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Thread: Oldest laptop?

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    Oldest laptop?

    Having finished musing on NV's keynotes and remembering the grief i had to try get my other half's lappy fixed (it had the wonderful self cooking gpu of doom in it. Ta NV) I'm sat here with an odd thought.

    How old is the oldest laptop you have and does it still work?

    Right now I'm typing away on an old IBM T20 from 2000. Its got XP and 256mb and a 40gb drive. The original 12gb hosts my Ubuntu install. I swap em as required.

    For most of my forum crusing and email its perfect. It suffers on Youtube and MKV films kill it. (might be able to fix with 512mb of ram instead of the 256mb)

    So... Given this one is 9yrs old and still ticking. How many of you have similar stories about newer generation laptops, or are we generation disposible now? 2yrs and its in the bin?

    This post brought to u by latenight musings and a memory of all the pc's i saw at the dump recently when i was taking the recycling down. Some almost new ones in the skip... and no they wouldnt let me take em home, nor would her indoors either... She's only just got me to get rid of the others

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    i have an OLLLLLLLLD Dell in the cupboard, win 98 installed with coa sticker :-P
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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    ah but do you use it still?

    and o/ from Eve. My main is SamuraiJack (long story)

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    no

    my oldest i use is a 700mhz celeron toshiba satellite pro
    192mb ram baby!

    it HATES running xp lol
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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    Still got my old ibm 240. Kept, simply becasue it has a serial port!

    Think it's 1999 vintage, 300mhz celeron, 320mb ram and a 60 gig disk. It'll probably outlive me!

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    I have a working dell something or other in my cupboard.
    it's a 486 with windows 3.11 I think, although the battery is dead.
    also got an HP armarda 700m (I think) which has a p3 700ghz in it and also has a dead battery
    I used to use that HP until I got an eeepc 901 which I'm using right now to type this on

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    I just took a Research Machines 386 laptop to the tip. Probably would have booted it I tried it though (Redhat 3.3 I think was on it)

    Budget machines these days have way more RAM than that thing had hard drive space

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    oh dear god the horror... a 486 dell with win3.11. I remember having to help set one up for a friend who had zero clue. /me shudders.

    Battery's dying seems to be fairly common. They just wont hold charge anymore. I get about 5mins max out of this and then it craters. The other halfs Acer battery is going bad too i believe. Problem is that she uses it plugged in and rarely uses it off the charger.

    Oh well roll on Ultracapacitors. http://arstechnica.com/science/news/...acitor-car.ars

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
    I just took a Research Machines 386 laptop to the tip. Probably would have booted it I tried it though (Redhat 3.3 I think was on it)

    Budget machines these days have way more RAM than that thing had hard drive space
    RM? Spit hiss.

    Dear god people you are worse hoarders than I am! Her indoors made me junk everything below a p3. (Its semi dissasembled at present with the view to make it into a MythTV box.)

    I got strange looks dropping off about a car load of computing gear. Mostly P1's. Oh well.

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    sadly my oldest laptop (Latty C600, so ~ 2000?) died recently - the power connector is soldered onto a litte tab that projects off the main mobo - I tipped the laptop back while it was plugged in and *crack*. No more plugging into the mains, so no more charging the rapidly dying battery Otherwise it was running a dream and I'd still be using it.

    There's an aging Lattitude XP in the store cupboard here at work - still runs and boots Win.. um, 95, I think. Remarkable old thing.

    The best bit of old tech we have, though, is an OHP projector converter. Yes, that's right - a translucent LCD display that you put on top of an old-style OHP to turn it into a PC projector. It must be a collector's item nowadays - wonder what we could get for it at auction...

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    My first one I ever bought was some advent thing from 1999 when I went to uni, bit banged up but still going strong P4 2.4Ghz and a gig of memory and around 30GB HD.

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    I found our old Toshiba laptop a few months ago. I don't know much about it other than a small green screen, and a 262MB hard drive. I would guess it was pre-Windows 95. When I turned it on, it came up with a message along the lines of the CMOS battery being dead, and the hard drive sounded like a chainsaw.

    I think it would make a funny mod to put a modern netbook in the case.

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    @Jim. Yep know that one. Far too easy to do as well Take it appart and solder job time?
    And Wow at the ohp toy. I'm sure a few computer museams would love that to display.

    @grey A P4 laptop still ticking? They were horrible for cooking themselfs. Nasty burns off them as well :/

    @Kid \o/ I remember having to install W3.11 on one of them. 11 disks... and then having to try and get the networking going on it. I think i'd rather slash my wrists than try that again...

    you could put something like damnsmall linux on it and use it as a netbook?

    I think someone has beaten you to that mod thou. Sure i saw something on HardOCP about someone who put his lappy into a old case so it wouldnt be stolen. Impressive work.

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    Quote Originally Posted by mercyground View Post
    @Jim. Yep know that one. Far too easy to do as well Take it appart and solder job time?
    And Wow at the ohp toy. I'm sure a few computer museams would love that to display.

    @grey A P4 laptop still ticking? They were horrible for cooking themselfs. Nasty burns off them as well :/

    @Kid \o/ I remember having to install W3.11 on one of them. 11 disks... and then having to try and get the networking going on it. I think i'd rather slash my wrists than try that again...

    you could put something like damnsmall linux on it and use it as a netbook?

    I think someone has beaten you to that mod thou. Sure i saw something on HardOCP about someone who put his lappy into a old case so it wouldnt be stolen. Impressive work.
    Not a single problem with it, the fans go mental now but 9 - 10 years of use, and now my brother has it for his own little net machine, the battery is almost dead so its constantly plugged in. Other than that it works just as well as it did when I bought it. It's a poor spec by todays standards and the prices of laptops back then. Man it cost me just shy of a grand in 1999. My old P4 gaming rig which I donated to a friend must be pushing 6 years old now and runs as good as the day I built it

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    I have an old 386sx Toshiba luggable stashed somewhere, must be 20 years old or more. Monochrome orange plasma screen, DOS 3.x and Windows 3.1. Heavier and uses more power than a modern PC hundreds of times the speed. Still booted up a few years ago, no battery to die!

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    Re: Oldest laptop?

    I have an Inspiron 8200 in daily use, which must be about 7 years old or so - P4 2GHz I think, and yes, a little warm. Still going relatively strong though. I had to swap it's graphics card a few years ago after the Radeon 9000M (I think) died, almost certainly through being roasted. Changed the HDD when the inevitable 40GB filled up, and I've shoved a USB2 PCMCIA card in it which has a USB freeview thing plugged in and recording TV for me.

    Battery is pretty poor now, and I don't even have it in the box now (nor the floppy drive) on the basis it might run a bit cooler! (and since it's almost always plugged in), and the rear fans get grouchy every few weeks and make a horrendous noise which then stops shortly after I threaten it with the screwdriver again.

    Its going to be retired from regular duties soon though - I'm considering my first ever build, for an HTPC box.

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