On Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 10:01 (-0700), William Morder via tde-users wrote:
On Thursday 26 March 2026 08:35:40 Jim via tde-users wrote:
<snipping throughout> >>> Dare I ask what CPU and how much RAM you have?
I don't have my specs ready at hand. However, I attached a jpeg of the manufacturer's description. It's not a super-duper gaming machine, but for a basic laptop, not bad.
I see you have 8 GB (according to the model number in your attachment). This would be enough if software developers were careful about memory usage, but I think there is a lot of evidence they aren't. Never write 5 lines of code yourself when you can link in some 100 MB library function. ;-)
The CPU in that machine isn't bad, but it is 6 years old now, and developers have had a lot of time to write programs requiring more memory and faster CPUs.
However, I ought to say that I have hacked it extensively, although that has nothing to do with LibreOffice, which has never run at all on this machine. At present, my machine has no hard drive at all, as both the original 128 gb SSD, *and* the brand-new 2 tb SSD which I bought, both got fried when my neighbor blew the fuse for everybody in this part of my building.
Blowing a fuse shouldn't have affected your laptop. Perhaps he caused a huge voltage spike? Even then, it is curious that the SSD went kabloouie without your motherboard also being damaged.
Were both SSDs inside the laptop, or was one being used externally when your neighbour zapped you?
When my neighbor "blew the fuse", he also managed to kill the power in this entire wing of the building.
Was he running his own power sub-station? That sounds like he was doing something very "interesting". (Or maybe the power distribution in your building is a bit on the sketchy side.)
At the time, I was transferring files between the two SSDs. I have a gadget (forget the term, now in storage) for connecting an SSD by a USB port. But it's not powered by an external source, just plugs into the USB port.
Yes, I have a couple of those for connecting SSDs to Raspberry Pis.
This happened a couple times with other hard drives and flash drives, too. Anyway, that neighbor died about six months ago. I won't say that I miss him.
Was there a big flash of light or an electrical storm when he passed away? :-)
(If he is the habit of doing this, you really want to get yourself a surge protector, if you haven't already done so.)
Yeah, I have been looking for a power supply backup; I used to be able to find them in most computer supply shops, but nowadays they seem to have gone out of fashion.
I suspect that with most people having laptops, as opposed to desktops, there is far less need for UPS power supplies. Of course, the people who want desktops might still want a UPS, but it is probably a supply and demand issue, like almost everything else.
I have my trusty Belkin surge protector which otherwise has served me reliably for years. But the problem seems to have been caused by the fact that I was transferring files at the time the power went out.
That is curious. Did you have anyone who is really skilled with those things look at the SSDs?
What I did instead was to get a YUGE 13-port USB hub, which I plug into my Belkin surge protector; this thing can manage all my needs. If the power does go out, it seems to delay the effects of a spikes and surges, so my drives don't get damaged.
Worth every penny!
Unfortunately, the electricity in this building will continue to be a problem, and my new neighbors also blow fuses all the time, and everything goes out for me, too; but these are minor, compared to the catastrophes that my old neighbor regularly brought upon us.
In the meanwhile, I have whittled down my working external drives to a few flash drives and one external hard drive; then everything is regularly backed up to other hard drives, using that 13-port hub. Otherwise, I have three 3.0 USB ports on my laptop,
Are you sure? The specs I saw said two were 3.x and the other was a 2.0.
as well as a slot for an SD card, which I don't use regularly, mostly to copy music files to an SD card to put in my phone.
In the first of those USB port is plugged in the 128 gb flash drive that contains my entire operating system, partitioned into root, swap and home directories.
Swapping to a flash drive is probably slowing you down big time. If/when you need to swap.
In the second USB port, I plug in a 1 tb hard drive that holds my music, films, tv shows, etc. ... all the mindless entertainment, since I don't have a television.
That shouldn't be a big problem for music. And on a USB 3.x, it should be good for video content as well.
In the last USB port I plug in a small Belkin portable 7-port USB hub, which can be powered if I need, but which I generally just use with USB power from the machine. I usually have a 128 gb flash drive plugged in that contains tons of old radio shows, music shows that I like, so that I have radio even when there is no listenable radio. Also, I sometimes plug other flash drives into this portable hub, so that I can backup my personal business files. (This is the one that I take with me if I need to use a public computer, out there in the so-called real world; formatted to be readable on any machine.)
Are you familiar with the hdparm command? For giggles you might do some performance testing. Running sudo hdparm -t /dev/<whatever> will run for a few seconds and give you an indication of what speed you can read from the device at. For example, on my laptop I do sudo hdparm -t /dev/nvme0n1 and it responds with /dev/nvme0n1: Timing buffered disk reads: 6330 MB in 3.00 seconds = 2109.97 MB/sec
The original disk in my wife's venerable 2009 laptop had this results sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda /dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 234 MB in 3.00 seconds = 77.96 MB/sec with its original disk, and after replacing with an SSD at some point, it went to /dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 818 MB in 3.01 seconds = 272.01 MB/sec
The SATA bus in that computer maxed out at 280 MB/sec (or something around there) and so we didn't get the full benefit of the SSD's speed, but it gave the laptop a new lease on life. The increase in speed of the laptop was very dramatic.
So my entire operating system dwells on a flash drive, which is partitioned with root, swap and home directories. I got rid of (or at least, bypassed) UEFI and boot using grub.
I am thinking this is your problem. By flash drive, do you mean -> USB "thumb drive" / USB "memory stick" -> a compact flash or SD memory card with a USB adapter? -> a NVM flash memory card in an enclosure with a USB adapter
No, this is not the problem with my machine. I do not have a problem with my machine; at least, not at present.
You are conflating three different series of events. This is partly due to my own fault, not making it clear that these things happened over some years on different machines.
Indeed, I did not realize you were talking about three different events.
<snip>
This is one of the reasons that I went out and bought a laptop a few years ago; because when the power goes out, I still have the internal battery power of the laptop.
Yup, it is very convenient to be able to just keep working away when the power goes away.
In that third and last series of events -- my fried SSDs -- this happened when I was transferring files from the original 128 gb SSD connected by USB adaptor to an internal 1 tb SSD. Even though they were connected to the laptop, they both got damaged, and within a week or so both stopped working. However, I did manage to save everything from them before they died completely.
That last part is good. Still, given that at least one was "hiding behind" your laptop power supply, I'm still a bit surprised.
The guy wasn't working on some military-grade electromagnetic pulse weapon by any chance?
I know it is easy to spend other people's money, but if you want some of your frustrations with your laptop grinding to a halt to go away, you should really put a new SSD inside, or, at the minimum, use an SSD with a quality USB interface.
Once I get out of here, and have reliable electricity like other people, and have my own network (or at least a better network), then I might spend money on another SSD, or maybe a new laptop. But for now, I want to keep everything as simple and portable as I can.
Also I am thinking of getting a Jackery power station, solar panels, etc. Not just for my machines, but for other projects (such as music) that I have going. The Jackery that I saw was about the size of a small suitcase, and could power an entire house ... at least, in theory. I hear that they are not quite so good as they promise, but I still think that something like this would be best for me. I don't know about brands, but so far the Jackery sounds like the top of the line.
I have an Ecoflow. If you talk to any of the Ecoflow fan-bois, they will tell you that Ecoflows are the cat's meow. I don't have any real opinion myself (when I went to buy an Ecoflow, the reviews were as positive as any of the other brands, and I could buy one locally, so...). My experience with my Ecoflow (Delta 2 model + extra battery) is that it will give you something like 80% of the rated power. So I have (nominally) 2 kWh, which should run one 250-watt device for 8 hours. But I suspect I probably end up with about 6.5 hours (or so) of power. YMMV.
Unfortunately, the price of SSDs (e.g., Samsung 870 EVO 1TB) has gone way up in the last while. At least where I looked. Maybe there is some place local to you with better deals.>
Right now, the price in everything is going up. I am glad that I got all my stuff moved before fuel prices went up. All that I have left here is about a carload, and I can manage that.
The recent gas price hikes have made me glad I don't have to drive a lot these days. Good profits for oil companies, though.
Otherwise, I just have to finish up my remaining business here, tie up some loose ends, then I may travel for a bit before I return to settle down. I need to make some trips to visit people that I have not seen in a very long time.
Start with the ones within walking distance. ;-)
Jim