Sorting Old Computers

[kebabaluba]

I bought one of those el cheapo $100 laptops with the garbage Atom like Celeron, 4GB ram (soldered non-upgradeable), and 64Gb of eMMC, Windows 11 is total dogs**t on it, Debian or Ubuntu (and likely whatever distro of your choosing) with the Mate desktop works great, although 4GB of RAM isn't the most compatible with my habit of opening like 50 tabs.

4GB ram is exactly what my laptop has, barely enough to run Win 8.1 but with Linux it loves it. Any cheap pc/laptops from now on, i gonna install Linux. In recent days i switched from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 LTSC on my main gaming rig, less bloat and more performance, love it.

 

[Lubener]

Still a solid PC for web use.

 

[blufeb95]

Still a solid PC for web use.

I don't know it may struggle playing HD YouTube, the CPU was pretty weak when it was new, and the GPU won't have the hardware acceleration for newer video codecs like VP9 that YouTube has migrated to.

 

[andrew_j]

I was in phase of doing similar but ended up with 10 laptops I never used. I think i enjoyed trying other OS. Finally I just loaded VirtualBox on my Mac and tried different OS including Win 3.1 , Linux and OS/2 warp.

 

[blufeb95]

I was in phase of doing similar but ended up with 10 laptops I never used. I think i enjoyed trying other OS. Finally I just loaded virtual box on my Mac and tried them all.

Also there's PCem for running super old OSs that only play well with hardware up to a certain point you can emulate on a modern computer everything from a 8088 upto about a faster Pentium Class machine.

 

[Zee09]

Dug this one up from 2016- it sat for 5 years unplugged,
Fired right up.. I updated everything and tried to dump Panada Dome AV and it refused so I use
IObit uninstaller and it sent it packing...lol
For a home or business computer this one is silent and has a platinum power supply.

​ ​ HP EliteDesk 705 G2 MT​ Product number: L1M88AV​ ​ •No Included Keyboard •ENERGY STAR Certified •No Included Mouse •HP EliteDesk 705 G2 MT Platinum Chassis •HP DisplayPort Cable •Single Unit Packaging •8GB DDR3-1600 DIMM (2x4GB) RAM •SD 3 Media Card Reader •3/3/3 TWR Warranty •AMD A8-8650B 3.2G 4M 65W APU •Slim SuperMulti Optical Disc Drive •HP EliteDesk 705 Country Kit •HP 128GB Turbo Drive G2 Solid-State Drive (SSD) - PCIe Card •Windows 10 Home 64​

 

[Zee09]

Success the above computer with the generic new floppy drive from Amazon has opened the floppies.
I do have a Sony on order as suggested by @blufeb95