Not that I'm in any hurry to try this, but it occurred to me that I could improve my old uni laptop by replacing the internal hard drive. It currently has a 1.2Gb drive which is inadequate even for the XP install on that (though part of that might also be the university programs installed on it as well). It seems that you can get far larger internal drives for old DELL laptops, but the limiting factor is that fact that it's a 32bit PC.
After a bit of a search on whether this was a Windows thing only, I found this link - https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1124191 - that suggested it was a BIOS issue, and that without a BIOS upgrade it couldn't access partitions larger than 128Gb. But, supposing I got a cheap drive (like the one at https://www.pccasegear.com/products/22914?gclid=CjwKEAjwl4q-BRDtzJmSk-uGunkSJACmCOY-26ZUOuJs2RLmMBFLG96gXovL3ZSvf5jOqZDYafysPRoCoDjw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds), there'd be more than space for lots of partitions under lnux. And maybe more RAM it it might be a very useful laptop.
And what would I be using it for? Maybe: stop motion videos; timed snapshots; an extra terminal for SL / OS and situations where taking a laptop to a place would be way better than taking a phone or a cheap tablet (like a presentation, or recording). But it seems to me that there's a limit to what I should spend on any potential upgrades to the laptop, and that's what it would cost to get a more recent cheap laptop. For example, the one linked to here. Still, I feel it's a waste to just let the uni laptop rot away. Ideas anyone?
http://www.dcomponline.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=285_286_325&products_id=2012
any way to make it a chrome book?
ReplyDeleteram, Ram, RAM, in that order. 4GB is too small, try to find a way to get more soon. This looks okay to me, though. HD graphics will run Opensim and SL with reduced settings, its at the bottom of the benchmark pile, as most laptops are, but it is a GPU
ReplyDeleteAh but Fred, that's the "comparison" laptop. That's the laptop I could buy with about $300, so that's the benchmark for what a budget will get me.
ReplyDeleteI found that with a couples if "ifs" (tpe of ram and type of drive) I might be able to upgrade the uni laptop for (maybe) just under $100!