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Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

geoff.greer.fm

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Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#211

Post by zokier »

danans wrote: post #111

A related question that is also interesting: What is the oldest laptop that can run an up-to-date, internet connected OS (i.e a museum device with the same OS from 1991 doesn't count). It doesn't have to have a fancy desktop, but it does have to support connectivity to the internet, and run all the latest security patches and updates. This is different than the article because optimizing productivity isn't an objecti…

Looking back at old Thinkpad models, I wouldn't be all surprised to see Debian Stretch and Firefox on a T20 from 2000, if it had full memory upgrade (to apparently 512M). 600X from 1999 might be the limit (first PIII model). Much beyond that I feel things start to get much sketchier. You might start to run into ISA issues with older CPUs or memory limits. Additionally 90s laptops especially might have had more exotic peripherals which might not be fully supported anymore, if they ever were. Going below 1024x768 resolution would be problematic also.

For more practical use I'd draw the line to 2003; with T40/R40 you got USB 2.0 and Wifi, both things that make life much easier. From spec point of view you got Pentium M CPU (with SSE2 and all) and top end models shipped with 512M of RAM (upgradeable to at least 1GB!).

That also serves to demonstrate what dramatic progress happened in just 3-4 years.

The next 3-4 years also saw fairly significant improvements, T61 from 2007 has SATA (allowing SSD upgrade) and first 64 bit CPUs, supporting up to 8 GB of RAM. That gets you in the realm of mostly practical daily driver.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#212

Post by [deleted] »

0815test wrote: post #202
ams6110 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone needs to make a modern day equivalent of a Model 100. By that, I mean a highly portable instant-on computer one can do remote terminal work on with seemingly endless battery life. They do. They are called Chromebooks.

Chromebooks suck. Just buy a cheap Windows laptop (and most recent models are going for the Chromebook-like "ultrabook" form factor anyway, even at the low end) and put lightweight Linux on it. You don't really get better specs for the price if you go the Chromebook route, and the whole way they're setup makes them pointless toys. (...No, I'm not going to look for the correct custom firmware for whatever my model of…

[deleted]

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#213

Post by bluedino »

teekert wrote: post #80

My Vaio FE11s from 2006 also still works well. I'm not really surprised. Especially when you do text based stuff. During the time I wrote my MSc thesis (in 2005) in LaTeX, I used a very old Toshiba Satellite (it looked like this Toshiba Satellite Pro 420 from 1996 [0]). It had a 2GB hard drive so I had to carefully select the software packages that Slackware wanted to install. But it worked a I wrote parts of my thes…

OWC sells the 'Aura Legacy' PATA SSD (macsales.com)

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#214

Post by bluedino »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #57
chx wrote: post #50

Heh, there are quite a few people on /r/thinkpad who thinks "something about this machine that causes me to favor it" -- aye, there is, quite a lot in fact. And yes, even the X61 is usable today and the Sandy Bridge based X220/T420/T420s being the last factory machines with the classic keyboard have something of a cult following. As I mentioned many a times before here, from Sandy Bridge to Kaby Lake IPC have only gr…

Good point on power dissipation and efficiency-- a T480 might not be substantially faster than a T430, but it's half the size and the battery lasts longer.

They're much faster. 50-60% on the single core stuff and 300% faster on multi-core tests.

Not to mention they cruise along on things that use the newer extensions for things like video playback, plus the integrated graphics hardware is much much faster

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#215

Post by kemitchell »

I daily a 2010 Lenovo T420s. Replaced the disc drive with a solid-state drive and the CD drive with an auxiliary battery pack. Maxed out RAM. Runs Debian 9.x with dwm.

Perfectly adequate for software development. On the odd occasion I need more, I shell into a virtual private server.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#216

Post by kakwa_ »

Just a few months ago I replaced nearly the same laptop (Thinkpad x61 in my case, with SSD and 4GB RAM upgrades).

It has served me well for 6 years (I bought it secondhand), but it started to definitely show its age.

It started to have difficulties playing youtube videos and the like, these consuming a lot of CPU, and consequently battery life started to drop to below 2 hours (plus the aging battery didn't helped), and fan noise started to get somewhat annoying. It also had some scars like marks on the screen or partially broken keys (I've not necessarily treated it well, compressing it in bags or having dropped it on more than one occasions).

It is still usable, and I will convert it for other uses (mpd server probably). But it was time to replace it with a newer laptop, the new one is a secondhand Thinkpad x250, and it's definitely an improvement, quiet, more powerful, 6 to 8 hours autonomy. I hope it will last about as long as the x61 that served me so well.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#217

Post by meuk »

I have replaced the battery and the HDD by an SSD in two old thinkpads, and they work very well. In particular, they have a nice key layout and type a lot better than my 1600 dollar Dell XPS, which is more important to me than a full HD screen.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#218

Post by dwild »

wlesieutre wrote: post #158
stcredzero wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone needs to make a modern day equivalent of a Model 100. By that, I mean a highly portable instant-on computer one can do remote terminal work on with seemingly endless battery life. The first programming job I was ever paid for, I did a large part of dialed in through a modem over landlines. Emacs was fantastic for that! (Because it's an OS masquerading as an editor.)

iPad Pro with a Brydge keyboard? https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/12/brydge-pro-keyboard/ The OS has a lot of limitations on doing local development work, but if you're connecting to a remote server you get a great quality screen and remarkably long battery life. Apple lists "Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music." Keyboard has its own battery (default connection is bluetoot…

I wouldn't call a 10 hours battery life as an "endless battery life". On my ASUS Transformer Book T100, which is a full Windows 10 device, I had a battery life of about 10 hours and I didn't called that endless yet.
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