Elbereth – my old laptop is alive! :D
It turned out that what made it look completely dead was some faulty RAM. Without those 256 MiB (the 1 GiB left is enough for my needs anyway), it boots up and works just fine :] Thanks Maq for fixing my precious lappy! :D
So what did I learn from this disaster:
- don't panic, it can probably be fixed if you keep your cool and check everything
- faulty RAM shows the same symptoms as clinical death …especially since it seems that on laptops you don't get those tell-tale beeps when RAM is foo
- it's still nicer to have your old lappy working then buying a new one
- reliable backups are essential
- PortableApps are a nice solution when needs be …but, boy!, am I happy to have my KDE an Awesome back! XD
- Amarok is not only amazing, but most probably the best tool out there to listen to free music and disover new artists and tracks
- now I understand (again) why people use FaceBook and Flash games …man, Windows is such a boring OS …I actually caught myself searching for flash games! OJo
- what people say about the ThinkPad's keyboards is true! They are fantastic!! – the bounce, the sound, the layout – it all makes sense, when you get used to it! If my dad didn't let me occasionall borrow his old ThinkPad, I'd never believe just how much of a difference there is!
- 14.1" is enough (erm, I'm talking about the screen diagonal, BTW)
- when Elbereth finally gives up and dies – hopefully not for at least a year! – ThinkPad T400 will be in my narrowest selection for a successor (probably called Fangorn)
hook out → lalalalala, lappy working, eix-sync; emerge -DNu world
, studying obligation law while stuff compiles…
P.S. Maq (a.k.a. MaQmigh, Dexter) is a hardware wiz, a co-worker at Cyberpipe, friend and an all-round great guy