Last week I wrote about my shiny new iMac. What I didn’t mention is that when I brought it home I transferred my files from an old iBook that I had bought used and was my primary computer (it's slightly faster than my old graphite iMac). Macs come with a cool program (Migration Assistant) to transfer all your files, programs and setting from your old Mac to your new one via a Firewire cable. It’s very handy and very simple. It worked well for me, and literally in the nick of time since my iBook’s hard drive died soon after the process was complete. In addition to not working, the hard drive made a very loud clicking sound, kind of like a grandfather clock tick hooked up to the amplifier from “Back to the Future”. Not a good sign. Since I hadn’t paid much for the old laptop, I wasn’t too upset and figured that I had gotten my money’s worth from it. Then after a week or so I decided, on a whim, to see how much laptop hard drives cost. My first search showed prices a little higher than I was willing to pay, so I wrote off the idea. Then, on one of my daily looks at dealnews.com (their slogan, that for some reason is no longer on the page: “How to go broke saving money”) I found one cheap on Overstock.com. I ordered it and it promptly arrived on Saturday. I found a good how-to guide online and was surprised how much work was going to be involved. I had to disassemble the entire laptop to get to the hard drive, which is buried under layers of other components. As you can see, there were quite a few parts that had to be removed. Fortunately, I had my supervisor watching me from the other end of the couch to make sure I didn’t lose any pieces and the operation was a success.