MacBook Air or iPad Air

My wife recently went on a trip and brought her MacBook Air so she could do some work during her downtime. She used it for about 10 minutes and then shut it off to go play with grandkids. When she tried to turn it back on, nothing. We played with it a bit but decided to wait until we got home to really troubleshoot the problem. We got home and discovered she needs a new laptop. For the moment, she is making due with my old Chromebook I got for free but I have been wanting to replace it for the past 6 months. I figure I have a week before my wife will demand a replacement laptop.

Having used my Chromebook for around 6 years, it is a great device and will do everything my wife needs a computer to do. I thought about replacing her laptop with one and threw the idea out to my son, who works in technology. He suggested getting an iPad with a keyboard instead. This has brought on a research project over the past several days trying to figure out which device would be the best replacement.

Several months ago kids headed back to school or off to college and a number of articles appeared on the Internet as to which device parents should get for students. While my wife is not a student, she will use it like one and I found the articles very useful. I listed out what my wife uses a computer for and realized that a MacBook Air, an iPad Air, and a Chromebook would all work well. I could also throw a Windows laptop into the mix as my wife often uses Windows at work. Then I priced everything and discovered that if I get a keyboard for the iPad Air, the total price comes within $40 of the MacBook Air. Now I am shortcutting a lot of the technical details as you can find an older generation iPad for around $200, but I question the longevity of the device. When comparing computers, it is best to try and make the comparison as equal as possible with regards to CPU, RAM, and storage space. That is pretty easy with the Apple products, less clear-cut between them and Windows or Chromebook machines.

Right now I am leaning towards the Apple MacBook Air as it represents the least amount of a learning curve for my wife. It comes close to the same price as the iPad with keyboard but weighs significantly less. No it is not as versatile as you can separate the iPad from the keyboard, but knowing how my wife will use the computer, I think it to be the best choice. The only thing that can throw a wrench into those plans is that Costco has a Dell laptop that competes with the Apple one for about half the price. Ultimately I will leave it up to my wife to decide.

My New Work Laptop

I have been at my current company for 2 months now and that has given me plenty of time to run my new work-provided laptop through its paces. It is a Dell Latitude 5320 and nothing special. It has an Intel i5 processor with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB hard drive. A simple description would be that it works for my daily activities as the director of software engineering.

Earlier in my career I did a lot of software development and this machine would not be nearly powerful enough. Now I do a lot of management tasks and that doesn't require a powerful machine. Truth be told, I could probably get by with a powerful Chromebook but I do like having a full-functioning computer. I do a lot of Microsoft Teams meetings and I use the camera a lot. I also use the computer for e-mail and I like having a full Microsoft Outlook client on my machine. That gives me the option to compose responses to e-mail while I am not connected to the Internet even though I have never had the need to do so.

That last sentence is very common when we think about what we want in a computer. While we may never use a feature, we want that option. Unfortunately it leads to wanting a machine that is more expensive than what we really need. Understanding that and being able to recognize it can ultimately save some serious money.

Another shift that has happened in the last few years is the idea of creating a document and storing it on your own computer. Now I am more apt to store a document on Google Drive or Microsoft's OneDrive as it is significantly easier to share. A document can be either a spreadsheet, word processing document, or presentation file. As they are stored somewhere other than my local machine, I don't need a large hard drive. If I did, I could always add an external drive and I have several laying around my office.

Honestly I never would have thought such a low-end laptop would work for me but I have to admit that it is. Should I need something a little more powerful, I can always go to our IT department and request it. For now that isn't necessary.

The Death of a Power Supply

A few months ago, I started noticing some weird behavior on my desktop Linux computer at home. I have been able to work around it until I got home from the airport this past Friday night. I went to turn on the computer, but it wouldn't boot. There were not lights nor fans that came on. It was like I was pressing a random part of the computer as the "On" button seemed to have no effect. When this has happened in the past, it was just a matter of disconnecting all of the cables from the back, re-inserting them, and turning it on. Friday night, that didn't work.

It is a good thing I have several other computers in my office at home as I was able to search the Internet for help. My Linux desktop is a Dell. In fact, it is one of the first Dell computers to have the new Intel i7 processor and it seems the engineers never got full credit on their homework assignments in college. Searching on my model number and a few other key words like "won't turn on" brought up numerous accounts of other Dell customers experiencing the same problem. When Dell built my computer, they put in a 300 watt power supply, which turns out to be way too small. Judging from the number of posts, I was lucky my power supply managed to last as long as it did.

Computer power supplies are relatively cheap. I probably could have ordered one online and gotten a better price, but I needed to get my computer running immediately. As it was 1 am by the time I felt I knew how to solve my problem, I went to bed. The next day I added a stop at Best Buy to my list of chores. I read about a 600 watt power supply that solved the problem nicely, but the largest my local store had was 450. I asked to make sure it would fit in my Dell case and was told all power supplies were interchangeable. In truth, they are not, but I decided to give it a shot.

I got home and opened the case only to be amazed at how many wires come out of a power supply. I had removed the case of my computer before but never really noticed all of those wires. There were really only 4 bundles that mattered: 2 for the motherboard, 1 for my graphics card, and 1 for my disk drive and DVD drive. I unplugged them all and pulled out the defective power supply. Getting the old one out took a bit of skill. Putting the new one in was almost impossible. When you build a computer, the first thing you put in the case is the power supply. I didn't want to pull everything out of my case and so it was rather difficult to work the new supply around heat sinks and cooling fans. Bending a bit of the sheet metal in the case helped but it was a non-trivial process. Besides, with the cover back on, nobody can tell I had to bend anything.

I connected everything back up only to discover that the power cable running from the supply to the hard drive and then to the DVD drive wasn't long enough. A quick internet search showed me I could get an 8-inch extension cord for around $5 and so I ordered one. After all the case bending, I didn't want to take out the new power supply and return it for one with more of the newer SATA power interface pig-tails. Right now I don't have a DVD drive as I had to choose between it or the hard drive, but that will be fixed on Wednesday when the part arrives.

I left a panel of the case off and made sure the computer would turn on. It did and so I turned the computer off and put the case back together. That was a huge relief as I really need my Linux desktop. It is nice to have it back from the dead.