231–240 of 262 posts
I used to have an old Windows 2000 laptop without onboard WiFi that I called "Deadline" and used for the same purpose. If you have work you can do without connectivity for extended stretches I recommend it.
One of the things I miss about older laptops is the keyboards. I would love to buy a laptop that is built like a PowerBook G4 or a ThinkPad X61 but with modern displays and modern internals, and with extra bonus points if it has user-replaceable batteries and user-serviceable storage and RAM. I've found the Thinkpad X62 ( https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/ ) and X210 ( https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/t…
Have you seen the MNT Reform? https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p... It's not as powerful as most modern laptops (uses an iMX8 SOM, rather than an x86 CPU), but it's got a full keyboard, trackball (!), replaceable batteries, etc.
Why not use old(er) Systems when they fulfill your needs? A computer is a tool, such as a typewriter, printing press, paintbrush or hammer. Would anyone argue about the age of a typewriter or hammer if its in good working condition? In fact, i am using an Atari 520ST as my main computer since my laptop died a while ago. It started as an experiment, but now "it just works". I got network connectivity, email and (limit…
Why not use old(er) Systems when they fulfill your needs? A computer is a tool, such as a typewriter, printing press, paintbrush or hammer. Would anyone argue about the age of a typewriter or hammer if its in good working condition? In fact, i am using an Atari 520ST as my main computer since my laptop died a while ago. It started as an experiment, but now "it just works". I got network connectivity, email and (limit…
They are tools, for sure. But some tools aren't so obsolete that today's youth would struggle at first to use them.
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A more modern Mac with an Ethernet jack could share its internet connection from WiFi to Ethernet with a couple of clicks on System Preferences.
And you can also buy little ethernet to (client, not access point) wi-fi bridges. They're meant for connecting devices that don't have wi-fi, like printers or game consoles. From some quick research, one model is the IOGEAR GWU637. I've never used it, so that's not a recommendation or anything, just an example.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=199588
Just tape it to the case with a short USB cable. You can even set up a firewall on the thing so your ancient unpatched Mac isn't pulling its pants down and bending over for the modern Internet scan bots. You could even set up a transparent web proxy on the Pi so the ancient root certs on that version of OSX don't break everything.
Then all you have to worry about is the way out of date web browser not being able to handle all of the new web frameworks. Pretty soon you're asking yourself why you didn't go and find a just-as-cheap and much less outdated laptop instead.
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>A computer is a tool, such as a hammer. Would anyone argue about the age of a hammer if its in good working condition? The computer is not a tool ‚such as a hammer‘, since the progress in computer innovation obviously outpaces the progress in hammer innovation. It is all about the features, not the age. You are definitely not crazy for using whatever tool you enjoy using, though.
>It is all about the features, not the age Tell that to someone doing basic tasks such as reading textual articles online and sending emails via some gmail web interface
I'm pointing out that the reason most people buy new computers don't apply to hammers at all.
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Nice - whatever maximizes your productivity is the right tool. I went the opposite route: I basically built a gaming rig so I could get really good auto-complete in vscode. Couldn't be happier... and I have a 'free' light show. :-)
VS code works great on my 2012 Mac mini. Maybe you just wanted a gaming pc ;)
But you should see how fast vscode reloads :-)
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A 386 w/5mb of ram. Or at least it was when I was doing so in 1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRC
I see your 386 and raise you an 8088 at 4.77 MHz and 256K of RAM (or less, I'm not sure what the actual requirements of ircjr is if you want to push it): http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/IRCjr.html Really, it's just text, it doesn't matter. Literally any general purpose computer will run IRC if it can do TCP/IP and someone bothers to write a client.