The Combat Laptop is down

I face the keyboard every single day I can and am glad to do it but now I foresee a problem coming up because I think the hard drive in the combat laptop just crashed and I am right now writing this on a borrowed machine until I can get ashore to get things squared away.

For the next couple of weeks I am going to have to play catch as catch can and see what I can do.

I have a very old laptop that I can cobble together when I get home and if it will work I’ll be in a more relaxed position because I’ll be able to keep on keeping on while I figure out what to do to replace the venerable old warrior.

One of the things I have noticed about technology is that it really is pretty throwaway. Cell phones last only about 16 or 18 months before they get replaced. Mine is coming on either two or three years now and I am mildly surprised it has lasted this long.

I have been getting about a year or so out of laptops that I drag around the boat which, while it makes the tool a throwaway I suppose it isn’t all that awful bad considering the beating they take out here. God knows they take a pretty good beating with all of the vibration that happens on a tank vessel, or a tug for that matter.

I suppose part of the problem lies in the fact that I have been using surplus/MilSpec stuff for years but as I have posted before MilSpec stuff is pretty good stuff as a general rule.

I do what I can to snag gently used MilSpec gear but you take what you can get. I know the DoD requires either a wipe or a destruction of all hard drives which makes a lot of sense. I would imagine that the hard drive for my now dead unit was yanked and I believe the company I bought it from said they replaced it but I wonder what they replaced it with.

I would imagine the hard drive they put in it in lieu of the original was whatever they could dig up somewhere. After all, I’d bet the original cost a pretty penny.

All in all it is aggravating but when you consider that buying a MilSpec laptop brand new from the original government contractor is pretty damned steep, as in thousands. This boots it out of range of the working stiff.
I now have a new inexpensive little netbook coming and I’m going to stuff a briefcase with foam rubber and make a rubber pad to rest it on and see how that will work out.

Anyway, I’ll be doing what I can to keep this blog rolling on a daily basis.

Wish me luck.






If there are any Itronix GoBook 3 tech types out there that know how to replace a hard drive, please give me a shout!




my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/