Submitted 14 hours ago by SidewaysSquid@lemmy.world to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
So, I’ve been writing a 175k word One Piece fanfic for about 6 months. Most of my writing is done on a 10 year-old laptop I dug out of the closet while I wait for my kid to finish sports practice. Today, the hard-drive died. (Thankfully I have a cloud backup.)
Now, without a laptop, I have nothing to continue working on. I can’t afford a new laptop. Just glad I didn’t lose all my work.
If it’s just the hard drive and you have a screwdriver on hand, SATA SSDs are extremely cheap. You can get 256GB in the US for $20-$25.
Or of the laptop has a serious hardware fault and is beyond repair, then pick up a keyboard from a thrift shop for a couple of bucks and type on your phone.
Or if it is just for the purpose of using a word processor, then any ancient laptop can be picked up on Facebook marketplace. I can see plenty of decent options listed in my area for <£50 (I appreciate this may be a lot to spend for some though).
This is the answer here. If OP has any techy friends they should tell them. I have a dozen HDDs and SSDs and RAM of varying sizes lying around. Most of them even work.
I tend to canabalize parts as computers pass through my hands. I frequently upgrade family member’s laptops for them. They buy the parts and I provide the labor of cloning windows and putting in the parts. Often the brand new (but smaller) ram/ssd are unwanted.
It’s the OS license that’s the main problem.
I know I’m summoning a horde, but even a new HDD needs an OS and I’m not a Linux person. Not sure I can find the license for Windows 10, because this old brick won’t take 11.
It’s super easy to activate Windows for free, and Microsoft doesn’t care: massgrave.dev.
If you were logged in with your Microsoft account before, that should also restore your real previous activation.
I’m not a Linux person.
[X] doubt
Horde here. If you get any Linux OS with KDE plasma as desktop it’ll feel pretty much the same as Windows, if you’re not a computer person you’ll likely not even notice the difference. Install the KDE version of EndeavorOS for example. Horde end
Are you able to physically replace the HDD (preferably with an SSD)? If so, you can use the (Win10) Media Creation Tool to create a USB installer.
When it prompts for a key, just skip it. If you have an OEM mass activation laptop (i.e. anything from a major brand), it’ll activate automatically after. If, for whatever reason it still doesn’t activate, you’ll have a nag screen telling you to activate. It won’t significantly limit what you do.
Linux - if all you need is to write in a word processor Linux can do that easy. If you want to custom everything it's harder
You can also just not activate it. There’s nothing stopping you from using the computer with the water mark. It’s not like XP which was super picky and would legit lock you out. Vista + just makes it kinda ugly but it works.
128GB are even cheaper, some in the $10 USD range.
If all you do is web browsing and word processing, that’s more than enough.
It was already mentioned that you can swap your hard drive /SSD easily and pretty cheap, but you can also use an old thumb drive and install a bootable USB version of Linux to test it out. While not ideal, this is probably a free since you may have an old USB thumb drive laying around.
Allows you to test Linux as well as test the rest of the laptop hardware to make sure it’s working properly (if the USB booting works well, it’s probably just your existing hard drive.
Ask your friends if they have an old laptop (or desktop, if that's acceptable) lying around. It's surprising how much old tech people have stuck away in their closets these days
I’m going to have my wife ask around. I don’t do social media, but there’s bound to be someone with a used laptop I can buy. Good idea!
Ask your friends and family as well. Someone has an old laptop/desktop from school or an old job stuck in a closet. A lot of people give up when their machines become too slow, but they don't bother with basic maintenance to see if that will speed it up: virus checks, uninstalling un-needed programs, clearing caches, defragging the hard drive, etc. I have one friend ditched a PC because it ran too slowly and when I checked it out they had two antivirus programs competing with each other, making it impossible to do anything else. Other people take the fact that the battery or charging cable died as a signal to get a replacement.
Where are you writing this from?
My tiny phone
Idk how infuriating this can be without work lost and such an old laptop. What part of it died? Might be an easy fix. Used laptops are more affordable than you think at a local ecycler. Where I am I could get a laptop or desktop for around $100 dollars and probably no older than five years.
Regardless that I can’t tell the quality of something labeled as fanfic, writing 175k words of anything is an achievement!
I would say it’s mildly infuriating
Ikr. I would be mediumley furiated if my laptop suffered any issues that caused substantial downtime. OP states cloud backups, so they’re good for data. But you can’t use that data without a device.
It’s what if style recreation of the entire East Blue arc of the Anime/Manga centered around original and remixed characters. It’s involved a lot of creative content that I workshop with my kid after practice. It’s really helped us to bond. Now, without the means to write down our ideas, it’s difficult to keep the momentum going.
That’s awesome actually. It sounds like a fun thing to do with a kid that’s into it too.
Can I be a minor character gesturing rudely at the anthromorphic prophylactic and declaring “Arlong did nothing wrong”?
I wrote a 300K fanfic! And I’m low key writing another!
I dunno if you are already doing this, but you should publish it a few chapters at a time. It will get way more visibility.
You can add a Bluetooth keyboard on an old android phone, could work for just typing. Or a normal keyboard and use an otg adapter
Or a USB one, sometimes!
Goodwill have these for next to nothing.
MrEff@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Imma pause you right there. I’m in the middle of writing a dissertation and from the bottom of my heart struggling to find the words- fuck you. 175k in 6 months? I have good days writing 175 words. Fuck you. I wrote a scifi book that is around 75k words and it took about a year to get the draft done.
gex@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Have you tried writing on a 10 year old laptop?