Revived a old iMac, mate; now minty fresh

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Visited my parents last week in Western VA; they are iPad users now and asked that I remove their old iMac 8,1; (core 2 duo and 1Gb RAM) Not much of an OSX fan, and this version was substantially out of date. This is a 2008-9 vintage. It still had the AOL fat client on it. lol!

Brought it back to CT, refreshed it with $55 of memory bringing it to 4Gb; loaded up Linux Mint 18.1 MATE and now have a snappy machine with working sound, camera, wireless and bluetooth; it is completely usuable machine.

Not going to recommend dumpster diving @ the recycling center, but if there are freebies on CL, certainly worth a look. 4Gb of memory in 2008-9 isn't anything most people would have purchased, so just refreshing it can certainly extend the life of the machine for 5 years or so.

-T
 
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Sounds pretty good to me. Great bang for the buck.

After W7, I will be going to a Linux platform myself. I was that impressed with my free copy of W10...
 
I just spent all morning reloading 18.1 on my machine, it wouldn't boot! I kept getting some busybox initramfs prompt. Luckily a live CD let me unlock my encrypted drive and retrieve files...what a headache!
 
I have a hackintosh with a Q9550 QUAD CORE, 8GB, SSD, I use for software dev. Runs FINE. Yeah, I'm cheap. It cost nothing. Has 3 screens with a GT720. I am waiting for a good price on a 2k screen. It can handle 2 of them.
 
simple_gifts, I appreciate what you accomplished, but I thought the whole point of buying Apple hardware is to legally use cool Apple software.
wink.gif
 
I remember my first computer had 256mb of ram. My next was 1gb of ddr2 667 thinking, "Man I'm rollin". Times have changed.

Glad you revived an old friend. People dispose stuff too easily these days.
 
Originally Posted By: BearZDefect
simple_gifts, I appreciate what you accomplished, but I thought the whole point of buying Apple hardware is to legally use cool Apple software.
wink.gif



At the risk producing an extended rant, I will briefly summarize.

With this model iMac apple decided to use a display that was only capable of display 18bit color; the graphics card is full color, but they cheapened out on the integrated display claiming "Hey it is the low end model, what do you expect? (paraphrase)"

I expect in 2008 a 32-bit capable display, especially on a $1100 computer, as I expect radial tires, not bias ply, on even the cheapest new car.

Since this was purchased for my parents, not me, it was sufficient and based on the 500 mile difference i was glad to buy an apple and not have to deal with the constant calls about nonsense windows issues. That being said, I don't drink the Kool aid regarding apple products but will purchase then when an appropriate scenario arises. This model is not capable of running the current version of macos and LinuxMint Mate loaded and runs nicely; I see no reason to reward Apple for their most recent betrayal.

-T (all in fun, or most of it)

edit: I recommended the 'yununs' research the origin of 'drink the kool aide' Many use it but are not aware of the horrific origins.
 
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Yeah Linux makes a nice desktop OS. Some distros anyway. I'm playing with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS right now in virtual box. I'm gonna give mint a spin too.
 
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Originally Posted By: ndfergy
I remember my first computer had 256mb of ram. My next was 1gb of ddr2 667 thinking, "Man I'm rollin". Times have changed.

Glad you revived an old friend. People dispose stuff too easily these days.


My first had 4kb of ram...

I am given free laptops all the time from friends who have no use for them. Two of the four computers I own are freebies. I increase the ram and add a SSD, then a fresh version of Linux Mint in most cases. They will usually SCREAM from that point on.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth

18-bit
Almost all of the least expensive LCDs (such as typical twisted nematic types) provide 18-bit color (64 × 64 × 64 = 262,144 combinations) to achieve faster color transition times, and use either dithering or frame rate control to approximate 24-bit-per-pixel true color,[12] or throw away 6 bits of color information entirely. More expensive LCDs (typically IPS) can display 24-bit or greater color depth.

Some of the newer LCD are 10bits per color.
 
Core 2 Duo computers are 64 bit, and, having 2 cores, usually run modern software quite well. The limitations are usually the video. If it had a great video for the time, Windows and OSX are unlikely to support it. If it had awful video for the time, it still has awful video. Upgrading depends on whether there are free slots. DDR2 RAM is finally cheap, if you don't mind buying used, and aren't looking for Unicorn 16GB DIMMs or something.

One downside, they use a lot of power, so for laptops cheap I prefer to get a Core i5.
 
My old Macbook 6,1 is still trolling around. Pretty much does baby sitting duties to my son watching youtube videos. With its 2 gigs of RAM and 5400 rpm HD it's really slow now. Then again I am comparing it to my i7 7700k desktop..
 
Too bad YouTube uses super CPU intensive compression to choke machines that are not relatively new.
 
Originally Posted By: HangFire
Core 2 Duo computers are 64 bit, and, having 2 cores, usually run modern software quite well. The limitations are usually the video. If it had a great video for the time, Windows and OSX are unlikely to support it. If it had awful video for the time, it still has awful video. Upgrading depends on whether there are free slots. DDR2 RAM is finally cheap, if you don't mind buying used, and aren't looking for Unicorn 16GB DIMMs or something.

One downside, they use a lot of power, so for laptops cheap I prefer to get a Core i5.


Got a 10 year + old Dell with a Core 2. Added the max ram (4 gb) and a 120gb Sata III SSD to it and installed 64 bit Mint XFCE. Runs like a champ if you use it for what it is. Internet surfing and streaming Netflix/Hulu/Amazon works just fine. It was a free laptop, invested $60 and works perfect for my daughter. Expect it will work fine until she gets the next hand me down likely from my wife (i5 laptop with a good graphics card).
 
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