Ye Olde Laptop

[monabri]

I lost track of when I bought two DELL Studio 1749 laptops....both are still in use, especially mine - the wife's laptop is used perhaps once a month.

The original battery says 10/06 suggesting it was made in Oct 2006 which is about right (the father in law died in 07 and we bought them just before he passed away).

I decided to upgrade today by buying a 512 SSD and 2x4GB of RAM (4 GB originally in 2x2GB). The argument about updating such an old laptop being that I can always use the SSD as a spare disc when my Dell eventually dies or - more likely - install it in the wife's laptop along with the upgraded memory.

I wonder if it will last another 13 years?


no - it's not steam powered!

[formoverfunction]

Ye Olde computer - I'm still using a Power Macintosh 9600 from 1997.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_9600

Has Mac OS, Linux and BeOS running on it.

These days I use it mainly for ripping CD's, email and running a collection of ancient games. The best being:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Warrior

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier ... a_Centauri

Still rips a CD perfectly! You can sometimes get 2nd hand CD's from Amazon for less than the digital download. Every penny counts LOL

[JoyofBrex8889]

I have been having a lot of fun playing with a tiny raspberry pi SBC running various flavours of Linux over the last few days. It’s got better specs than my main PC back in 1999, runs Libre Office and Chromium and costs tiny money.

Technology is ever more amazing!

[swill453]

I have been having a lot of fun playing with a tiny raspberry pi SBC running various flavours of Linux over the last few days. It’s got better specs than my main PC back in 1999, runs Libre Office and Chromium and costs tiny money.

I've got one of the original raspberry pi's (sorry for apostrophe, "pis" looks strange ) I didn't really have a use for it until I read the thread which mentioned PiVPN viewtopic.php?f=39&p=230167#p230167

After installing Raspbian Lite and running the PiVPN scripts (along with setting up a free Dynamic DNS hostname), it now sits unobtrusively behind my router and I now have the ability to effectively be on my house LAN from anywhere in the world.

Performance-wise it had absolutely no problem streaming HD BBC programmes to my tablet in hotels and apartments when I was in Bulgaria recently.

Scott.

[Infrasonic]

I've been posting Raspberry Pi and other SBC /OS/Apps reviews over on the Linux thread for the past 18 months or so for anyone interested in dipping their toe in the water.
SBC's in general have come on a long way lately, using one as a daily driver PC is perfectly feasible these days (within reason...).

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=237&start=160

[tea42]

Where do you shovel the coal in?

[JoyofBrex8889]

I have been having a lot of fun playing with a tiny raspberry pi SBC running various flavours of Linux over the last few days. It’s got better specs than my main PC back in 1999, runs Libre Office and Chromium and costs tiny money.

I've got one of the original raspberry pi's (sorry for apostrophe, "pis" looks strange ) I didn't really have a use for it until I read the thread which mentioned PiVPN viewtopic.php?f=39&p=230167#p230167

After installing Raspbian Lite and running the PiVPN scripts (along with setting up a free Dynamic DNS hostname), it now sits unobtrusively behind my router and I now have the ability to effectively be on my house LAN from anywhere in the world.

Performance-wise it had absolutely no problem streaming HD BBC programmes to my tablet in hotels and apartments when I was in Bulgaria recently.

Scott.

I am writing this on a pi3B+ model. It will chug a bit if it gets hot: air temp out here in the Malaysian sticks is typically 28-30C and a big prolonged I/O operation seems to trip the CPU temperature throttle. The poor thing is currently in a nasty fanless box, in a tropical biome, so no big surprise that it occasionally overheats!

That said, I am having a lot of fun programming with the kids in Scratch, and playing games under emulation in RetroPie. Once my pi4 arrives I will stick the one I am writing on now by the router as a PiHole, and use the pi4 as a kids pc.

I have three way more powerful Windows PCs than the Pi4 floating around. But there is something quite special about this open source barebones Linux aesthetic that just appeals. It harks back to my schooldays playing with BBC Micros and Amigas. Certainly it is the machine that I am happiest with my level of control of. Win10 essentially took over the PC with forced updates and no user choice.