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22 Jan 2021 - Podcast #727 - (21:14)
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A couple of weeks ago, I described some of the things you might want to consider when looking at new computers if you've decided to replace an older computer in 2021. If you did that (or plan to), you may be wondering what to do with the old computer.
Although there are doubtless other possibilities, four primary options came to mind. These include installing Linux on the old computer, turning it into a Chromebook, giving it to a friend or family member, or donating it to a charitable organization. Just because the computer is too old to run the latest version of Windows well doesn't mean that it's worthless. Putting a computer out for trash collectors to carry away is the worst possible option.
If you've been wondering about Linux, it's easy to replace Windows. Most Linux distros have two installation options: One for those who understand disk partitioning and the multiple partitions a Linux installation needs, and another for those who don't know and don't care to know. Choose the second option, accept all the defaults that the installer presents, and you'll have a Linux computer in less than half an hour. Usually quite a bit less than half an hour.
One of the best Linux distros for Windows users is Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu. There are literally hundreds of Linux distros, but they're all based on just a handful of primary distros. Mint and Ubuntu are the primary choices of new users.
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Linux Mint looks a lot like Windows. You'll find a Menu button that serves the same purpose as the Windows Start button. A Files function looks like the Windows File Explorer and the Settings panel bears more than a passing resemblance to the Windows Settings panel.
I have a Toshiba computer that's had Windows 7 installed when I bought it, so it would have been manufactured in 2009 or 2010 and is more than a decade old. It's running Linux Mint. Although I don't use the computer a lot, it serves as a good way for me to keep an eye on what's happening in the world of Linux. Whenever the topic of Linux comes up, I have admit that it would do everything I need if I didn't depend on Microsoft and Adobe applications.
The old computer may look like junk to you, but somebody might be willing to buy it. If not, you can donate it to an organization that will be able to use it or give it to a recycler who will keep it out of a landfill.
Bible Money Matters offers a list of ten places where you may be able to sell or trade old equipment.
SellBroke is a company I dealt with in 2019 when my wife's old computer finally broke down for the last time. See my description of the procedure in the 28 July 2019 program. SellBroke buys Windows and MacOS laptop computers, various kinds of phones, desktop computers, cameras, tablets, and other miscellaneous gear. They paid $44 for a computer that was useless.
If the computer is still in working order and relatively new, five or six years old, there are organizations that will accept it and make it ready for others who need a computer. A Microsoft service will help you find a computer refurbisher. It's always better to keep computers and other electronics out of landfills. Another good source to locate organizations that accept computer equipment is provided by TechSoup.
For devices that are older or no longer work, check out Earth 911's recycling search service.
It really is important not to toss electronic devices into the trash because they will end up in a landfill. Computers contain valuable and sometimes dangerous materials. Chromium, lead and other heavy metals and substances that reduce flammability are all used in manufacturing computers.
If you donate a computer to someone who will reuse it, it's essential to remove licensed software that you've installed on a new computer and any personal information that's on the computer. This is less important if the computer will be disassembled for component recycling, but it's still wise.
The best way to strip personal information and licensed software from the computer is to use a utility that deletes all data on the disk and then writes nonsense data onto the disk using several passes. That's because just deleting files and even formatting the disk won't remove the magnetic traces of data. Several common utilities have functions to perform this task and, if one is not installed on your computer, there are free open-source utilities. More about that in a moment.
When you donate a computer to a library or charity, include all of the peripherals if you got replacements with the new computer. The keyboard, mouse, any packaged software, and other accessories that came with the computer will help a school, nonprofit, or charity put the computer to use quickly.
The Licking County Computer Society runs an electronics recycling event every year, usually in September. They accept old computers, faxes, printers, monitors, ink cartridges, batteries, and cell phones in working or non-working condition. Televisions and old-style CRT monitors are not accepted.
Does a parent, child, cousin, aunt, or uncle need a computer? The danger involved in giving a family member your old computer is that you will probably be considered the de facto tech support person for the device. Forever. So this is something to think about before deciding to hand it over to someone.
The same preparations that you would use to prepare the computer for sale or donation apply here.
Converting a Windows computer to run the Chrome operating system is not a trivial task, but PC World has an excellent article that describes how to perform the conversion of a Windows computer to a Chromebook-like computer, and what to expect. It uses Neverware’s CloudReady operating system that is based on Chromium OS. There are limitations. For example, you won't have access to the Google Play Store and that may be a deal breaker. If not, the result will be a computer that's nearly identical to a Chromebook.
If you're a criminal or a terrorist, you'll want to prepare the computer before you sell it or give it to someone. Likewise if you have a stash of porn on the computer. Or even if you're just a regular citizen who has email addresses, bank account information, and documents that you'd prefer that the entire world not have access to.
This isn't important if you're planning to install Linux or convert the computer to a Chromebook, but it is important if you'll be doing anything that involves giving someone else access to the hardware.
Your private information might be stored in the computer's memory, but only when the computer is on. The only locations you need to be concerned about are the disk drives in the computer. Deleting folders and files isn't enough. Deleting files and folders doesn't really delete files and folder. It just marks the items as deleted and you won't see them in the file explorer or any application that displays files and folder. Recovering the folders and the files in them is trivial.
You might think that formatting the disk drive would destroy all of the files and folders on the drive. This does make it a bit harder for criminals to recover data, but the process isn't difficult. What you need is an application that securely deletes files and folders. These aren't difficult to find and many of them are free, open-source applications.
Last week, I described the process of replacing the solid-state boot drive in a computer with a larger drive. I had wanted to use the old M.2 solid-state drive as a device for fast caching of data for photo, video, and audio files. The computer didn't recognize the M.2 drive after I installed the new SSD. There's a quick, easy solution.
The computer has a Thunderbolt port in addition to USB3 ports. Depending on which generation of USB3 is being used, data rates range from five to 20 gigabits per second. Thunderbolt can transfer data at 40 gigabits per second.
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It would be nice if one could just plug an M.2 SSD into a Thunderbolt port, but it's not quite that easy. But it's also not much harder than that. I found an aluminum M.2 SSD enclosure from SSK for less than $15, so I ordered one. When the device arrived, I placed the M.2 drive in the enclosure's tray, slid the tray into the enclosure, and inserted a screw that SSK provided using the screwdriver that SSK provided. Total elapsed time: Less than 5 minutes.
The cable has a Thunderbolt plug on each end, but SSK also provides a Thunderbolt>USB3 adapter, so I connected the drive to a USB3 port and it was immediately recognized as drive N. As you may recall from last week, the M.2 drive was the original boot drive in the computer, so it had four partitions: The EFI system partition, the partition that was drive C, the recovery partition, and a bit of unallocated space. Using Aomei's Partition Assistant, I selected each of those partitions and marked it for deletion. The application noted each request and placed it in a queue to be executed when I click the Apply button.
With all of the existing partitions deleted, all of the space on disk 7 was unallocated, so I needed to tell the partition manager to create a new partition and to use all space on the drive. The job was added to the queue following the four deletion actions.
With the partition changes made, it was time to format it. I want to use all of the space in the partition, format the partition as an NTFS drive, and assign drive letter N. That final job is added to the queue.
With six jobs in the queue, it's time to have the Partition Manager execute them in order. The process took less than two minutes.
Once that was complete, I wanted to disconnect the drive from a USB3 port and connect it to the computer's Thunderbolt port. The drive was immediately recognized and mounted as drive N. Although it wasn't necessary, rebooting the computer seemed to be a prudent step at this point in the process — just to ensure that the drive will be recognized and mounted properly. It was.
Although it wasn't necessary, I chose to run Crystal Disk Mark to benchmark the process. To get a good comparison, I also ran Crystal Disk Mark on the new boot drive (C) and one of the mechanical drives (H). The results speak for themselves, but I'll speak for them anyway.
I have partially obscured the 4K random read and write tests because they have little meaning for a solid-state drive. Still, you can see that the Thunderbolt drive is up to 161 times faster than the mechanical drive because SSDs don't have to reposition heads.
The sequential read and write tests are the important ones for SSD performance. The numbers shown are the average results of five tests. Read results were 142 megabytes per second (MB/s) for the mechanical drive, 455 MB/s for the Thunderbolt drive, and 542 MB/s for the new Samsung boot drive. Write performance was similar: 147 MB/s for the mechanical drive, 442 MB/s for the Thunderbolt drive, and 476 MB/s for the new boot drive.
This should make a significant difference for applications that cache data.
There is no foolproof method to eliminate spam, but there are actions you can take to reduce the amount of crap that makes it to your email inbox. The solution may be more inconvenient than the problem, though.
Most people use a single email address for everything, and that's part of the problem. I have a personal address and a TechByter address that I use for just about everything. Some people suggest having one email address that you use only with friends and relatives and a secondary address that's used only for subscribing to mailing lists, setting up accounts on commercial websites, and the like.
The theory is that the protected address won't get any spam, and that's probably true. But if you set up a new account to be used only by friends and family, you'll have to notify each of them that they should use your new address. Some will. Some won't. And you'll doubtless continue to use the old address for mailing list subscriptions and your accounts on commercial websites.
So you really won't get less spam; the spams will just be divided between two or more email accounts.
Those who promote the use of private and public email addresses point out correctly that virtually every commercial website includes, in its terms and conditions, the right to share your email address. And by "share", I mean that they will sell your address. Having two or more accounts does nothing to address this issue.
You'll also be told to use only your secondary email address if you make a public comment on a website, sign up for a contest or special offers, or to create accounts with social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn.
After doing all that, you'll have two or more email accounts and you won't receive any less spam.
I mentioned that I have two email accounts. Actually, it's worse than that. My internet service provider created an email account for me. I check it about once a year. Creating an Outlook account for use when I sign on to my Windows computer created an Outlook email address that I check regularly. There's my primary email account and a TechByter email account that are both checked regularly. And there's a Gmail account that's used primarily for communications with Google, but also as a backup account. And I have one account that is used exclusively for communications with a specific client. Oh ... and there's one more email address that I use only for communications with banks. Only that last account has never, ever received a spam.
Instead of playing games with different email accounts, I use MailWasher Pro, an application that checks my email accounts every ten minutes and uses a variety of methods to identify spam. There's a free version of MailWasher, but it is limited to monitoring a single email account.
MailWasher's filtering method starts with whitelists and blacklists that I've provided. Whitelisted addresses will never be tagged as spam and blacklisted addresses will always be tagged as spam. The whitelist, which MailWasher calls a Friends list and the blacklist can include specific addresses, domains, and entries that include wildcards. Users can also write their own complex filters, use SpamCop and Spamhous services, and use a new service called "First Alert" that keeps a list of known spam emails. Additionally, MailWasher learns by watching which emails it hasn't classified to understand whether you choose to consider them good or bad. In other words, its accuracy improves over time.
Last week I described replacing a hard drive in my primary computer with a larger disk drive. When the old drive and the new drive were installed, I renamed the boot drive from Windows to Windows-New so I could easily differentiate between the old drive and the new drive.
That made it possible for me to be absolutely certain that when I deleted partitions I would be doing it on the old drive. That seems like a reasonable and easy action, doesn't it?
Well, it's not, and I probably should have known that. Renaming any disk drive can cause problems, and it did. If you find yourself in a situation like this, rename the old drive, not the new drive.
The primary problem I found was that Adobe's Creative Cloud thought the computer was an interloper and wouldn't give me access to any of the applications. The solution was easy enough: All I had to do was deauthorize the computer and then reauthorize it.
Several other minor annoyances cropped up, but they were all relatively easy fixes. But the point is that none of the problems would have occurred if I had renamed the old drive instead of the new drive.
File this under "Lesson Learned".
Let's look back even further than 20 years. I'll spin the clock back almost 26 years and set the Wayback Machine (apologies to Mister Peabody and his boy, Sherman) to New York City in the year 1965. June specifically.
In June 1995 I was at PC Expo at Javits Center in New York City. The article I was writing in my hotel room on the Compaq computer running Windows 3.11 mentions IBM's OS/2, which I said had no way to beat Windows 95 in the marketplace, and noted "Windows 95 will be available on August 24th."
At that time, PC Expo might have been the largest event ever at Javits. Every space on every floor was filled and people "joked" (in a non-joking way) that the show sucked every cab in Manhattan over to Eleventh Avenue. By 2001, the show was feeling the effects of a worsening economy and by 2002 it was a tiny shell of what it once was.
But it was fun while it lasted.
Has Amazon ever not been profitable? The answer is yes.
In 2001, I wrote "Amazon.com has brought in more money than any other web-based business, but it's routinely spent more than it's collected. In other words, Amazon.com has never made a profit. Back when anyone with a dot-com idea could raise millions, I heard people say, 'If Amazon needs to be profitable, it will be profitable.' Investors are tired waiting. Now we get to see if Amazon can turn a profit. Jeff Bezos says it'll happen in the fourth quarter of this year."
Long story short: The company laid off 15% of its workforce, closed distribution centers in Georgia and Seattle, and became very, very profitable.