Ignorance of the law is a legal excuse in some circumstances.
"It is wrong to convict a person of a crime if he had no reason to believe that the act for which he was convicted was a crime, or even that it was wrongful. This is one of the bedrock principles of American law. It lies at the heart of any civilized system of law." United States v. Wilson, 159 F.3d 280, 293 (7th Cir. 1998) (Posner, C.J., dissenting).
"Chief Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit aptly explains the dilemma between the maxim "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and the inherent unreasonableness of criminal prosecutions involving obscure violations of law:
We want people to familiarize themselves with the laws bearing on their activities. But a reasonable opportunity doesn't mean being able to go to a local law library and read Title 18. It would be preposterous to suppose that someone from [the defendant's] milieu is able to take advantage of such an opportunity..."
Watch out for the interface voltages. I think older laptops and desktops communicate with the hard drive at 5Volts. Newer laptops use 3.3V I think the transition took place back in the days of around 1 GigaByte laptop hard drives. If your computer came with something bigger then you probably won't have to worry. This may also be a concern when using a 3.5inch to 2.5inch adapter to plug a laptop into a desktop. I bought a cheap $10 adapter to get the data off of my old laptop drive and onto my desktop and then onto the new laptop drive. I used the adapter before knowing that the voltages were different. Luckily it worked anyway. However one of the new laptop drives crashed after a few months and the other still makes scary clanking noises.
Also, wear an anti static wrist strap. With the emphasis on low power consumption in laptops, they're probably even a little more sensitive to static than desktops. What's more, static damage to a laptop is likely to be a lot more difficult to diagnose, and expensive to repair than a desktop.
The laptops I've disassembled have had secret screws hidden in places that would have been hard to find without the disassembly manual.
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Ignorance of the law is a legal excuse in some circumstances.
"It is wrong to convict a person of a crime if he had no reason to believe that the act for which he was convicted was a crime, or even that it was wrongful. This is one of the bedrock principles of American law. It lies at the heart of any civilized system of law." United States v. Wilson, 159 F.3d 280, 293 (7th Cir. 1998) (Posner, C.J., dissenting).
"Chief Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit aptly explains the dilemma between the maxim "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and the inherent unreasonableness of criminal prosecutions involving obscure violations of law:
We want people to familiarize themselves with the laws bearing on their activities. But a reasonable opportunity doesn't mean being able to go to a local law library and read Title 18. It would be preposterous to suppose that someone from [the defendant's] milieu is able to take advantage of such an opportunity..."
Go to the folowing page and search for "ignorance" for some more info http://www.saf.org/1999Emersoncase2amend.html
Watch out for the interface voltages. I think older laptops and desktops communicate with the hard drive at 5Volts. Newer laptops use 3.3V I think the transition took place back in the days of around 1 GigaByte laptop hard drives. If your computer came with something bigger then you probably won't have to worry. This may also be a concern when using a 3.5inch to 2.5inch adapter to plug a laptop into a desktop. I bought a cheap $10 adapter to get the data off of my old laptop drive and onto my desktop and then onto the new laptop drive. I used the adapter before knowing that the voltages were different. Luckily it worked anyway. However one of the new laptop drives crashed after a few months and the other still makes scary clanking noises.
Also, wear an anti static wrist strap. With the emphasis on low power consumption in laptops, they're probably even a little more sensitive to static than desktops. What's more, static damage to a laptop is likely to be a lot more difficult to diagnose, and expensive to repair than a desktop.
The laptops I've disassembled have had secret screws hidden in places that would have been hard to find without the disassembly manual.