It had to happen

I have been venturing to set up a WiFi bridge to UWA so as to rid the household of telephone line rental and internet subscription. After talking to Mitch, he recommended me a Ubiquiti NanoStation2 Loco. This has involved me climbing on the roof for the past few nights trying to get a good SNAP (the staff/student WiFi) access point signal.

I got one, which ranges from -80 dBm to -85 dBm (I am a complete newb at all this, so do not ask me any questions). Attached to some random pole on our roof, cable run down the chimney, and hours of configuration (it should take a normal person about five minutes).

Not happy with the throughput (I get full 54 Mbps transmit, but only 2- 11 Mbps receive signals), I rang up ITS to find out where the hell this AP was, such that I could aim my WiFi bridge more accurately. It turns out it is in EECE room 2.75, which is blocked by a few trees from my pole attached WiFi bridge. I went up to the room to ascertain its exact location and line of sight to my roof.

So I climbed back up on the roof, unhinged the WiFi device, and attempted to move it to a location less obstructed by trees. Unfortunately I slipped.

Did I mention I was taking my laptop up on the roof with me, with great care. There's a service on the Loco that lets to you align the antenna to get the best signal. I set the laptop down, making sure it isn't about to slip, set up the webpage to tell me the signal strength, then move the WiFi device around incrementally. Before moving to different parts of the roof I make sure to pack my laptop back into my backpack so it doesn't fall off.

Unfortunately the area least obstructed by trees in the line of sight to the EECE SNAP AP was at the very edge of the CAT-6 cable attached to the WiFi device (it's powered over ethernet don't you know?!). This combined with a quite steep section of roofing led me to slip and fall about two metres down the roof (it's a large roof). The laptop slid further.

After climbing down, I picked up the laptop pieces and noticed the screen had cracked. Shit. I removed the hard drive and put it into an external USB caddy to see if it was still useful. It wasn't. Fuck. Luckily I am quite anal about backing up my PhD data (maybe not so much other stuff). However I'm sweating that I didn't back up my outlook .PSD file in the last couple of days.

The laptop has survived since around 200-2006, with only minor modifications (new battery, USB sound adapter, new keyboard), but it's a shame to see it die in such an avoidable way.

So now I'm looking for cheapish laptops. I'd like a MacBook Pro for aesthetics, but that can wait until I have a real job and proper disposable income. Dell seems like a good bet, but their phone support is normal office hours only (the WiFi card in the system I'm looking at only mentions 802.11n. I'd really like 802.11g as well). I might wander into JB HiFi and Officeworks tomorrow to have a look at their offerings.

In the mean time, my frugal ways have been shot in the arse (although I did stop myself adding a $240 23" full HD monitor as an accessory when speccing out the Dell (Studio 15). I'm also worried that the cheap student only Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade pack was only 32 bit, I hope I can convince them to cancel my authorisation code and give me a 64 bit one. Doubtful, as the conditions only allow for upgrading from XP or Vista.

So now I'm in my PhD office, bitching, and looking at new laptops (Lenovo, Dell and HP). I think I'll hang the old laptop screen backing up for rememberance. So much for taking the afternoon off to do household chores.