Extending laptops’ ROI

If administration criteria for laptops in your company are similar to what we do at InfoWorld, it’s quite possible that you inherited that rig from another user. For example, judging from the stickers on its cover, my Sony Vaio belonged to at least three employees before falling into my lap.

Let’s be clear: rotating laptops (and desktops) among users is a very sound practice that many IT managers adopt to extend the life of these quickly obsolescing gizmos. Because different users have different needs, a unit that is not flashy or capable enough, say, for a sales rep, can be appropriate for someone like me who mostly uses it for writing and e-mail.

Nevertheless, many laptops reach the end of their useful life well before complete depreciation, which invariably means writing off a loss in your company’s books. Multiply that for hundreds or thousands of machines and you’re talking some significant dollars.

Slow CPUs, not enough memory, or a small and not-so-fast disk drive typically cause the early demise of those laptops. Obviously, the proprietary, ultra-compact architecture of those machines doesn’t facilitate upgrades. Right?

Well, that’s still true for processors and memory, but the latest wave of incredibly large and fast mobile drives can change the rate of your depreciation and increase the longevity of those machines.

For example, I received for evaluation from Seagate one of the new Momentus drives, a 40GB, 5,400 rpm unit. Finding a test bed for the drive was easy: an old Compaq Presario laptop that had run out of disk space and been gathering dust since being replaced by the Vaio.

I had no problems swapping the two drives; after removing a single screw from the back of the Presario, I pulled the drive bay out and replaced the 6GB, 4,200 rpm Fujitsu with the Momentus. Other laptops can make this simple update more challenging. To get to the drive bay on the Vaio, for instance, you have to completely open the case.

The next logical steps were to reinstall the OS and applications on the new drive (boring), then find a way to copy my personal data (not easy to do if the laptop has room for one drive only).

However, I found a better approach: Apricorn sells an EZ Upgrade kit, essentially an external case for laptop drives that connects to the USB port of any computer. Interestingly, the EZ Upgrade kit includes a bootable CD with software to partition the new drive and copy the content from the old one. Mounting the old drive in the kit and booting from the CD, I was able to transfer OS, applications and data to the Momentus in one-step.

After that drive transplant, my old Presario not only has more capacity but boots quicker and is noticeably more responsive. Moreover, the Apricorn case with the old drive has become my preferred device to move large files across computers: it’s a multi-gigabyte USB drive.

What would that cost? Seagate estimates a $145 MSRP for that Momentus model and the Apricorn kit sells for about $90, a cost that an administrator can spread over multiple laptop updates. Not a bad price to pay for reviving a notebook and avoiding a loss.