81–90 of 262 posts
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to a job interview a year and a half ago where part of the interview was to give a walkthrough of my solution to short "homework" problem. Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz and they had no 2.4ghz access points. Ended up having to use a cellular wifi hotspot they had lying around to get anything to work.
> Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz Wow, that’s surprising…most laptops from like 2010 onwards have done 5 GHz. Did yours have a particularly old Wi-Fi card in it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a word for such long-lived computers that aren't hobbies? "Retrocomputing" is people goofing around. A person who drives a 1995 Honda is probably not a "retromobility enthusiast". Maybe at some point in our future it won't seem weird to use a 25-year-old computer.
Do we need a word for it? I've got a 1996 Toyota van and a 2ish year old Dell XPS, both serve my needs well enough. Some new tools are appreciably better than older ones, others aren't; I generally prefer to not spend extra money/time for things in the second category. The 25-year-old car still takes a driver's time and some fuel, and moves stuff around just like a brand new one would. There's no hope of using a 1995…
A top of the line 2008 desktop (especially if it had been occasionally upgraded but even if it hadn't) will still be faster than a low end laptop as described above (the kind you can buy for €200-300 at Lidl) & perfectly good for front end web dev (what I happen to be doing for a living currently).
It would upgradable be something like 3ghz core 2 quad, 8gb ram and reasonably fast (non-m2) SSD. I've certainly done web dev on less than that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wasn’t the initial PowerPC architecture and designs done by Apple, IBM and Motorola, with Motorola and IBM also working the fabs for processors used by Apple during that time (before the switch to Intel)? When did Apple stop being involved in the design of specific processors used in its systems?
George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to a job interview a year and a half ago where part of the interview was to give a walkthrough of my solution to short "homework" problem. Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz and they had no 2.4ghz access points. Ended up having to use a cellular wifi hotspot they had lying around to get anything to work.
> Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz Wow, that’s surprising…most laptops from like 2010 onwards have done 5 GHz. Did yours have a particularly old Wi-Fi card in it?
Actually it was only with 802.11ac (AKA WIFI5) that laptops started universally supporting 5GHz on the high and low end.
Before that you had to check the spec sheet.
In fact, it's still common for IoT devices to forgoe 5GHz, but it's becoming less common, thankfully.
George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.
Wordstar was genuinely good. It is a strange accident of history that WordPerfect and lotus and Microsoft supplanted it so easily.
When I was first messing around with Linux, I was (pleasantly) surprised when a WordStar clone popped-up instead of vi. Googling says it was called joe editor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to a job interview a year and a half ago where part of the interview was to give a walkthrough of my solution to short "homework" problem. Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz and they had no 2.4ghz access points. Ended up having to use a cellular wifi hotspot they had lying around to get anything to work.
> Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz Wow, that’s surprising…most laptops from like 2010 onwards have done 5 GHz. Did yours have a particularly old Wi-Fi card in it?
> In fact, for reasons I’m yet to discern, my iBook’s internal AirPort Wi-Fi card can’t connect to modern Wi-Fi networks—they simply confound it. WPA2 was standardized a year after his laptop was built. The ancient 802.11b card in it wants to do WEP. Getting driver support for a modern USB WiFi on that prehistoric version of OSX is no picnic either. It's a good thing he doesn't want to get it working.
I went to a job interview a year and a half ago where part of the interview was to give a walkthrough of my solution to short "homework" problem. Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz and they had no 2.4ghz access points. Ended up having to use a cellular wifi hotspot they had lying around to get anything to work.