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Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

geoff.greer.fm

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Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#261

Post by phjesusthatguy3 »

luminiferous wrote: post #178
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.)

For the first year or so of my job, I actually used a chromebook to SSH into my work desktop to do work remotely. (I'm a Googler and they were pushing new hires to try the chromebook over the more traditional macbook/thinkpad.) It was fantastic! The chromebook itself basically does nothing so the battery life is absurd, 10-12 hours easy. The chromebook starts up really fast because, again, the machine itself does alm…

What were you using for an SSH client? I just started to try using a Chromebook for everything and I really dislike the Google SSH client, but I could probably get used to it.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#262

Post by LyndsySimon »

hyperpape wrote: post #169
TheWiseOne wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happened is that _software_ stopped bloating and inflating like a balloon, as was the norm through the '80s, '90s and early '00s. Is that true though? Windows might have gotten more efficient but I think overall most software has gotten worse from a performance perspective. With the prevalence of Electron everywhere, performance doesn't even seem to be a priority anymore. And "native" apps using WPF, etc. aren…

It doesn’t strike me as true either. I was just thinking about how my Intel MacBook came with 1GB in fall 2006 (stock was 512 MB, iirc). Granted, that wasn’t a professional machine, but I’d say expected memory for a machine has grown 4x in a dozen years.

My first desktop was a Compaq Presario CDS 520, in 1994. It was a 486/66, and came with 4 MB of RAM and a 450MB HDD. I want to say my parents paid $2,400 for it, but would have to double check to be sure.

A dozen years later would be 2006 - if memory serves, a decent laptop in those days would have run you about $1,200-1,500, and would have come with a Core 2 Duo @ ~1.2Ghz, 2GB of RAM, and a ~40GB HDD.

That's a lot more than a 4x increase in specs!

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#263

Post by 5166cc9c39fa61 »

tokai wrote: post #84
mbrumlow wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor how? I have a nice IPS in x220 and it looks amazing!

16:9 for a work machine is a bad choice, and the resolution is horrible.

> 16:9 for a work machine is a bad choice, and the resolution is horrible.

I found a way to turn 16:9 into an advantage: if you go for 70-character columns, you can get a 3-column display in a tiling WM or Emacs if your resolution is 1280 or more pixels horizontally (there are 5-pixel wide fonts out there, but none of them are very legible).

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#264

Post by fixvzbdjzis »

unxmaal wrote: post #222
fixvzbdjzis wrote: post #206

I used an old SGI Fuel (700Mhz, 2GB Ram) as my daily driver @ work until 2013. I would rdesktop to use heavy websites, but other than that it rocked. Stopped using it because I graduated and I didn’t want to pay the electricity bill or keep a jet engine running at night (light sleeper) If anyone here had successfully converted an SGI to a fanless SSD unit, let me know!

You might check on https://forums.irix.cc/ . I have an Origin 300 rackmount with upgraded Noctua fans, and it's quiet enough to not be a bother.

Thnx. Now that Nekochan is dead I’m really lost in the Irix world.

Btw, do you know if there’s a way to make the boot drive a network drive (not the install drive)? I thought I remembered the post-doc in the lab keeping a half dozen O2s alive w/out replacement drives. But I might be wrong

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#265

Post by shereadsthenews »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #253
shereadsthenews wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a 486-class machine with 32MB of RAM running an up-to-date unix as my firewall. It really depends on what you want the machine to do for graphics and javascript and whatnot.

Which unix?

It evolved from a stripped down Debian originally to Core Linux today. It's just a firewall, so it hardly needs any software.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#266

Post by 5166cc9c39fa61 »

jplayer01 wrote: post #237
htk wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T420 here for the nostalgia. Apart from the ssd and ram upgrades, the FHD IPS upgrade made it an excellent cheaper alternative to the thinkpad 25th anniversary edition. My only problem with it is the battery, I bought a new one but it only lasts for about 2-3 hours. If anyone here is planning to do the FHD upgrade, be very careful with power, you need to remove the battery/power cable and press the power button a cou…

Huh, odd. Even my old, quite run-down battery (9-cell) gets me 5-6 hours. Back when it was brand new, it got me anywhere between 7-10 hours. This is on Linux. Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel.

> Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel.

It is most likely due to poor quality batteries. The "cells" in a 9-cell battery are 18650 batteries, which vary in capacity from 3400mAh at the high end, to counterfeit ones that are labelled to have 1200mAh capacity, but in reality have only a fraction of that. Lithium-ion batteries also have a limited shelf life, so even good quality aftermarket batteries will have a fraction of the rated capacity if they have been sitting in a warehouse for years.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#267

Post by listenallyall »

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…

+1 for Sony. This comment is written on a 2009 VAIO FW-4xx series w/big beautiful 16.4-inch FullHD screen, HDMI, dual-band wifi, SD slot, VGA, Bluetooth, dedicated GPU. Upgraded to USB 3.0 via the PC Card slot (eSATA too). Amazing keyboard and touchpad. Yes I've upgraded RAM and added an SSD (both upgradable without opening the case).

Best part of my VAIO: it runs Win7 Pro. Compared to a 2015-era Dell Latitude running Win10 Pro, it is more stable (Chrome crashes regularly on Win10, seems 8gb RAM is not enough for Win10), better touchpad (new ones lack edge scrolling), quieter & less active fan, way less behind-the-scenes activity (updates, unwanted services, malware checks, etc), Aero's look & feel is so much better than Win10. I really, really, can't understand Microsoft's strategy in removing so many of the good things about Win 7. Does anyone prefer the Win 10 UI over Aero???

The (very minor) cons of this 10-year old laptop: Blu-Ray drive no longer works. No sound except through headphones. The manual "wireless" switch no longer deactivates wifi/BT. Battery life was never very good, the machine is pretty much useless if I am not near a plug.

Really wish Sony was still in the laptop game.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#268

Post by ams6110 »

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…

No, for the stated purpose (an "instant on" portable remote terminal with long battery life), a Chromebook is far superior to a cheap windows laptop. The Chromebook will go from out of the box to fully configured in about 5 minutes. The cheap windows laptop will still be installing linux, and you'll be bashing your head against the wall trying to get the wifi to work because it's a weird chinese copy of a no-name device that has no linux or other open-source drivers.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#269

Post by msravi »

I've been using a mid-2010 Mac book Pro as my main laptop. Since 2010, the changes I've made are to bump up the RAM from 4GB to 8GB (its max), and replace the power brick. The battery now only lasts for about half an hour, so that needs replacement as well. There are also some big bad black dead spots on the display.

In terms of speed and performance, I can't complain too much, at least for my use.

I think we've hit a point where peripherals and batteries wear out sooner than the performance slowdown hits us.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#270

Post by LeoPanthera »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #265
LeoPanthera wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which unix?

It evolved from a stripped down Debian originally to Core Linux today. It's just a firewall, so it hardly needs any software.

Whether Linux is "a unix" I suppose would be a big debate. :)
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