Laptop Purchase

[nemorathwald]

Today I drove out to Roseville, north of Detroit near Lake St. Clair, to put down $130 on a laptop I found on Craigslist. Dell Inspiron 7500, 466 Ghz Celeron, 384 RAM, 24 GB hard drive, Windows XP, and it runs Chrome with no perceptible slowdown. The battery doesn't work, but he warned me about that. Wireless card comes with it and works fine. There's at least one thing that I didn't know I needed to check for. Now that I've got it home, I have just one question.

When did laptops not come with an ethernet port?

Jen won't allow wireless in this apartment. There are malicious computer intruders in this building who constantly try to subvert wireless networks. Why oh why, oh flying-hamster-of-doom WHY, must wireless access to an Internet Service Provider be tied inextricably to accessing a home network of computers?

The free wireless internet at this complex is unreliable, but it will have to do for now. Fortunately there is an Asian grocery nearby, from which we obtained a vegetable strainer in the shape of a parabola, that serves as an awesome wifi amplifier.

Comments

[li885.livejournal.com]

If that has more than one ram slot I may have some to spare. I received a latitude chassis recently,next time your in the area let me know.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Are they better than 256 apiece?

[crywolf.livejournal.com]

Sounds like that was before ethernet usage was really widespread. When I worked at a college from 2000 to 2003, we kept a stock of cardbus cards for students with laptops that did not have integrated ethernet. It looks like that laptop is from 2000.

As a side note and nitpick, either you meant 4.66 GHz or I'm bright green with envy.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I did mean 4.66 GHz! I know I got a good value for the money, but it is not from the future. heh heh

[craig trader (from livejournal.com)]

I've still got a 600MHz Dell Inspiron 7500 that I bought in 2000. I'm real sure that your processor is a lot closer to 466MHz than it is to 4.66GHz (ie: 4660 MHz) unless you're overclocking it in a liquid helium bath, which would probably play havoc with the LCD screen.

[n9uxu.livejournal.com]

I probably have 3 or 4 PCMCIA Ethernet adapteds lying about if you want one...

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I'd appreciate it. I'll email you!

[bardicwench.livejournal.com]

I just got a laptop less than a year ago... it still has an ethernet port. So... I have no idea.

[dnance02.livejournal.com]

That's simple. It's when ethernet was provided using the PCMCIA cardbus. Those are realitavely easy to configure provided you have the driver already downloaded.

As for wireless, there are malicious computer users everywhere that will either "borrow" wireless connections or break into the computers on an unprotected network. The trick is to make sure that you're using the proper encryption; a good router and wireless adapter will allow that to be done. More advanded configurations can lock down the wireless so much that only specified computers can connect to it (this is by using MAC address filtering). Furthermore, disabling the adapter when not connected is important as well; hackers have developed techniques to breaking into computers with idle adapters.

I wouldn't be suprised if the free wireless that the apartment provides is used to hack into computers that are connected to it. Free wireless anywhere (airports, hotels, Starbucks) are really unsafe territory. Everyone's sharing the same network, after all. Make sure that your firewall is turned on, all Microsoft patches are applied, and that you're using anti-virus and anti-spyware.

[rbradakis.livejournal.com]

And preferably, make sure you're using a VPN back to a secure network.