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The laptop that won't die

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Re: The laptop that won't die

#191

Post by mickael-kerjean »

agumonkey wrote: post #133
nirui wrote: post #104

This is another Thinkpad festival post? Let me just cold you down a bit by telling you that a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have this DELL Studio laptop released back in September, 2009, and it can still kick very well too if I decide to recruit it back to my "workforce". I retired it just 3~4 years ago because I got a T480. Heck, some of my code (old versions) for the same project that…

ah well funny, the only dell studio i saw couldn't operate more than 6 months without requiring surgery (motherboard, dvd drive, keyboard)

and the first thinkpad I bought died 2 days after the warranty expired

Re: The laptop that won't die

#192

Post by t312227 »

thinkpad x200s from march 2009 - steadily approaching 15 years -, still works great to read news-sites, browser hackernews, watch some vidos on youtube etc. ... using the current version of linuxmint / mate edition :))

Re: The laptop that won't die

#193

Post by baq »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #185
pbmonster wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I was alone with that problem. Do you know what the culprit is? What keeps randomly waking up modern laptops? It's so stupid, too. There is exactly one single case when I want my laptop to wake up with the lid closed: when I plug in the dock. Every single other case where it wakes up with the lid closed is a bug in my eyes.

Its the removal of S3 sleep states from the BIOS/ACPI tables. Now the processor is kept powered on (in a low power state) but any poorly written driver or software can jolt the machine back into a higher power state and superheat your backpack. Intel's rationale is that PC's should function like smartphones and you should be able to stay connected and receive notifications while asleep. I'm not convinced.

I think that's actually MS who wants that. I'm not sure there's anyone other than them who's convinced.

Fortunately I moved fully remote when COVID started so this hasn't been a problem and also switched to a mac last year - macs seem to be well behaved in this matter.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#194

Post by jeroenhd »

lmm wrote: post #95
antisthenes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Win 7 SP1 was peak desktop computing for sure. Actual desktop-first design without security kindergarten cancer that is every windows OS after.

What are you claiming was improved compared to Win2K? As far as I can remember everything after that was dumbed-down UI and pointless security clickthroughs.

Vista added a lot of usability features like window snapping and start search, but it's underlying OS was literally unfinished. 7 became what Vista, could've been and even Vista became usable when enough updates were applied.

7 disabled a lot of the security prompts for usability. It didn't remove them, it actually just automatically approved them. These days, most software doesn't need admin privileges anymore. You could always turn off all of the prompts if you wanted to, I think there were 4 levels of prompt severity?

Re: The laptop that won't die

#195

Post by baq »

imp0cat wrote: post #119
hawski wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that would go a long way would be the return of S3.

This. It seems to me that nowadays, you can either have a well-behaved older machine or a Ryzen-equipped mobile powerhorse that will glitch every now and then. Unfortunately for me, recent AMD's offerings have greatly decreased the attractiveness of older laptops. But be warned, you gotta take the good with the bad and accept that a modern laptop might wake up at any time (even when stored in your bag).

I could perhaps tolerate the wakeup, but it should notice it's in the backpack with a lid closed sensor and a thermometer and maybe go to sleep again instead of trying to melt itself and set the car or house on fire? Just throwing out this million-dollar idea for free here.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#196

Post by rollcat »

boricj wrote: post #187
rollcat wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have a 20yro TiBook. Both the RTC and the main battery are dead, and there's a tiny screen defect, but the machine is otherwise perfectly usable (if relatively slow). And by usable, I mean the desktop experience of Mac OS X 10.5 often feels more polished than that of some of the modern OS's... The big bummer is that the modern web keeps raising a wall t…

If modern encryption is that big of a performance drag, would using a proxy that deals with the encryption sidestep that issue? With hardware that old and power-hungry, I'd expect a proxy hosted on a modern single-board computer in the local network to be essentially a rounding error on the electricity bill in comparison.

That would kinda kill the last hope of using one as a portable device. You'd either be chained to your home network, or have an extremely inconvenient dongle hanging from the side. (Unless you'd do the TLS termination e.g. on your phone.)

But that gave me some ideas. While the G4 PowerBooks are recent enough to be officially blessed with WiFi capability (via PCMCIA), Macs that are even older have to resort to community-made devices, such as BlueSCSI[1]. Perhaps it would be feasible to cram an SBC with on-board Wifi/BT into a PCMCIA form factor, and - in addition to providing physical network connectivity - use it for TLS?

[1]: https://jcs.org/bluescsi

Re: The laptop that won't die

#197

Post by criddell »

ribit wrote: post #150

And we have a bunch of 15 year old Macs in the basement that outlasted any PCs we ever owned. What’s the point of these personal anecdotes? Lenovos build quality went down the drain in the last 10 years and their service is awful.

I think their build quality went down only in a relative way. Everybody is making pretty well build machines today and Lenovo hasn’t been improving fast enough. I think design is where they have been losing ground the fastest. Their machine thermals seem especially atrocious. My P1 really doesn’t need an LED to know it’s on because I can hear the fans.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#198

Post by [deleted] »

neilv wrote: post #61

That T420 was from the last generation of ThinkPads to have a real keyboard. And so long as you don't need a big GPU on-board, it's perfectly fine for most Linux-based developer workstation purposes.

[deleted]

Re: The laptop that won't die

#199

Post by larme »

regularfry wrote: post #180
Aerbil313 wrote: post #127

While everyone is bragging about their old ThinkPads, I am typing these on a Pi Zero 2W. I spilt coffee on my ~8 years old HP Laptop two weeks ago. While waiting for my parents to buy me an iPhone 15 Pro (with its USB-C to connect to the monitor) I am using a Pi Zero 2W + Asus Zenscreen Portable Monitor + 10.000 mAH Powerbank setup, connecting to my server via RDP. Github Pro student credits on DigitalOcean, all free…

The problem I have with the zero 2w is that building anything on it seems to knock out the wifi. I've got a couple on the local network as terminals and if I try to build (e.g.) a recent python interpreter, the ssh connection dies to the extent that I have to power-cycle them. I presume they're just going into swap, but they never come back. Now that's not your use-case if you've got a remote server and all you're us…

can you use mosh instead of ssh?

I even built earlier zig compiler on zero1 because zig has no official 32bit arm release. I don't recall any significant wifi dropout with mosh.

Another work around is connect zero to a usb port of your computer/ipad/iphone and enable usb gadget on zero. Then you have a ethernet connect between zero and host that is more reliable than wifi?

Re: The laptop that won't die

#200

Post by walteweiss »

m463 wrote: post #105
MichaelRo wrote: post #101

>> I needed a machine that a) could run Logic Pro (the finest music-editing software available to humanity), b) had a high-resolution screen for my lousy eyesight, and c) had a 1-terabyte hard drive. It was the only machine that fit the bill. For a time, I too fell into the trap of looking for "readily made laptop" with shiny specs, only to eventually notice that getting ripped off is an understatement. Like spot a d…

> I'm buying "gaming laptops". step 1: disable rgb. Honestly, I wish the "lunchbox" style laptops existed. EDIT: I remember dolch lunchbox style laptops from a long time ago (search for "dolch pac") EDIT2: wow, search for FlexPAC III Of course, if these were a thing, somebody would bring it to starbucks.

FlexPAC III it is indeed!

https://acmeportable.com/products/flexpac-iii

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