Thoughts and Opinions - Give me a laptop

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Give me a laptop

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Forum Name: Thoughts and Opinions
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Topic: Give me a laptop

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Subject: Give me a laptop
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 4:23pm

Give me a laptop, a craptop, the oldest, cheapest laptop you have. You know you want to...
I want to put Damn small linux on it and use it for writing. Barring that, reccomend a super-cheap laptop.

Replies:

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 4:30pm

I have 4....but no

Posted By: Rambino
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 4:31pm

Ebay is your friend. Thousands of off-lease laptops all the time.

It won't be free, but you can get pretty close.

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[IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/aag8s8.jpg">

Posted By: Monk
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 4:39pm

I have a couple gateway 2000s. That battery is shot in both of them, and I had planned to up them alittle.

I think they might be in my storage shed. They can barely run on windows 95.

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 4:44pm

3 of mine are running os x, one is running os 9, barely

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 5:20pm

Monk wrote:

I have a couple gateway 2000s. That battery is shot in both of them, and I had planned to up them alittle.I think they might be in my storage shed. They can barely run on windows 95.

I wonder if one can still find batteries for those?
Anyway, I wasn't really exepcting anyone to donate one. More looking for advice for a cheap one that'll take a little abuse.

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 5:37pm

craigslist. You'll learn to love it

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 5:43pm

Meh, my town is too small for craigslist.

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 5:44pm

Find the next largest and see what you can find and arrange a mail thing.

Posted By: Cedric
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:17pm

I was going to offer you my brand new macbook, but I see you want a crappy laptop. Sorry I can't help.

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Posted By: Benjichang
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:18pm

I have an old Dell Latitude P2 with a busted screen. I might use it for parts though.

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irc.esper.net
#paintball

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:31pm

Cedric wrote:

I was going to offer you my brand new macbook, but I see you want a crappy laptop. Sorry I can't help.

Yeah, seriously, what were you thinking?

Posted By: Cedric
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:32pm

I'd say save up and go for a macbook. You'll you it so much.

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Posted By: Monk
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:35pm

BARREL BREAK wrote:

Monk wrote:

I have a couple gateway 2000s. That battery is shot in both of them, and I had planned to up them alittle.I think they might be in my storage shed. They can barely run on windows 95.

I wonder if one can still find batteries for those?
Anyway, I wasn't really exepcting anyone to donate one. More looking for advice for a cheap one that'll take a little abuse.

Ya can, but they cost an arm and a leg. They are now really crappy Desktops lol.

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:35pm

Cedric wrote:

I'd say save up and go for a macbook. You'll you it so much.

I'll you it? You mean use it?

Anyway, that is so not worth it for me. What would I want to do with a powerful laptop? Game. What can't you do on a mac (without bootcamp)? Game.

All I want to do is type.

Although they ARE uber-sexy machines. (the black ones)

Posted By: High Voltage
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:38pm

i have a 12 year old thinkpad. want that? it still has windows 3.1 on it(original install). not sure about ram, it has a 500mb hard drive. oh, and a floppy drive. the battery needs to be replaced.

http://img332.imageshack.us/img332/1218/pict4017wx2.jpg - pic

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Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:40pm

High Voltage wrote:

i have a 12 year old thinkpad. want that? it still has windows 3.1 on it(original install). not sure about ram, it has a 500mb hard drive. oh, and a floppy drive. the battery needs to be replaced. http://img332.imageshack.us/img332/1218/pict4017wx2.jpg - pic

Do you know the type of battery it would take?
Even if the battery doesn't work, I'd love to take it off your hands.

Posted By: High Voltage
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:44pm

i can find the battery online possibly. let me look around, it may be about $100 for a replacement.

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Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 6:50pm

High Voltage wrote:

i can find the battery online possibly. let me look around, it may be about $100 for a replacement.

Even if you can't find the battery, I could probably use it just plugged in various places.

Posted By: mbro
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 9:51pm

BARREL BREAK wrote:

High Voltage wrote:

i can find the battery online possibly. let me look around, it may be about $100 for a replacement.

Even if you can't find the battery, I could probably use it just plugged in various places.

Isn't linux great, you can make a crappy old machine useful again with modern convienences. Just throw damn small on there, apt-get abiword and bamb, homework machine

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 9:53pm

mbro wrote:

BARREL BREAK wrote:

High Voltage wrote:

i can find the battery online possibly. let me look around, it may be about $100 for a replacement.

Even if you can't find the battery, I could probably use it just plugged in various places.

Isn't linux great, you can make a crappy old machine useful again with modern convienences. Just throw damn small on there, apt-get abiword and bamb, homework machine

That actually might not be so simple. If you read HV's description, this particular machine don't have no CD drive, and I'm betting no NIC either.
How would you even get linux on it?

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 10:02pm

mbro, I should put linux on my old powerbook. Take anything important off and leet it out.

Posted By: DBibeau855
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 10:05pm

Hm.. I would keep the macintosh on there, but thats just me.

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http://www.last.fm/user/DBibeau855/?chartstyle=myspacecolors">

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 10:06pm

It's os 9. I hate os 9,and its slow

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 10:18pm

choopie911 wrote:

It's os 9. I hate os 9,and its slow

I don't know if any decent distro works on PPC chips...

Posted By: WGP guy2
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 11:48pm

I have one I could possibly give you. It has windows 95 on it now, it was made in like 95. I have no idea who made it, it has 2 batteries both which don't work at all. It only has a floppy drive, a serial port, and a phone jack. It is so old it has one of the ball mouses built into it beside the screen with the left and right buttons behind the screen.

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 24 July 2006 at 11:55pm

WGP guy2 wrote:

I have one I could possibly give you. It has windows 95 on it now, it was made in like 95. I have no idea who made it, it has 2 batteries both which don't work at all. It only has a floppy drive, a serial port, and a phone jack. It is so old it has one of the ball mouses built into it beside the screen with the left and right buttons behind the screen.

pics...that thing sounds confusing

Posted By: WGP guy2
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 12:08am

choopie911 wrote:

pics...that thing sounds confusing

I will tommorow. I'm not at home now.

Posted By: mbro
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 12:40am

BARREL BREAK wrote:

mbro wrote:

BARREL BREAK wrote:

High Voltage wrote:

i can find the battery online possibly. let me look around, it may be about $100 for a replacement.

Even if you can't find the battery, I could probably use it just plugged in various places.

Isn't linux great, you can make a crappy old machine useful again with modern convienences. Just throw damn small on there, apt-get abiword and bamb, homework machine

That actually might not be so simple. If you read HV's description, this particular machine don't have no CD drive, and I'm betting no NIC either.
How would you even get linux on it?

Well first of all, I'm going to assume that it has a floppy drive and that it has a nic, if it doesn't have a nic (which I doubt, but it is possible (my comp from 93 did have a nic) you can still get a pcmia nic card) All you have to do is make a boot floppy which will boot a small generic kernel onto it and will then allow you to install a distro on it. The damn small forums (i'm going to guess on linuxquestions) would be more help, or the debian forums. Think of it as a learning experience. A challenge. A time to grow.

choopie911 wrote:

mbro, I should put linux on my old powerbook. Take anything important off and leet it out.

Eh, why not. If you've got the extra laptop and you don't use it much why wouldn't you have fun with it? I don't know the specs on it but you might want to go with powerbook xubuntu if your specs aren't that great. Otherwise plain old ubuntu would be great. It'll give you the chance to experience a new OS with new apps. You'll finally be able to see the greatness that is amaroK (music playing program, a linux killer app) and use true customizability for the first time in your life. However you don't have to just install ubuntu because that's what everyone else is doing. There are plenty of other linux distros out there that are also very good. I just recommend ubuntu because out of the many distrobutions I've tried it has been the best experience for me.

BARREL BREAK wrote:

choopie911 wrote:

It's os 9. I hate os 9,and its slow

I don't know if any decent distro works on PPC chips...

There are plenty. Yellow Dog is the original distro for PPC chips but it's based on Slackware

. Ubuntu has a PPC version as well as most of the other mainstream distros. It used to be the case where it was hard to find but lately the PPC version of the kernel has been doing just fine.

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 1:00am

Hmmm, interesting...

mbro - you truely are a wealth of information, aren't you?

Posted By: mbro
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 1:44am

BARREL BREAK wrote:

mbro - you truely are a wealth of information, aren't you?

A small countries wealth, yes.

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Posted By: choopie911
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 12:40pm

Yeah, I think I'd rock ubuntu, I suggested it to a couple friends in university after hearing of your good experiences, and they loved it too.

Posted By: rdcisneros3
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 2:48pm

My workplace has some HP Omnibook 4150's we're donating. They don't have NICs but they do have PCMCIA slots. I think they're 450MHz/128MB. Let me know if you're interested.

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Donny Cisneros

Posted By: BARREL BREAK
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 3:37pm

rdcisneros3 wrote:

My workplace has some HP Omnibook 4150's we're donating. They don't have NICs but they do have PCMCIA slots. I think they're 450MHz/128MB. Let me know if you're interested.

You've got PM.

Also, mbro, I just intalles ubuntu on my desktop (on a spare ten gigger). Care to reccomend any stuff to install?

Posted By: High Voltage
Date Posted: 25 July 2006 at 3:42pm

mbro nailed it, the laptop has a pcmcia nic card. it's an x-jack pop out thing.

well, kinda take that back, it's a fax modem card. but yeah, you can pic up a pcmcia nic card for cheap.

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