MakubeX lives!

[sagesaria]

So if you haven't heard....Asus sucks balls. My netbook, Matilda, has started having the strangest problems ever, namely with the battery's inability to charge and losing power WHILE IT'S PLUGGED IN. This is apparently a common problem, and while I kept getting mixed answers it seems to be a problem with the power cord. I replaced the power cord, and now it's doing it again, and on top of that the battery itself probably needs replacing, and there's no telling if that would fix the problem at all.

At this point, I'm just plain fed up with it. Webcam or no webcam, I don't want to deal with the netbook problems anymore.

That's when a plan hits me. The battery and power supply are shit, but the hard drive works fine. I have an old laptop, MakubeX, that has a busted hard drive...I wonder if I could put Matilda's hard drive into MakubeX!

So I dig him out, and just to see if anything's changed, I turn him on, and suddenly it's as if nothing even happened! He works just fine!

So long story short, I'm giving up on the netbook and going back to my big ol' Dell. I'll have to replace the battery on this one, but that's only because it ran out of life a while ago. Much better than getting a million new parts for the netbook; I'd already had to get a new keyboard for it too.

I might want to replace the fan too, but we'll see.

ETA: thinking a little more, the Netbook's hard drive would be nice to have for all the free space. My google foo is weak tonight and I'm tired; anybody know if it's possible to transfer an Asus EEEPC 900HD hard drive to a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop, or where I could find out?

Comments

[fly-buggy-fly.livejournal.com]

...That's like what happened with Starscream. I still use him occassionally, even though my new computer is better.

Batteries and Drive Swapping

[unix-vicky.livejournal.com]

The inability to hold a charge is definitely a sign of a battery that needs replacing (e.g. my laptop's battery will currently only hold 5-10 minutes worth of charge... I haven't yet replaced it since a new one is over $60). I haven't seen it happen that the battery will actually drain even while on AC power though. That seems like it might be a problem with the AC adapter not supplying enough power, but I don't know.

You may be able to swap hard drives, assuming they're the same type. New drives use an interface called SATA (fewer wires) while older drives use ATA/IDE. Unless your older laptop is more than 5 years old, it probably uses SATA. One other consideration, especially if you're using Windows, is that you probably have laptop-specific drivers installed. Once you swap drives, your laptop may not be as fast as it could, nor have all it's functionality (e.g. your networking may not work). Once you boot up, you will probably want to download the correct drivers from the manufacturer's web site (if you don't have networking, you may have to do that from another machine, then transfer the files on a CD or flash drive).