Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 14th Mar 2008 21:52 UTC
"When my girlfriend visits me, she has to work on a mini PC while I use my laptop to finish whatever I postponed at the office. Her PC has a 1GHz VIA processor and 128 MB of RAM and runs Ubuntu. You can imagine how slowly it boots, even with Linux installed, and GNOME runs so slowly that it's quite irritating. I didn't want to reformat and install a lightweight Linux distribution like Fluxbuntu because the mini PC doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, and I already had 10GB of data that would have taken a long time to back up. Instead, I found and installed some lightweight software to improve her computing experience."
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RE[4]: PCs are cheap now days
by Doc Pain on Sat 15th Mar 2008 01:29
in reply to "RE[3]: PCs are cheap now days"
Member since:2006-10-08
Guess it depends on how valuable your time is, really.
Learning time is always time well spent. :-)
[...] neither would I spend several hours trying to get (for example) a sound card to work when I can drive down to Fry's and get one that works out of the box for $30.
That's correct, of course, I wouldn't do so, too. But remember: When you're interested in "reviving" older hardware, computer stores usually don't carry the parts you need. For example, my sound card is a cheap CMI thing for less than 10 Euro, works better than the built-in VIA AC'97 soundcrap. Money well invested. The good thing about PCI is: It's present from P1 class processors up to modern systems (which usually include built-in sound stuff). So instead of trying to figure out how to activate a strange nonstandard loadmyfirmwarefirst crap sound card, I'd buy a new one. If it's too complicated to get the sound card running, it's crap anyway. Nearly all good sound cards - even the old ones - are standard compliant or relatively easy to set up.
Just for the record, my main PC is about 5 years old.. a P4 2.8ghz, so you gotta know that I don't run out and buy the latest, bleeding edge stuff.
Similar here, P4 2.0 GHz, still with SDR-SDRAM (taken from the previous system) because I'm to mean to buy DDR-SDRAM. :-) I'll better change the complete system when (a) this one stops working or (b) this one does not fit my (futire) needs anymore. But actually, I don't see any reason to invest in IT infrastructure. Never change a running system that serves you perfectly. :-)
Another thing regarding buying things: Better buy something that's good for a long time than something that is considered "best" for a moment, revealing that it's crap after a few months. (Furthermore: The worst solution prevails.)
But a 1ghz PC w/128MB of RAM? I'd probably draw the line at around 1.4ghz 
I'm just not gonna cripple my productivity just because my PC doesn't have the horsepower to run the apps I want to.
I'm just not gonna cripple my productivity just because my PC doesn't have the horsepower to run the apps I want to. Running specific applications is a point for a good decision, I agree. You're using your system for productive reasons as it seems. What do most home users do? Listen to music, playing videos from the web, treat their PC like a typewriter. That's what they can do with a 300 MHz PC, too - granted that the respective software is installed. For example, LaTeX doesn't need tons of RAM, but produces better looking documents than (insert your favourite hate word processor here). :-)
I guess if you can't afford it, then you can't afford it. But if you can afford it and you have a PC that's slower than snot on a doorknob and/or eating up more of your time than it should, you'd probably be doing yourself a favor by picking up a new one and give the old one to someone who needs it.
Yes, I agree with that. It's just up to your individual feelings how much time you are willing to invest. Or, on the other hand, give up, that's possible, too. I would not invest time to get an older system running when I've not got a valid (!) reason to do so (e. g. no money, sufficient power for the particular job).
RE[5]: PCs are cheap now days
by helf on Sun 16th Mar 2008 01:08
in reply to "RE[4]: PCs are cheap now days"
Member since:2005-07-06
RE[4]: PCs are cheap now days
by elsewhere on Sat 15th Mar 2008 06:04
in reply to "RE[3]: PCs are cheap now days"
Member since:2005-07-13
But a 1ghz PC w/128MB of RAM? I'd probably draw the line at around 1.4ghz I'm just not gonna cripple my productivity just because my PC doesn't have the horsepower to run the apps I want to.
I'm just not gonna cripple my productivity just because my PC doesn't have the horsepower to run the apps I want to. It's not the speed, it's the memory; throw an extra 128MB in there and it opens a world of possibilities.
I've got an old Dell tower with a PIII750/256MB, I've thrown a couple of extra drives in an use it mostly as a backup server on my home network. Cost me an arm and freaking leg when I bought it something like 8 years ago, and I guess I refuse to stop using it just because of that expenditure. But it has KDE and runs most standard apps just fine. Konq, Opera, OOo2, etc. I avoid firefox because, well, I don't have 128GB of memory, but beyond that it works well enough that I would categorize it as usable. Sure, it takes longer to boot, and apps take a little longer to start up, but once running, there's little *perceivable* difference with my snappy dual-core lappy. I wouldn't want to use it as my day-to-day, but I wouldn't feel too guilty giving it to someone else for their day-to-day, depending on their needs.
I do think there's too much of an emphasis on "must-upgrade". I think things have gotten out of hand. Hell, I've got an old Compaq corp PC from our company with a PII450/256MB and XP Pro. For web browsing or even using MS Office, it's adequate and would work surprisingly well for many people (our company gave them away to the employees when we did a forklift upgrade many years back, and I know people that still use them as the "family" PC). A stick of RAM or a faster HDD will often work wonders for a PC, much more cost-effectively than replacement.
RE[5]: PCs are cheap now days
by helf on Sat 15th Mar 2008 22:14
in reply to "RE[4]: PCs are cheap now days"
Member since:2005-07-06
heh...
/me hides his NeXT from view that he uses daily...
33mhz Motorola 040 with 128MiB 60NS EDO RAM (slow), 1GiB internal SCSI-2 HDD, 2GiB SCSI-2 external hdd and external CD-Rom... 
Hell, it'll do word processing, web surfing, ssh, IM, music in various formats, games (doom, nethack etc etc)... Who needs your fancy multighz CPUs and your fancy peripheral buses that are clocked faster than my CPU...
p.s.
Heres a screenshot of my glorious desktop
http://helf.freeshell.org/screengrab-02-15-2008.jpg
yes, be jealous. I know you are.
Edited 2008-03-15 22:19 UTC
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Member since:
2005-11-13
Guess it depends on how valuable your time is, really. Though I for one don't believe in the concept of keeping up with the Jonses, neither would I spend several hours trying to get (for example) a sound card to work when I can drive down to Fry's and get one that works out of the box for $30.
I'm just not gonna cripple my productivity just because my PC doesn't have the horsepower to run the apps I want to.
Just for the record, my main PC is about 5 years old.. a P4 2.8ghz, so you gotta know that I don't run out and buy the latest, bleeding edge stuff. But a 1ghz PC w/128MB of RAM? I'd probably draw the line at around 1.4ghz
I guess if you can't afford it, then you can't afford it. But if you can afford it and you have a PC that's slower than snot on a doorknob and/or eating up more of your time than it should, you'd probably be doing yourself a favor by picking up a new one and give the old one to someone who needs it.