Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Recycling win

A few weeks ago I visited a recycling centre in the city of Fremantle.  I don’t live within the city’s boundaries, but still manage to dispose of some of my irreparable computer gear there.

I noticed a smart looking laptop in the computer section.  I got it home and found the hard drive had been removed which is standard practice if one is to dump a computer.  No problemo, I had a spare.  It also didn’t have a power supply and the battery was dead.  I took a punt and bought a secondhand power supply for $50. and after a lot of mucking about got it started.   
                             It was the eye candy that sucked me in.

Loading an operating  system and all the drivers for that particular machine (17” Dell XPS M1730) took some time.  It also gave me a bit of a headache getting it to recognise my wireless modem.  After many test starts and restarts I figured I would purchase a new battery for it @ $55.


So there it is up and running.  It is a fast machine, but I am not very familiar with PCs and find getting around in XP a bit clumsy compared to a Mac.   Now I don’t know what I am going to do with it.  

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It may be perfect for setting up a home weather station Kev. Macs are not well served in that area. Paul Weaver.