Lazy Man and Money

Working on a $100 Computer

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A few weeks ago, I brought you 10 Hacks to Speed Up Your Browser. I explored how I hacked my version of Firefox to run very fast and consume much less memory (most of the tricks will work for Chrome as well). What I didn’t know is that within a week, I’d be forced to put the hacks to the test.

My crazy computer purchase of February 2013 died on me. An ounce of drink hit the keyboard and though it worked for a few more hours, I had trouble getting it started after it went to sleep. It turns out that both the video card and the keyboard took major damage. I was able to rescue it long enough by plugging it in to television and using a spare keyboard. Getting that to work seemed nothing short of miraculous.

This put me in a position of needing a computer to work, but not having one. Circuit City is long gone. Best Buy moved out of my town years ago. I could get something cheap from Wal-Mart, but when you use a computer as much as I do, you don’t want to make a 2+ year decision because of a day or two.

And this is when I cashed in on the best insurance I bought last year. During Black Friday I bought a ASUS X205TA Laptop at Staples for $100. My rationale was that it would be a great travel computer at 2.2 pounds with 12 hour battery life. The processor runs like it is powered by a hamster wheel. It has very little memory meaning you can only open up a couple of programs before it grinds to halt. The screen angle has to be just right. The 11.6-inch screen is a big difference from the 16-inches I used a few years ago.

However, I was able to get real work done. I could write articles, check emails, update spreadsheets and just about anything else I needed to do.

It made me think, “What if I could just pick up nearly any computer and get to work?” What if I could do the same things on a $100 computer that cost me $1100 two years ago? Computers are getting cheaper and cheaper, but my computing needs aren’t necessarily expanding. The ability to retain my data and workflow are far more important to me than hardware itself.

I can’t lie, my computing desires expand all the time. I look up all the latest laptops much more often than I should. There’s sexy 4K screens and new processors that zip along using very little battery, all wrapped up in a package of around 2.5 pounds or less. As long as I can keep myself in check, being productive on a very cheap computer could save me hundreds of dollars.

Create a “Work Anywhere” Environment

Being able to work on any computer saved my bacon in this disaster. How did I do it? I simply looked at everything I do and tried to find a way to make it work on another computer. Specifically, these things came in particularly handy:

  • Firefox Sync – I was very nervous about syncing my browsing history with a third-party. It seems like a huge security risk. After reading about how the security was handled, I felt more secure. Being able to download Firefox (even on my Android phone and tablet) and have my browsing environment is about 80% of the battle.
  • LastPass – I use LastPass to store and secure all my passwords. If I can remember one password, I have them all. It seems like every site I use nowadays requires a login, so this is huge.
  • Google Documents – I have documents and spreadsheets that I want to have with me at all times. For example, I have notes on the articles that I am intending to write as well as a spreadsheet of earnings.

I’m sure I’m just touching the surface of what I could use. Feedly and Pocket are two apps that I’m looking to use more. I recently started to use NotePad++ which offers backing up data to the cloud via DropBox and similar services. I’m going to see if I can use this to sync files a little faster than dealing with Google Documents (it can be a bit of a resource hog to leave it open all the time).

I am testing my “work anywhere” environment by trying to work on my wife’s computer with my own separate Windows login. (I offer the same to her on my computer of course.) So far it is working pretty nicely.

What I Learned From Using a $100 Computer

I learned two really valuable lessons from using a $100 computer:

  1. While the computer is functional, it is annoying enough to use that I found myself looking forward to doing errands rather than goofing off.
  2. Most people probably don’t need nearly as much “computer” as they think they do.

There’s definitely some kind of sweet spot of having a very functional computer at a relatively bargain price. In the past you might need to spend $500 to satisfy basic computing needs. I feel like that has shifted significantly and much of that money is more about wants.

That leads me to…

Should You Really Skimp on a Computer?

This is a difficult question and it really depends on the person. I use my computer so much, that I feel like any loss in productivity would be magnified. At the same time, my wife uses her non-work computer only about an hour a day, so it isn’t magnified as much.

I’m going to cop out escape this question by simply saying that many people could save money if they wish to.

Next week, I’ll review the new computer I bought. In writing this article, I’ve realized I might have made a several hundred dollar mistake.

A Crazy Computer Purchase

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Today’s post is written a 9″ Acer Aspire One netbook (remember those?) that is probably about 4 years old. I bought it as a travel computer and it’s come in handy more than few times, but never more so than in the last 24 hours. If you notice some words missing a “c” it’s because most of the time it doesn’t register the first 3 times I type it.

Yesterday my main computer, a Dell 16XPS died on me. By dying, the computer gave me beep codes which I hadn’t heard of before. That’s the computer’s way of saying, “Things are so bad, that I can’t even put an error on the screen.” I took it to GeekSquad and they gave me an option of sending it out to get a quote on repair and getting a new computer. I wonder if anyone really answers with, “Yeah, I don’t need a computer or access to all the data that was on there for week or two. Why don’t you take it and then tell me that it will cost me 50% of a new computer to fix this outdated computer?” I’m guessing not too many.

So today, I bought a new computer to replace that one that is probably between 2 to 2.5 years old. Every time I’ve bought a new computer, I always was able to upgrade thanks to Moore’s Law. I’ve usually saved myself a little money too. This purchase feels a little different. My old computer had the following improvements over my new one:

  • A spacious 16″ screen vs. a cramped 13.3 inch screen
  • 4GB of extra memory
  • 200GB of hard drive space
  • An Intel i7-core processor vs. an Intel i5-core processor
  • A $999 price tag vs. a $1100 one
  • A DVD-RW drive vs. no optical drive at all

So two years later I managed to downgrade a number of critical components and spend more money. Good job Lazy Man, right?

Well, the new computer has a few things going for it. It’s an Asus U31Xa (rolls right off the tongue) Ultrabook. Despite all those minuses above, it has a super fast SSD hard drive, USB 3.0, a really long battery life (6+ hours according to most), and a weight of 3 pounds, which isn’t too far off what HP Touchpad tablet weighs with its case. Oh and that i5-core processor today is about 3 times faster than the i7 that I had before according to Passmark benchmarks.

The biggest downside is that I got the bad luck of the draw with the much slower Sandisk SSD vs. the Adata SSD. It will still be faster than what I had previously.

I would have paid extra for 8GB of memory and an i7, but while Asus claims to make it on their website, they aren’t available in any store online that I could find. In fact no one seems to make all that with a touch screen. The Acer S7 is pretty close with almost everything that I want, except that the cover is glass, which just doesn’t seem durable. It’s also another $500 or so. Vizio makes some good 14 and 15″ “thin and light” computers that seem impressive, but I’ve read bad things about the touchpad and keyboard.

Manufacturers are just starting to come out with touchscreens to work with Windows 8. Also, SSD prices are expected to drop dramatically this year. Until that happens computer makers are going with hybrid drives where the operating system is on a fast SSD, but the data is on slower old fashioned hard drives. In an attempt to keep costs low, they are also going with 4GB of memory instead of 8GB.

All of this adds up to why I didn’t want to buy a computer at this time. There’s really never a good time to buy a computer and be future-proofed, but this is a particularly poor time. Maybe for back to school or Black Friday this year, you’ll start seeing cheaper prices on several components hit the stores.

I’m off to think about getting a big SD card for the slot to work as a second drive. Hit me up in the comments with what I should tell my wife when the 14″, i7, 256GB SSD, 8GB memory, 3.2lb Ultrabook goes on sale for $999 later this year.

How I Saved Money on a New Laptop

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Earlier this week I bought a new laptop. My currently laptop is around 3 years old and it’s starting to show it’s age. It has 768MB of memory, much less than many computers have nowadays. When I have my 700 Firefox tabs open, it really slows down to a crawl. I realize I could fix this fairly cheaply by buying some additional memory. The other problem is that if I’m not careful about leaving all the vents open to air, the laptop will overheat and reboot (without warning). I’ve lost a good amount of work this way. My friend says that I could take a can of spray air to the vents and fix this problem. So in reality it would take me $30 to make it a fairly functional computer again.

So why didn’t I go that route? I asked myself my five questions before making a purchase. As these problems crept up, a new laptop was getting closer and closer from going from a “want” to a “need” to protect my income. The other side is that there are some productivity gains to be had as well. Simply having the extra memory and faster processor should get me through tasks quicker. In addition to these, I’ll have a web camera for the first time. It’s a small thing, but I’m sure I can talk with my niece and nephew back east. I got a WXGA+ screen which is a 1440×900 resolution instead of my current 1200×800. That’s going to lead to a sharper picture. I also will get an HDMI out, which will be great streaming Netflix movies easy to my televisions. Finally, I got a built-in bluetooth card, which means I can teather to my phone and get Internet anywhere my phone has data.

However, I am most excited about the price. I had done some research and came really close to buying a refurbished system on CompUSA’s site. I saw a computer that gave me most everything (no bluetooth) for $610. A friend said that if I go that way, I should look at the Dell Outlet. I saw deals that were similar, maybe a little more – nothing to sway me much. I remembered that at times Dell has coupons. As luck would have it, one of these coupons was for 20% any refurbished laptop over $500. And then I found that I could get all the above with a Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 and 4GB of memory (just a tad more than the 768MB I have now) for $503 it was impossible to resist. Yes, I did get a refurbished system and that may be a concern to some. (Who knows, maybe I’ll be writing an article about How I Lost Money on a New Laptop 6 months from now). Pricing the computer new, it would cost $869… after a $279 instant savings that Dell is running now.

So my tips for saving money on a laptop… look for refurbished, and try to stack coupons from places like Ben’s Bargains. You can also follow Fat Wallet’s Laptop message board as they show good deals that in stores. For instance, Big Lots is currently getting some overstock from Circuit City and clearing it out at very cheap prices. Each store only gets a few and it seems like they sell out quickly, but that was my plan B. I liked the Dell laptop better.

Best Buy Extended Warranty

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About a year and a half ago, my fiancee bought a laptop and decided to protect it with the extended warranty. I know that usually they aren’t good investments, but when I did my research, getting one for a laptop seemed to be the right thing to do. When it failed to work in early September, she was happy she had gotten the protection.

However, since then, it’s been a nightmare. Best Buy sent it out for repairs and four weeks later it returned with a new motherboard that, without the protection, would have cost more than what we paid for the computer. We hadn’t been home for 15 minutes, before the monitor failed, a new side-effect of the fix, I surmise. We brought it back to Best Buy and again they confirmed the problem and sent it out for repairs. Just yesterday, it was ready for the second time. We had it home for about 20 minutes this time before it froze on us… three times. I’m a software engineer, so I know this just isn’t normal. On reboot it gives a blank screen for 10-15 minutes before it decides to get to the initial Windows loading screen. It’s funny because when we took it back to Best Buy that’s about exactly how long it took for the technician to get the manager. Just when the manager shows up it works, go figure.

He wanted to run an overnight diagnostic on it, but at this point, I think it’s time to honor the extended warranty and replace it. Even if he does it get to work at this point, I want them to extend the extended warranty because at this point, I’ve lost a lot of confidence that it’s going to continue working. I expect it’s going to die the day after the warranty is done. The most frustrating part of this is that for 6 weeks now she’s been without her computer. Someone needs to come up with a loaner plan like they do with cars.