Advantages: Better Organization, may use less disk space

Disadvantage: More drives to monitor.

I've always been big on partitioning the hard drive. I leave the C:
drive for Windows, Install programs on D:, Use E: to store data, store
media (graphics, videos) on F:…etc

Large hard drives partitioned only once tend to use more disk space to
nest files further into subdirectories.

Things like fat tables will use up the same disk space whether it be
one large FAT on one drive or two smaller FATs on two drives.

It all comes down to this… Any advantages or disadvantages will be
small. It's really a matter of personal preference.

The only major disadvantage I can think of would be a single large
drive is much more likely to get fragmented files… that will slow
down the system. However, if once every few months you run your disk fragmentation tool found under systems tools then this will reorganize the files to run efficiently.

The rule of thumb in the laptop service business is that the cost of the warranty should be 15% of the list price of the laptop. So, for a $500 laptop this would mean that a one year warranty would cost $75. This seem a bit expensive and means that the cost of the refurbished laptop has increased the $575. Actually the warranty is 90 days, so the 9 month extension is more than $50, which still seems expensive. We offered such warranties for year and people rarely took them.

If the laptop shows up and works ok then you can typically expect it to work a year or more. Especially, if it is mostly kept in one place. The first 30 days is the most critical period. If you move it around a lot then the hard drive, the weakest link, at some time may have some issues. These days low end, brand new laptops, Dells cheapest as an expample, only include a 90 day warranty.

Should your laptop have a problem after the warranty period, we at UsedLaptops.com, as an example can often repair it for $50. We have lots of parts for the laptops we have sold over the years, so the parts are inexpensive. It costs $20 to ship it to us and $20 for us to ship it back, so the cost would be $100. Out of the hundreds of laptops we sell per month only 2-3 our of 100 seem to have service related issues. Often we can mail a part, sometimes the unit needs to be sent back.

It started in Universities, then coffee shops, then airports and hotel rooms, now cities are rushing to join in. Google volunteered to put wifi in San Francisco and in their home city of Mountain View, CA. Philidelphia is putting it in a deal with EarthLink. AT&T recently bid to build a wireless network for a county in Michigan. New Orleans began service to residents after Katrina damaged land lines. Tempe, Arizona launched a network in February 2006. Initially, the phone utilities fought this trend, now rather than be left behind are joining in.

WiFi Hot Spots and How To Find Them

A great resource for finding WiFi hot spots in US cities is Yahoo's Mobile site.

In April 2006 the City of San Francisco announced the Google and Earthlink would be implementing a city wide wireless network.

Check out for a comprehensive list of airports with wifi that is updated regularly.

Quikbook, the hotel booking search engine also provides a great service that allows you to find which hotels in a particular US city offers complimentary WiFi service.

The WiFi Hot Spot Directory is a massive global list that is constantly adding providers from coffee houses to libraries, street corners to universities.

An interesting proposed new wi-fi potential location is on the train from Sacramento to San Jose, CA on the 171.5 miles of the Capitol Corridor railway. Sounds like over the next few years wifi will really start to snowball.

In April 2006 there was a major announcement about Wireless Silicon Valley. A task force was put together in November 2005 and they plan on recommending a vendor in September 2006.

Got almost $4000 to spend? Lenovo introduced a dual-core 2.8GHz 1GB RAM Thinkpad with over 4 hours of battery life. A road warriors delight. It includes all kinds of wifi including Verizons 3G EV-DO, which costs by itself over $50 a month and is available in select US cities. It is targeted at corporations with enterprise ready security features, biometric fingerprint security, a 100GB hard drive and lots of other sophisticated features. A long ways from the refurbished laptops we sell at www.usedlaptops.com, but maybe we will see some in 3-4 years in the refurbished marketplace!

Go to the Start menu My Computer and it will tell you how large the Hard Drive is. There is always a C Drive and there could be a D drive or other set up as partitions.

It is also possible that there are is a hidden partition installed on the drive. You can check for a hidden partition, most manufactures will place a hidden partition for system restoration and system core operations. The smallest size I can make this
hidden partion is 8MB, it is the smallest that windows will allow it
to be.

Also, another thing to remember is just how much is a real Mega
bite? Remember a 1 Kb is actually 1024 bits and a Meg is actually
1,024,000 bits. I have a 120 GB hard drive that shows 111GB, when you
add up all of the stray bits, it comes out to 120GB mathematically.

You can also check your hard drive size out, just go to the System Information
Tool, click Components, Storage then Drives and take a look at the two
differant numbers reported for Size and Drive Size.

When a hard drive is made, there will always be bad sectors. a 100 gig
hard drive can easily be in the high 90ish gigs.