Memory, misc stuff

[quinterro]

I had a Compaq D530 sitting around and gave it to a coworker. She brought her old one in so I took what I wanted out of it and will recycle the rest.

512MB RAM (PC 133)

40GB hard disk

CD-ROM drive

It has a video card and an old USB card in it but I don't have a need for those.

Thanks to her generous contribution my Dual G4/450 now has 1.25GB of memory. Woohoo!

Also in the last few weeks, I picked up a Jetway VIA C7 1ghz ITX board from eBay and bought an ITX case to put it in. It works a lot better than their C3 chips ever did. I compare it to a 1ghz P3 or Celeron. It also came with a daughtercard for one PC Card slot and a CompactFlash card reader.

Last but not least is a copy of Office:mac 2004 for $3 from a local thrift store not too far from the office.

 

[Gorgonops]

Also in the last few weeks, I picked up a Jetway VIA C7 1ghz ITX board from eBay and bought an ITX case to put it in. It works a lot better than their C3 chips ever did. I compare it to a 1ghz P3 or Celeron.

I have a C7 based NetBook, the HP 2133. I personally think it's a tad generous to compare it to a similarly clocked P3 (I don't think the machine feels much if any faster than the old 650Mhz P3 Dell Latitude I had... ten years ago. Granted it may be because the Linux drivers for the chipset video are complete crud.), but... as long as you're not using it to watch video or play Flash it's a perfectly good CPU. ;^)

 

[quinterro]

Could be. Currently mine is running XP. I've tried CrunchBang Statler on it with an 8GB CF drive and it was OK. I tried to run Osmos on it and it was an exercise in patience. Mines played OK on it though. Under XP I have VB.NET and C#.NET 2010 Express installed. They work, but are understandably a little slow. If your are learning the language the speed isn't too important.

I did replace the CPU fan with a SilentX fan. It's much quieter now, but runs slightly hotter.

 

[Gorgonops]

I ended up giving up on Linux (I'd been running Xubuntu) and slapping XP on my 2133. I use it for learning to program my Propeller demo board (and a couple other Microcontroller demo boards I've picked up that have friendly Windows IDEs), and it does a fine job of that. I'll admit it was was disappointing just how much grief drivers for Linux ended up being on a machine that shipped *with Linux* on the built-in SSD.

(Among other things there were two different proprietary video drivers offered by VIA, both of which were ugly hacks of the Xorg tree, had contradictory sets of limitations, and neither of which was particularly reliable...)

Obviously I regret not waiting until the Atom-powered 2140 came out before buying. :^b

 

[4seasonphoto]

Obviously I regret not waiting until the Atom-powered 2140 came out before buying.

For life's little mistakes, there's eBay }

Yeah, the stock SuSE Linux install on the 2133 was an absolute joke (what, no wifi?) and they obviously didn't expect anyone to actually use it. I sold it early on and got enough money back to buy another new netbook. The Lenovo S10 was almost my ideal cheapie but for the small right shift key.

 

[quinterro]

I bought a IdeaPad S10 for my wife last summer. It's ok except for that damned keyboard (shift key, small keys, no dedicated F12, etc). It would be nice if the video drivers allowed for a virtual desktop like the original EEE PC I reloaded. 1024x576 is a bit small. She uses that primarily instead of her desktop (an Athlon64 3800+).