I have worked in IT for years. I write down things that occur to me. All these thoughts are personal and should not be taken as recommendations.
Subscribe to this blog
Follow by Email
Bart Simpson's MacBook
Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
Sometimes an idea just hits you. I was scrolling through Ebay for no particular reason. With most browsing the aimlessness causes you to head off into various unexpected rabbit holes. On this day it became a list of Apple MacBooks. MacBooks are expensive. Although the word expensive is based on the sort of PCs most people buy. A premium Windows based laptop can easily cost the same as a Mac. Nevertheless most potential purchasers reach for a credit agreement or look at their bank balance before laying out cash for an Apple. Apple is a consumer brand.
Ebay is the destination for bargain hunters. A bargain being a low price for the highest specification possible. Matching the aspiration of high quality and low price being the buyer's challenge. The other challenge is avoiding those offers that are too good to be true, scams and counterfeits.
What I saw was a reduced price MacBook. The previous week I had spotted it at £249. This week it was well below £200. The Mac was close to eleven years old. I discovered later it had a US keyboard. The memory was maxed out at 4gb and the hard disk was 250gb. The latter would be slow by the standards of 2020. The battery was probably shot and, in my own mind, would probably barely last a few minutes of mains power. On the positive side the OS was updated as recently as 2018, the keyboard would be good and a unibody MacBook of that era was going to be upgradeable.
I bought it and a couple of days later it was at the house. The upgrade I wanted to do was an SSD disk. I had ordered a new screwdriver to match Apple's internal screws and I was ready to add an SSD.
Upgrading a MacBook
YouTube had some decent repair and upgrade videos. I found Ifixit the most useful site for information and step by step guides.
Once I got down to business I found a stamp on the bottom of the Mac. It confirmed the device was secondhand. It also confirmed it was used in US education.
Barely visible were the words Property of Springfield School District. Had I got Bart Simpson's MacBook?
He is a fictional character. I get that. However, the idea that this Mac kept Springfield learning was somewhat comforting.
Once the SSD was fitted I booted the device from the old disk via USB, downloaded an operating system from Apple and got it installed. I put on Microsoft Edge as the browser, Office applications, Skype and made it a Microsoft Mac. These days Microsoft just want you to pay a monthly subscription for it's software and services. They no longer care if you use a Mac rather than Windows. It's the new Microsoft.
Twenty four hours later the fast SSD disk is doing a good job and the Mac is working as advertised. I even found how to get a "£" on a US Mac keyboard. I might even name the Mac "Bart" in honour of it's history.
One of the ways many people use their mobile phones is text messaging. Apple “disguise” the differences between text messages and instant messages, that use the data network, is through their iMessage that uses either depending on your connection. However, text messaging has still some way to go yet. If you use and Android phone then you are firmly in the Google messaging camp and iMessage doesn’t exist. One trick for android users is to get away from just using their phone keyboard when creating a text. You can go to Messages for Android located at; https://messages.android.com/ . A number of people have done short YouTube videos to demonstrate how to do this. Search for “messages for web” on YouTube. You need to be using the Google messages app for your texts. You also need to have a wifi connection connected to the phone and PC. After this go to the website and, from the messages app, click on the thrTee dots on the top right corner as if you changing settings. Then select “Mes
Windowsphone actually “died” a couple of years ago. After Steve Ballmer , the previous CEO of Microsoft, bought Nokia for $7.2 billion you might have assumed that Microsoft was serious about mobile. However Microsoft had little choice. Nokia had made Windowsphone it’s primary operating system and now had 98% of the Windowsphone market. If Nokia’s phone division had just gone bankrupt or made Android handsets then Windowsphone would have ended in 2014. Nokia had done a pretty good job for Microsoft. Good industrial design, striking colours, double digit market share in places like Europe, South America and Asia where Nokia was a known brand and Microsoft had neglected. Nokia’s handsets had great cameras and additional apps that added value to the device. Nokia had teams of designers and specialists that knew how to make mobile hardware. Microsoft, on the other hand, struggled to sell Windowsphone in their US home market, contantly re-booted the operating system making older handsets
It's been rejected!. OK so I made up this completely rubbish address but if you get an email that has been rejected, a so-called "bounced" mail, you can do some good analysis of the reason if you can read the SMTP logs. SMTP being the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol that sends mail between servers and other places too. Before you yawn this is what you get back. Generating server: AM5EUR02HT096.mail.protection.outlook.com kbmregregkrgrgktrgrtb@hotmail.co.uk SNT004-MC5F20.hotmail.com Remote Server returned '550 5.1.351 Remote server returned unknown recipient or mailbox unavailable -> 550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable' Original message headers: DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=outlook.com; s=selector1; h=From:Date:Subject:Message-ID:Content-Type:MIME-Version; bh=lURfIqW7JBVRaKyNHMwqLzWn5AAyxsprWeqWekgSchc=; b=rH8HpA6mqgsmvED575S7sZZ3m6fy36WII+18d68flJNvd0IaNC+ Received: from AM5EUR02FT045.eop-EUR02.prod.prote
Comments
Post a comment