I authenticate via Bluetooth from my smartphone. Login is via my Google account.
2. Most of the apps run inside the Chrome web browser. Most of those also require an internet connection. Heres some examples of useful web apps: Photoshop workalike as a web app: Some are Chrome apps, while others reside on the web server.
3. Many apps can be used offline. The Chome web store has a category for those:
4. The selection of apps suck. Although ChromeOS and Android share the same ancestry and are very similar, Android has far more apps available in the Google Play Store, than in Chrome Web Store. Google keeps mumbling about merging the two operating system and stores, but nothing seems to be happening.
5. Updates are automatic and painless.

1. If you make a mess of the OS by rooting, you can simply wipe the OS from the SSD, reload via a USB dongle (or online), log back into Google, and all your apps, user data, and settings will be restored. I've done this several times to recover from failed Linux on Chromebook experiments.

2. Most of my customers start with a Chromebook as a 2nd laptop and eventually migrate to using the Chromebook exclusively. The original justification was a cheap laptop to take on trips and vacations where losing the laptop will not be an expensive catastrophe. I've been buying them refurbished for about 0 to 0.

1. You do not need to store anything in the cloud (Google Drive). However, syncing your settings to the cloud is a good idea so that setting up a new ChromeOS or Android device is painless. There is some control over what is saved and stored with the Google Dashboard: Hmmm... my dashboard shows that I manage 13 Android devices that are backed up to the cloud.

I can't convince you unless you see for yourself. Go to Best Buy and look at the laptops on display. Tell me if you can tell if they have an SSD. I could but only by the size of the SSD/HD. Ask the salesperson and they'll probably have to look it up. Yes, it is possible to shoot oneself in the foot.

OEM prices have a time delay built in. If you buy a name brand laptop with an SSD included, the price of the SSD reflects the price of SSD devices at the time the laptop was built, not todays mail order prices. SSD prices have been dropping, so expect to see overpriced SSD's inside name brand machines.

Data storage management is a personal thing that varies with the individual and their applications. I do have customers that collect massive amounts of data, but they store it on removable USB 3.0 drives or NAS boxes. A few use the cloud, but not many because of speed issues.

Well, you are fairly typical. You want to have everything available and at your finger tips when you need it. If you're in a meeting, and you need to find a particular document or drawing, you want it on your laptop drive. So, you carry everything from current work to ancient history on your machine. That works, but I consider it risky to put all my eggs in one basket. As long as I can convince customers to keep the big files (videos, DVD images, VM's) off their main drive,

That depends on whom the store salesman is addressing. Nerds and knowledgeable users, that read the reviews and know what the numbers mean, are not impressed. They also don't buy much from retail stores. Retail targets those who are unlikely to understand what 16GB of RAM really costs or what performance improvements it might deliver. Sales people are instructed to NOT throw numbers, buzzwords, and acronyms, around. To average purchaser, the selling points are a nicer look, better screen, good keyboard feel, convenience features, price, and possible a service contract (Geek Squad). Numbers, like processor speeds, cache size, benchmark results, diskspace, etc are not emphasize because they will tend to confuse the buyer. The sales people will try to answer any questions that the customer asks, but if it involves a number, they drag it out and "search" for an answer mostly to discourage the customer from asking another numerical question.

Ok, I screwed up. Sorry.

You can't. It's all or nothing. It's not like Windoze where you can install parts and pieces of the OS. You do what's called a "Powerwash" which wipes EVERYTHING from the Chromebook, reinstall the entire OS, automatically reload the apps and data from the cloud, and you're back in business. The OS is fairly well protected from mere mortal users. However, developers need access to the OS, which is where the problems start. The developer mode is only moderately protected.

Sorry, but I don't have any experience with that model or its relatives. I've replaced one or two keyboards on similar models, but that's about it. Mostly, I see Yoga and Thinkpad series Lenovo laptops.

Incidentally, Chromebook keyboards are very similar to your Lenovo keyboard and have similar layout and function key problems.

That means the keyboard is not seated properly. Find the instructions for removing the keyboard. Don't bend the keyboard or your will kill it. Clean out the food droppings, cat hair, dust, etc. Figure out what is keeping the keyboard from laying flat. Usually, it's something with a connector on the end, such as the fat video cable or internal power connector. Compare cable routing and shield placements with an online photo. Hold things down with tape if necessary. Replace keyboard and it should lay flat and not flex. If your laptop has been worked over in the past, lumpy keyboards are a common problem.

I used to buy things from Tiger Direct. I got tired of complaining about "open box" shipments where half the contents were spilled all over the delivery truck. This was apparently chronic as were billing and replacement issues. I haven't bought anything from them for about

I don't know what to suggest. I take my chances with online vendors, refurbished equipment, eBay/Amazon purchases, and used equipment. I've had my share of problems, but nothing as bad as this laptop. I don't know what I'm doing different, except maybe one item. I never buy from the absolute cheapest price and prefer to buy one or two notches above the cheapest. For some unknown reason, the very cheapest vendor or deal always has a well hidden problem or complication with either the merchandise, description, terms, etc. While overpaying slightly is no guarantee of success, it seems to work better for me.

Lenovo goofed, but perhaps something can be done to fix the problem. Try this fix for the Z510, which hopefully will work with the Z710:

That can happen to any laptop. The charger connectors are universally awful. The right angle flavor seem to be better than straight in. I do plenty of charger connector replacements. Apple magnetic connectors are the best, if you can keep them clean. Toshiba laptops mostly have the power connector on the end of a pigtail cable. The idea is to make it easy to replace. Unfortunately, I sometimes have to remove the motherboard in order to replace the pigtail.

A very common problem is that fur ball has wedged itself between the laptop heat pipe radiator and the fan shroud. The fur ball cannot be removed without disassembling the laptop. Something like this: It's a known problem and at least one manufacturer has designed the heat pipe radiator to be easily removable and cleanable like this: If you ever have a similar cooling problem, you might want to tear apart the laptop clean out the crud.

I don't understand. Isn't Bluetooth via smartphone an Internet connection?

This may be what I need to do. Where do I get the load to put on the USB dongle? If the machine is hosed, how do you get online? I didn't realize I needed a userid and password. I'll need to get those.

The Samsung 1TB drive has been offered at $280 for months now.

Where else is there to buy laptops unless you buy online from the same sort of business? I've yet to find a vendor that is any better than the others.

Ok, thanks.

I was having a *lot* of trouble with the keyboard this morning and I think I figured out it might be Yahoo groups. I was typing a post and was seeing all manner of dropped chars. Now, in Thunderbird I'm not seeing that problem.

The Chrome is not my laptop so not my problem for using it.

Thanks I will try that. I read somewhere that a BIOS update is required to fix this and I am *very* leery of updating the BIOS as it can brick the computer.

I'm told that can reverse the hotkeys and also fix some of the poor power control issues I see as well as other issues. Why do they keep shipping the same crappy BIOS after they can fix so many problems with an update?

Yes, mine was on a pigtail. The mounting ears were broken off. As long as I didn't push on the connector it was fine. One push a bit too hard and it would slip and I'd be f****d until I could open the clamshell.

Thanks again. I'll try Speedfan. That sounds exactly like what I want. I might have a furball problem having a bunch of cats that climb on me while using the computer. But the exhaust has been hot since day one. They just seem to prefer to keep it silent. I like quiet, but not at that cost.

Mine has a heat pipe like the Dell. Sometimes I blow through the exhaust port and don't see much effect.

No. BlueGoof is device to device (peer to peer). It's normally NOT used for internet access due to the lack of speed. Mostly, it's good for keyboards, mice, printers, and small file transfers.

In this case, it's a new feature on the Chromebook that arrived with the last update called "SmartLock". It's not really as convenient as I would prefer, but does save me from typing in my password in a crowded coffee shop full of "finger hackers". The problems are that I have to unlock the smartphone before BlueGoof will connect, and that I still have to click on my photo on the Chromebook login screen in order to initiate the BlueGoof connections. Once I get past all that, it's quite fast.

The easiest way is to install the recovery app, which will download the necessary machine specific image: Don't guess on the model number or you may brick your Chromebook. If possible, copy your documents to flash drive, just in case. Recovery takes a long time (30 mins?). I suggest a USB 3.0 flash dongle. However, I've had problems getting a flash drive to boot on some USB ports. If it doesn't boot on the fast USB 3.0 port, try the slow 2.0 port.

You will need the owners Google ID and password in order to restore the apps and data. It will download everything from the cloud so be prepared for a long wait. Mine takes about 30 mins on a cable modem connection.

If you don't have a fast wi-fi connection, you might consider getting a USB to ethernet adapeter. I have a pile of these, mostly for chromebooks. However, I have never tried using one to restore a Chromebook, so I don't know if it will play during a reinstall.

There are lots of other instructions available online:

I get better service (returns, credits, replacement, expedited delivery) from eBay and Amazon vendors than any retail establishment. However, if I want something customized or built to order, I have a few vendors that do the work for me. For mail odor, I tend to buy from Newegg. Note that the Best Buy, Newegg, and Tiger Direct web sites are full of items that are actually fulfilled by a 3rd party. So far, I haven't had any problems with these 3rd party vendors, but I'm worried that this might change in the future.

I also deal with the factory refurbishers and outlets. All the major vendors have these outlets online mostly to unload returns. For example: etc...

Locally, there are only a few retail vendors left. Best Buy, Office Max, Staples, Costco, Santa Cruz Electronics, and Gray Bears. If I want to go for a drive, Frys and Walmart. All will sell you a laptop.

Windoze might have been doing something in the background. right click on the task bar and select "Task Manager". Depending on your version of Windoze, have it show a graph of CPU and hard disk activity. If they're maxed out, you'll be running rather slow.

I'm trying to sell you on the idea of at least trying a Chromebook. With luck, you might even like it and buy one.

I haven't bricked a computah in many years. Even the worst products have BIOS recovery utilities. The trick is to look at the date. If it's very recent, I'm very wary. However, the Z710 bios is from 2014 has probably been beaten to death by now. Google problem with the Z710 (or Z510) and see if there are any horror stories. If not, it's probably safe. If you've never done it before, RTFM. Assume that the update is going to trample all over your settings. There's no easy way to save those (that works reliably) so I just take digital photos of the BIOS screen settings before doing the update. One critical setting to record is whether the hard disk is set for AHCI or ATA-emulation. Your HD won't boot if it's set wrong. Anyway, plan on resetting the BIOS settings to defaults, and entering everything from scratch even if it looks like your settings were preserved. I've been fooled a few times where the update trashed some obscure setting that caused problems later on.

I don't know of a single "smart" product that doesn't require a firmware update on installation. Literally everything I buy with firmware needs to be updated. Routers, modems, PC's, laptops, DVD players, TV sets, media players, automobiles, satellites, etc are shipped with out of date firmware. This is to give the manufacturer a head start on shipping product. I would not be very surprised in the next generation of gadgets arrive with no firmware at all, and require connecting to the internet in order to load the latest firmware. Fasten your seat belt or the future might pass you by.

Yeah, I get that too. The laptop vendor wants to save a few milligrams and makes the case too flimsy. To fix that, I use hot melt glue. I should use low temp (120C) glue to avoid melting the plastic, but I'm careful and use the regular stuff. I sometimes smear some silicon grease onto the plastic and connector to make removal easier.

Also try the S.M.A.R.T. utility that's part of SpeedFan. It produces a very nice and human readable report that I can hand to customers proving that their hard disk is about to blow up and they really should have me install a replacement drive or SSD before it blows.

I'm thinking the low air flow and resultant high temperatures is the result of either fan drag or obstruction caused by the fur ball. You can't see it from the outside or blow it out with compressed air. The only way is to tear it apart and clean it. If you do take it apart, be sure to take a paint brush and clean inside the fan shroud.

Good luck.

Battery alone wouldn't do it---what's needed is scrubbing, i.e. content reading and maybe even rewriting, to give the firmware a chance to detect failing storage and remap it.

"Wear leveling" is something else; it's needed because you can only rewrite an individual flash cell a limited number of times (1e5-1e8 times). In the actual usage, the writes tend to go to few limited active files, and so you have to spread the rewrites of the active disk content onto many available physical sectors. It is usually achieved by changing the mapping of the files/sectors visible externally to internal physical sectors. Usually flash/SSD storage has significantly more sectors than what's visible, and they rotate in and out of visible range. Some sectors are detected as faulty, and are taken out of circulation. If the data can be read out, or the fault detection happens upon writing, this is not even reported as error---the disk continues to operate.

BTW, this is actually SSD's great advantage: their main failure mechanism is quite predictable, so the maintenance of large data stores is nice: you buy a replacement when the remaining lifetime drops to 20% and replace the disk when it gets to single digits. You can actually read this as one of the SMART parameters---my disk right now reports:

The wear leveling is actually a security problem: you may think you've wiped out your SSD by overwriting the data, but in fact lots of fragments will still reside in currently unmapped sectors, and can be read out by messing with the firmware or by directly reading out the flash media.

Thanks, this is all very helpful.

Do they come with 17 inch screens? If not I'm not interested. They seem to call 15" a "large" screen.

The BIOS settings have never been changed, but I guess it's still a good idea to photo the settings as you say. I was working with a friend to repair a coffee maker.. not a Mr. Coffee, but really an espresso machine. We got it apart and found the trouble, replaced the driver transistor and then found we couldn't figure out all the wires. I had said to take some photos but he didn't do a very rigorous job. There were several wires that looked identical once disconnected and we had to play some guessing games to get them back on correctly.

This is what hanging is for.

I'm not sure it isn't just a crappy control program that errs on the side of quiet.

This sounds to me more like RAID scrubbing, which is commonly done as a regular scan for both SSD and harddisk raids. This does not normally involve any re-writing, and is thus not going to affect any wear levels (not that a weekly re-write of an entire SSD would make much effect on its endurance). RAID scrubbing just reads each stripe and checks it for consistency. If there are a few bit errors on reading, the disk's ECC will fix them on the fly. If there are a few more errors, the disk will correct them and automatically re-write the data to a new sector. If there are lots of errors, the disk will return an error, and the RAID system will re-build and re-write the missing data.

So scrubbing like this eliminates gradual decay of data, if any, without re-writing unnecessarily.

Re-mapping happens automatically - it is a /long/ time since this was handled by system software rather than on-disk firmware. You might be able to fine-tune the error level at which re-mapping is triggered, but I doubt if that is done much.

Yes.

Rubbish. Even the cheapest of USB flash sticks have ECC - NAND flash is never used without ECC, because such a large proportion of blocks have at least a few bad bits.

Of course, higher quality drives are likely to have more powerful ECC and be able to handle more errors - but they all have ECC.

You don't do any re-write unless there are significant errors, and then the re-write is triggered by the disk firmware (SSD or HD). On SLC SSD, re-writing good data is useless - the bits are basically quantum in nature, so they are perfect until they fail totally, so re-writing the same data does not "reset the rot timer". MLC SSD's have some failure modes where bit values could gradually move, but even there it is rare. And these devices have more ECC to handle such issues - again, simply re-read.

This what I already wrote. Indeed, this is how it works, and it is a usual function of raid controllers and harddisks.

The reason I replied is that that "MegaCLI" command is not a command that controls operation of the Linux kernel, but only for the MegaRAID controller. So when you don't have that controller, you cannot use that command.

None of that is true. SSD bits do not stay stable for a time (one year or anything else) and then start to stray gradually from their set point. There is just a chance that a bit will jump due to quantum randomness, or external influence (like cosmic rays), as well as the not insignificant chance for any given bit that it simply does not work. They don't need refreshing by re-writing, but it is not a bad idea to do a /read/ pass every now and again so that any sectors with significant errors get corrected by automatic re-writes in the disk.

More sophisticated SSD's will do such reads anyway, as part of their garbage collection and wear levelling passes. If you want to do it manually, something like this will work:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=16M

Indeed it is a feature of the disk firmware. It is most likely on by default, but you can set lots of parameters using mode setting commands.

In Linux you can change the setting with hdparm, but the manpage indicates that modern drives often do not support it. (likely they have become so dependent on this feature that the drive would not perform reasonably without it)

Yes.

I've used MegaCLI on a Dell server. It is extraordinary how inconsistent that program is - it appears to have been thrown together by a number of different developers who refuse to talk to each other and agree on common formats for command line options, or the names and technical terms, whether things should be case-sensitive or case-insensitive, and so on. Fortunately, it is not a program that I actually need to use often.

It is the same with all RAID controller management programs. Try hpacucli and you will get even more frustrated.

Programs to setup the ILO or DRAC management cards: same thing.

However, they are rarely needed and it is nice that there actually is a solution so you don't need to reboot the system and do it from the BIOS setup program.

I haven't had the pleasure of using other programs, so I'll take your word for it. I mainly use Linux mdadmin and btrfs raid. mdadmin is not simple either, but I guess familiarity helps.

Indeed.

No. Note the title of this review: "Chromebooks will never be successful until they have bigger screens" The problem is that Chromebooks are a product looking for a market. They found it in cheap notebooks for K13 skools. In general, school kids have much better eyesight than their parents (or grandparents). They also don't want to drag around a big heavy large screen laptop. Those that really need a large screen just plug a 24" or larger

"Google's Chromebooks make up half of US classroom devices sold"

I just tore apart a Fluke 8050a DMM. It's a good thing that I took photographs because I can't tell which way the elastometric strips are oriented to connect to the PCB's and LCD display.

Hint: Never do something you can't undo.

It could be. However, the fan control program resides in the BIOS, so it might be a good idea to check if the laptop needs a BIOS update.

Consider yourself corrected. I selected a random 2.5" laptop drive from my collection. In this case, it's a Western Dismal WD1600BEVT

I first tried to scrape off the plating so that I might create a clear spot. Didn't happen as the coating is really tough. My pocket knife wouldn't touch it. I reached for the Dremel tool but decided that might be too dangerous if it shattered. I was rather surprised at how much force was required to break the glass with a small tack hammer.

Incidentally, I knew that it was glass before I shattered it by the tone it produced when struck like a bell. Glass makes a pleasant high pitched "ting" sound, while aluminum makes a dull "thud". That's why you can buy glass bells, but not aluminum bells.

Need anything else destroyed?