MSI GE60 - Laptop troubleshooting

I rarely buy hardware as a complete package, preferring to build my own PCs, however when it comes to Laptops, I felt I ought to play it safe and buy from a brand. I wanted a laptop that was powerful enough to handle the odd game (think UFO: Enemy Unknown rather than Crysis) and wasn't going to break the bank. After much deliberating, I decided on the GE60 by MSI. On paper, it had the right specs, a decent graphics card, fast processor combined with 8GB RAM. The only drawback was the hard drive, a pretty slow 5200RPM SATA drive, not the SSD drive I would prefer. No matter, I thought, it can' be too bad. A bit of a mistake.

My first piece of advice if considering this laptop is either to buy an mSATA SSD drive and fit it yourself and clone the C: drive onto it, or buy the next model up with a SSD drive. This alone will save you a lot of grief.

However, if, like me, you've bought the £750 model with standard drive, and have found a fair few issues with the GE60, then let me explain what the problems are, and how to fix them.

The first problem is Windows 8, indeed most problems with this laptop stem from having Windows 8 as an OS. This isn't to bemoan Windows 8 as a whole, but on this laptop, and the MSI configuration of Windows 8 on this laptop, has made the performance woeful. So my second piece of advice is to either reinstall Windows 8 from scratch, or downgrade to Windows 7 if possible. Again, this will save you a lot of time, sweat and tears. All drivers for Windows 7 can be found on the MSI website (apparently, I didn't go down this route).

Again, if the above isn't an option, then read on.

Windows 8 likes to do something called 'Write-caching'. In theory, this speeds up performance of your machine, and prevent data loss in the event of a power outage. All very sensible. The problem is, the data loss part of the equation absolutely kills the performance as the hard drive is in near 100% usage all the time. From the moment I turned the laptop on, disk usage was at 100%. After around 5-10 minutes, it would dip to 90% or so, and the laptop became usable.I had come to accept this as part of the laptop usual routine, blaming the slow speed of the hard drive. However, this does not need to be the case!

After my laptop became slow and unresponsive loading up the basic Mail client, I started to look around and noticed something in the system tray called 'Intel Rapid Storage Technology'. Thinking that my storage wasn't being particularly rapid, I loaded up the application. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, however there was a message talking about the Windows write-cache buffer flushing policy, and that disabling it can improve performance. Thinking anything is worth a try, I followed the instructions, written below for your convenience:

1. Right click the bottom left hand corner of your screen, this should open a drop down menu, choose Device Manager.
2. From Device manager, expand Disk drives.
3. Right click your disk drive, and open properties.
4. Choose the Policies Tab.
5. Tick the tick box next to "Turn off Windows write cache buffer flushing on this device."
6. Click OK.

All of a sudden, my disk usage dropped to 5% and my laptop has never felt so fast and responsive. Seriously, it's finally performing like it should have from the start. A word of warning, should your laptop suddenly lose power, then you are far more likely to lose anything you were working on. But, I figured this is a gaming laptop with a battery life of two hours tops. Most of the time, it's going to be plugged in anyway, and the performance gain is well worth the price.

There are other issues with this laptop, primarily the fact that MSI in their wisdom decided to install every language display language as standard. This means that every update you download from windows update has to be configured for each language, meaning every update takes an incredible long time to install and configure. In addition, Windows 8 is clever enough to realise you're not likely to use these extra language packs, so tries to uninstall them every once and awhile after a reboot. Sadly, this process can also take hours, leaving your machine with the "configuring windows features" with either 15% or 100%. I have successfully removed all language packs, and my laptop was still chugging (primarily due to the above write-caching issue), though windows updates weren't quite so painful.

So to sum up, if you've bought this laptop and are just a little bit disappointed with it's speed, then do the following:

1. Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on your hard drive
2. Remove all the extra display languages from the laptop (http://techmell.net/how-to/uninstall-language-packs-windows-8/)

I hope this helps someone, somewhere, as the laptop itself is a fine bit of kit, and with the above tweaking, can be the laptop it should be.

Sphero - Control has come along way since Flowol...

Grabbed from an Edugeek post, Sphero looks like a lot of fun with, hopefully, a lot of learning too.

 As taken from the edugeek post:

Occasionally you come across a piece of tech that makes you think... and then very rapidly makes you think "where can I get one?!", for team CP this has happened with the discovery of the Sphero.

Remember using LOGO to program that pen wielding Turtle? Imagine if you will that Turtle evolved through the troublesome Teenage Years (where it picked up a penchant for martial arts and pizza), then evolved further; this is getting close to Sphero.

You can program it
You can create Apps for it
You can race it
You can augment reality
You can control Apps with it

The below links go into more depth as to its capabilities within education.

OrbBasic 
Having a Ball with Code- Can Sphero inspire the next generation of programmers?

Classroom AR

http://www.dvice.com/2013-6-19/ar-glasses-poised-become-every-teachers-best-friend?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Heard about Augmented Reality years ago, but haven't really seen anything to excite from an educational point of view. The above sounds interesting, even if its a few years away!

Touch Coding

TouchDevelop

Coding on a ipad or other touchscreen device, as well as PC or Mac. Definitely worth a look.

BYOD in schools

I've been following 'dangerously irrelevant' for a while now, and a recent post caught my eye discussing how teachers are struggling to keep pace with technology, and what to do with BYOD should it be implemented in a school. Specifically, the following comment I thought summed it up beautifully:

"I am in the same boat – I just presented to our school board last night about BYOD, and the need to have a district-supported program so that our infrastructure can be upgraded handle the increased demands.
BYOD has the potential to provide for personalization of learning environments, curriculum that meets 21st century demands, student access to relevant, emerging technologies that enhance the educational experience – while also meeting the demands of the new Common Core state standards. However, potential does not automatically equal reality.

In the past, the integration of technology in to the classroom was seen as something extra for those who had the time, knowledge, money, and patience to take it on. However, workforce demands, and Common Core standards, require students to be as proficient with technology as they are with a pencil. Playing games and posting status updates on Facebook is not how our students will become savvy; it’s being able to select and use the proper tool for the task at hand. Teachers need a lot of training and support to make this shift. The biggest training aspect is letting teachers know that they don’t have to know how to use all the technology tools out there. Instead, their job is to provide the learning opportunity, and let the students navigate the experience. This lends itself nicely to the idea of personalized learning because students, after being told to create a presentation on an element of the periodic table, can choose which tool best fits their need. A student with an iPod may choose to use StoryRobe, a digital app, to create a story-like video, whereas an iPad user may use iMovie, or VoiceThread…all while a laptop user is creating a Prezi or website.
We know this transformation won’t happen overnight. It takes time and support, which will be offered through curriculum development teams creating, modeling and sharing lessons. Workshops and discussions will be scheduled to also help teachers navigate these new opportunities.

Our plan is to start small – let the teachers who have been asking for it have it. We’ll document their journey; provide a lot of time for reflection, modification, failure, and success. We have to let them know that failure is part of the process.

With CCSS forcing change anyway, it is a great time to “throw it all out” like someone said earlier and start anew.

I hope you find success. Please keep sharing your journey with us!"

I'm hoping that, should my school adopt a BYOD policy, it will take heed of the above. Start slow, start small, get the teachers involved, comfortable and trained, and go from there.

In addition, the key questions from the following powerpoint would need to be answered fully.

http://independenthead.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/mobile-device-strategy-for-schools.html