Comments on: New old laptop http://yaxu.org/new-old-laptop/ Making music with text Thu, 04 Apr 2013 04:14:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: BigBen http://yaxu.org/new-old-laptop/comment-page-1/#comment-123484 BigBen Sat, 05 May 2012 11:10:29 +0000 http://yaxu.org/?p=790#comment-123484 …belatedly….
Great idea and a grand post, Alex. Well-chosen components.
Agree with you regarding the dumb ‘widescreen’ trend. It’s not so dumb for the makers, because the measurement (eg 15″) is on the diagonal, and the wider they go the smaller the area of screen – ultimately you get a 15″ wide screen that is 1 pixel high.
We have an early Acer Aspire One that was treated to a fat battery (14 hours), upgraded WiFi (BIG difference) and an enlarged SSD as well as a more appropriate flavour of Linux.
It was purchased used for £85 with Ubuntu Netbook, which is pretty good c/w Windows. but Bodhi Linux uses significantly less RAM and runs noticeably faster.

Our fave for rebuilds has been the Itronix GoBook 250, a rugged laptop which used to be available for around £30 – with a P3 CPU and 128/256MB RAM it badly needs a light weight OS, and Bodhi has worked best of the large selection we’ve tried.
The 10-year-old GoBook has proven to be 4-year-old-boy-proof with its water resistant keyboard and casing – which is solid aluminium and built to last. The batteries are (at long last) dying off, and it’s pretty hard to crack them open and rebuild them.

All the best, Ben

]]> By: Alex http://yaxu.org/new-old-laptop/comment-page-1/#comment-78272 Alex Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:54:57 +0000 http://yaxu.org/?p=790#comment-78272 Heh, good work on the repairs Tim. You must have a much bigger dropbox limit than me! I’m not a big space user but I believe you can get much bigger SSD drives than 96GB.

]]> By: dumbledad http://yaxu.org/new-old-laptop/comment-page-1/#comment-78269 dumbledad Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:47:00 +0000 http://yaxu.org/?p=790#comment-78269 Great post – I’m still loving my X61, though I have found the need to replace the plastic hard-drive cover with wide electricians tape. I like the SSD drive idea, though getting one comfortably larger than the Dropbox limit would prevent worry for me.

]]> By: Alex http://yaxu.org/new-old-laptop/comment-page-1/#comment-73573 Alex Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:26:00 +0000 http://yaxu.org/?p=790#comment-73573 Well this t60 is replacing my thinkpad t410 which cost a lot about three years ago when I bought it. Even though it’s two years older it’s just as fast AFAICT, and I prefer it.

But more importantly, fuck apple! :)

]]> By: Davide Della Casa http://yaxu.org/new-old-laptop/comment-page-1/#comment-73571 Davide Della Casa Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:20:07 +0000 http://yaxu.org/?p=790#comment-73571 Oh my, this blog entry comes at a difficult time of my life when I’m about to upgrade my 3.5 years old macbook. It’s seriously making me think. That product line costs a lot of money. Avoiding the debate of whether it’s worth it or not, it’s objectively a lot of money.

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