Without a Traceroute

After the hackmeeting ended, my top priority was trying to get my computer situation resolved. I generally hate solving problems by just throwing money at them (although that’s usually remarkably effective at smoothing away life’s little irritations). Not only does it make me feel wasteful and profligate, it makes me feel stupid that I couldn’t come up with anything more clever than buying my way clear.

However, in this case, the answer was pretty obvious. I had a dead computer that could not be repaired here. I needed a new, working computer. Monday, I went to one large electronics store that had an Asus eee PC 900 for €400, and a Acer Aspire One for €300. I resisted the temptation to just buy something on the spot, did some research at an internet cafe and located some specialty computer stores (God, I wish Europe had Fry’s). Tuesday I spent most of the day (4 or 5 hours) trekking around from store to store comparing prices and seeing what was available.

I finally bought a Asus eee 901 (for €400), which is quite similar to the 900, except it ships with the new Intel Atom processor and a larger battery. This means better performance and longer battery life. I also got a USB drive enclosure (€10) and a 120 GB external drive (€50), since the eee pc has only 20 GB of on-board storage. The guy at the store helpfully loaned me a small screwdriver to transfer the old laptop’s HDD to the enclosure, which then led to this unholy scene:

It's Alive!

From left to right are:

1. My old laptop, plugged into the “power” part of the y-connector USB cable. The external drive I had was failing repeatedly during large file transfers. I suspected that the USB bus on the little eee PC wasn’t supplying enough power, but I didn’t have any more USB ports on the eee pc since the external drive enclosure also asked for the dual power/data USB y-connector. Hence, my old laptop, sans hardrive, still frozen at the POST screen, was pressed into service as a zombie USB power source. Note: I have also used the light from its screen to read a book in bed, making it the world’s most expensive rechargeable flashlight.
2. The external drive in question. The file transfer failures later proved to be software-related. The drive is NTFS formatted, and apparently the default eee PC OS has rather flaky NTFS support. Since I switched to Ubuntu-eee I have had zero problems with it.
3. The eee pc 901, plugged into the “data” portion of the USB connector. In this setup, the eee pc is simply functioning as a conduit to transfer data between the two external drives.
4. The old laptop’s hard drive, contained within the cheapo external enclosure. The enclosure was basically just a little aluminum tin, and it didn’t even fit very snugly; the drive could rattle around inside. I would never use this thing long-term, but it worked perfectly well for emergency data recovery.

A couple people in the hostel came by while I was performing this procedure and looked at me as if I were some sort of crazy mad scientist. I simply explained that I was sucking the soul out of one computer and locking it in the little metal box.

As for the other step in this process, getting my old laptop back home for warranty servicing, that’s proving significantly more difficult. I went to a Mailboxes Etc outlet in Palermo, and they told me they could ship it UPS 1-week shipping for €110 euro, I also went to Poste Italiane, where the guy flat-out refused to ship it at all (I may have been at the wrong window for international shipments). Looking on their website hints that they might ship something of a similar size and weight to my laptop to the Stati Uniti for €76, which is still way, way more than I want to pay.

A few days ago, I went to another Mailboxes Etc. that quoted me €90. So far, I have been unable to locate anyone who will do very slow, very cheap by-sea shipping. My best bet may be to hold out until I meet an American traveler who’s returning to the States in the near-future and see if they’d be willing to take my laptop with them and then drop it in the domestic post once they hit North America. I’m also hoping that perhaps when I get to Rome, I’ll be able to find a better shipping option.