Matthew

Getting ready to make some more sales of refurbished computers. Still keeping quite busy, but catching up with my backlog of work. Hopefully will be caught up soon!

I just made my first purchase with Monero (on XMRbazaar). It went well. Plan to do again. Digital Cash! #monero

Testing more computers today. I've been trying to catch up on work. Still got quite a bit to go. Delivered two fixed computers back to customers this morning. More to go this afternoon. Replacing a battery on a Lenovo Yoga laptop now. #repair #tech #business

Just picked up some more Dell hardware. Five Optiplex desktop computers, two with Intel 7th Gen i5 and three with 8th Gen Intel i5. Also got a PowerEdge T130 with Xeon processor. I will refurbish and resell the Optiplex machines. Not sure yet what I'll do with the PowerEdge. #Dell #Hardware

I'm not sure if people are crazy to be paying this much for this kind of service... or if I am not charging enough for my work on PCs (Windows and Linux). Possibly just the Apple tax, as I have stopped working on Apple devices for the last five years or so, for the most part. Cleanup service for $149.95 per device! This is a screenshot of an email promotion from a local store that specializes in Apple, not from Apple themselves. #Apple

I'm just disappointed time after time with Mozilla. I've been using Firefox since it was called "Firebird". Each broken promise and failed project is yet another let down. I'm probably about ready to give up on them entirely. #mozilla #firefox

I'm looking into the issue with Intel 13th and 14th gen processors. Will be replacing two for my customers with AMD Ryzen motherboard and CPU. One system just immediately crashes on Windows or even the Windows installer. I replaced the storage, tried installing again and it crashed. However, when live booting to Linux, it seems to run fine with no crashes. I even ran a CPU intensive task over night and it is still running fine. We know there are serious issues with these Intel 13th and 14th gen chips, but why do you think it seems to run fine for me for simulated workloads in a Linux live environment? Do you think I'd see the same crashing problems if I installed Linux to a disk? If so, wouldn't that point to some kind of storage controller issue instead of a CPU issue? CPU in this instance is an Intel i7-13700KF, so we know it is one of the Intel chips affected by the "Intel Crisis". #Intel #Linux #Windows

Video explaining sneaky ways KYC is implemented: https://rumble.com/v6ol1fc-how-know-your-customer-kyc-requirements-are-used-for-surveillance.html #kyc #privacy

Wondering if anyone else is experiencing issues with keyboards and ThinkPad laptops. This only happens in Windows, so probably is a Windows bug or purposeful defect. It does not happen in Linux. The keyboard will not work at all, but if the laptop is restarted the keyboard will work fine until the next time it is powered on. Happens with both Windows 10 and Windows 11. Mostly on ThinkPad models with Intel 6th and 7th generation processors: ThinkPad T560, T470s, et cetera. Anyone know what causes this? Or what a fix would be? I've seen it on at least 10 different laptops now. I have done some research but not found anything conclusive. #thinkpad #windows

I am replacing the CR2032 coin battery on a Dell Optiplex. At this point, I've just come to accept that it is best to replace all CMOS batteries on Dell computers. For some reason, they seem to die much quicker in Dell computers than other brands. #Dell

I'm researching the default Dell Optiplex BIOS setting that is on RAID for the storage instead of AHCI. This also is the default on most Dell models, both laptop and desktop. It makes it more difficult to use CloneZilla to copy the computer, as the setting has to be changed from RAID to AHCI for the drive to show up in CloneZilla, but then you have to change it back to get the OS to work or Windows will "blue screen". I'm doing fresh installations, so I'm thinking of changing the BIOS setting to AHCI. This will make things simpler for me, though it looks like Dell having the default on RAID made things easier for Dell. The one bad thing that could happen is that if the BIOS goes back to default setting on RAID, when I have installed on AHCI, then the OS will crash and not work. This could possibly happen with a BIOS update (shouldn't but could) or the CMOS battery going dead. What setting would you use? RAID or AHCI? Context: https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps/proscons-ahci-vs-raid-on-xps13-9300-nvme/647f89cef4ccf8a8de97b145

I feel really busy all of a sudden. Lots of computers to test and upgrade. Also sold quite a few, so have orders to complete. Also have some sysadmin stuff that really can't be put off much longer. #business

I'm using CloneZilla to backup a 1000GB hard disk drive in a laptop before I shrink the partitions and migrate it to a smaller 256GB SSD, also using CloneZilla. Upgraded the memory (RAM) from 8GB to 16GB. Will be extending the usefulness of this laptop. #clonezilla #upgrade