[sf-lug] upgrading versus wiping and installing new

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jim Stockford (jim at systemateka.com):

> For the last two plus years I've been using a (now unavailable)
> Zareason Atom-based laptop (anything portable with a computer,
> display, and keyboard is a laptop to me). It has 4 GB RAM and a 500 GB
> spinning hard drive.

Ever considered swapping out the HD for a new SSD of the same form
factor?   You'll thank yourself if you do:  radical increased in system
speed, ditto reduction in heat and noise, much longer battery life.  
Me, I've been gobsmacked at the difference it makes.

> About six months ago I bought a new Zareason laptop (X86-64, 8 GB RAM,
> 120 GB SSD).

So, maybe you know about the SSD difference from your own comparisons.
;->  (The sweet spot for laptop SSDs was recently the 256GB sizes, and
of course this situation improves over time.  Follow the NewEgg customer
reviews to track the situation.)

> * I can easily rethink and re-implement filesystem (partitioning) and
> directory structures

If you have time, I'd appreciate hearing your partitioning philosophy.
Lots of ideas on such things, and differing objectives, so I always like
hearing what people have decided on the subject and by what criteria.

> I'll be grateful for any comments, derision, suggestions....

I use Thunderbird + Lightning at work to reach an MS-Exchange
mail/scheduling system (via a Davmail gateway process, a Java app, that
I run locally).  Thunderbird isn't the fastest thing around, but it's
pretty reliable.  Be sure to kill and restart it every few days, as it
has (in my experience) the slow memory leak characteristic of apps built
atop Mozilla XULRunner.

At home, I use mutt, which is stupid-fast and will do just about
anything.  (Of course, unlike most people, I choose to leave my MUA,
mutt, running 24x7 under a /usb/bin/screen session left running on my
SMTP mail server, so that I can reach my Internet point-of-presence by
ssh'ing to it from whatever device I'm front of at the moment.  Works
for Me<tm>.)

> I do not plan to import my elaborate and huge Evolution email data
> files to the new laptop.

Well, if you want to, there are ways.  It's kinda nice to have copies of
one's mail going back many years, especially if you have them in a
standard, easily-worked-with format like mbox (which has its drawbacks
but at least is simple).  I keep old mail in gzippped mbox files, which 
then can be examined using zgrep, zless, etc.  It's handy and at the
same time efficient of space (especially if you purge dumb attached
videos of dancing hamsters and such before gzipping your archived mail).


-- 
Cheers,              When _Guns of the South_ came out, it was sometimes shelved
Rick Moen            with the history books, but only south of the Mason-Dixon 
rick at linuxmafia.com  Line.  I couldn't make that up.  Fiction has to be 
                     plausible.  History just has to happen. -- Harry Turtledove