| Toughbook CF-C1 battery issues solved |
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Friday, June 3rd, 2016 14:56:14 GMT |
| Computers |
I finally managed to solve the problem of not having enough Toughbook CF-C1 batteries in good working order.
It turned out going to eBay and buying another entire Toughbook CF-C1 which came with 2 good batteries ($187.50), and also a battery charging dock which happened to come with 4 good batteries ($74.21), was much cheaper than it would have been to get CF-C1 batteries from someplace like Amazon for around $92 apiece.
With an ordinary laptop with a single non-hot-swappable battery, having 7 of the same batteries wouldn't be so useful. But fortunately, the Toughbook CF-C1 can use 2 batteries, and they're hot-swappable. :-)
I considered buying some other kind of convertible laptop/tablet, but I decided I'd rather get something I'm already sure works well. Also since it was difficult trying to search for what other convertible laptop/tablets with hot-swappable batteries even exist.
It's amazing how relatively primitive the search features even on sites like Amazon and eBay (two of the most popular shopping websites in the world) still are. I guess maybe what I should have looked for was some kind of laptop database websites. But, I didn't, since overall I just felt better buying stuff I'm familiar with, and which would also enhance the usefulness of the CF-C1 I already had.
I'm so glad I have this stuff now, rather than later. Back in the winter I wasn't as bothered by being stuck inside with my desktop computers, but now it's spring.
Already though, the weather has often been unpleasantly hot during the day. Good thing I have possibly Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder, and my family's house has a balcony, so I can comfortably go outside even at night. Getting all these batteries wouldn't have been as worth the trouble otherwise.
Happily, once I got it, I found out I could in fact boot it using a bootable Flash drive containing Lighthouse 64 Puppy Linux 6.02 Beta 2!
So, even though I still wish the CF-C1 had a nicer old-style 4:3 aspect ratio screen instead of a widescreen, it should still be a pretty good replacement for my pitiful Dell Latitude D510 with a 1.5 GHz single core processor and only 2 GB of RAM.
Also, fortunately, I've learned to like having a tallscreen, which is what I can have when I convert the CF-C1s to tablet mode. Extra vertical space is still nice despite the regrettable loss of horizontal space.
I also like the fact that now I don't have to feel frequently undecided between booting my CF-C1 with GNU/Linux, or Windows with GNU/Linux inside a VirtualBox. Instead, now I can use my old CF-C1 for Windows stuff, and my newer CF-C1 for GNU/Linux stuff. Or both with GNU/Linux.
Or even, both with Windows. But I'm especially unlikely to do that, because the newer CF-C1 has Windows 10, and Windows 10 seems to be quite bad, judging by the fact that I couldn't even figure out how to increase the scrollbar size to make the scrollbars easier to control with the touchscreen. (Meanwhile, Windows XP and even Windows 7 made it easy to change the scrollbar size.)
But, to make the best use of my newer CF-C1, I'm going to have to return to working on my setup kit again, and also return to Lighthouse 64 Puppy Linux 6.02 Beta 2 so I can make use of all that extra RAM and the touchscreen.
So, hopefully I'll soon start making progress on the setup kit again.
...I'm definitely not the only programmer in the world who has a lot of difficulty making accurate estimates about how long it will take to finish such a complex creative process as building a software program.
Oh, well. At least not everything is so time-consuming - such as my Floating Volume Control which took less than 4 days. But I didn't think that was going to even take that long, so yet again, I underestimated. But at least, not very much. :-)
My recent purchases all cost $311.69 total. (I also got two original CF-C1 AC adapters for $49.98 because the newer CF-C1 didn't have its original AC adapter, and the battery charging dock needed one too.)
Probably surprisingly, I actually used PayPal Credit to buy this stuff, because PayPal Credit is actually not a credit card, and it's from PayPal, a company I like more than any nasty credit card company. And PayPal Credit's intro offer gave me 6 months with no payments and no interest. And hopefully I'll be able to figure out some way to make $311 in the next 6 months.
My newer CF-C1 actually has 8 GB of RAM - twice as much as my old CF-C1. It's also slightly faster than my old CF-C1 - 2.5 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz. Its only major flaws are that its BIOS is locked and it was described as being only able to boot from the hard disk - but I'm sure that's part of why I was able to get it for such a remarkably good price as $187.50.
I actually haven't worked on my Puppy Linux Setup Kit since maybe mid-April 2016.
I wish I had been able to better estimate how long all my various projects were going to take. But, judging by this Quora page: