Opinion Question...

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Opinion Question...

Jun. 22nd, 2008 at 9:33 AM

netcurmudgeon

You're a bunch of opinionated people, so I thought I'd ask. :-)

Poll #1208902 What to do for the girls?

Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All. Participants: 13

I have a pair of Dell Latitude CPx laptops that I'm rehabbing for my two school-age nieces. The machines are 750Mhz PIIIs with 512MB RAM and 'ok' hard drives. They currently have Windows 2000 Professional on them. Should I leave them as-is, or install XP?

View Answers

Stay with Win2k

3(23.1%)

Move up to XP

5(38.5%)

Don't be a cheap uncle -- scrap these junkers and buy them new 'low end' laptops

2(15.4%)

Ticky box!

2(15.4%)

Current Music:WWUH Ambience

Comments

( 9 comments — Leave a comment )

majikshop

Jun. 22nd, 2008 02:31 pm (UTC)

Because there weren't enough ticky boxes. . .

I voted for move to XP, but with the caveat that you bump the machines to 1GB of RAM. 512 is 'enough' to run XP (whereas 256 is 'painful', and 'only to be undertaken if you really hate the recipient'). With the slower (comparatively speaking) processors, the extra RAM would help a lot from feeling the pinch of the Microsoft-patented RAM-to-Disk Shuffle(TM).

The problem with buying >i>new</i> laptops, is that you have a limited Window to get consumer/low-end laptops with XP on them, and a low-end laptop with Vista is a Death Sentence. Worse yet - many of the laptops that were 'Designed for Vista' don't HAVE any XP drivers, so down-grading yourself isn't an option in many cases. :-/ Often-times your best route on a new laptop is to go to the 'Small Business Store' for Dell (or your manufacturer of choice) and order something there, and they're more willing to dispense XP-goodness to the recalcitrant Business Community.

Of course - if you're really going to get new machines, I saw fuckit and get 'em MacBooks (which I believe can be had for under $1000). But you know, I'd like a million dollars and a pony too. . .

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netcurmudgeon

Jun. 22nd, 2008 02:42 pm (UTC)

Re: Because there weren't enough ticky boxes. . .

I'd love to pop'em up to a gig of RAM, but the CPx-J maxes out at 512MB. So, I'm doing the next best thing ... I'm yanking their 4200 RPM IDE drives and dropping in new 80GB 5400RPM drives. Total spend will be $217 ... $110 for 2x256MB SODIMMs (one unit only has 256MB now) and $107 for 2x80GB HDD. The basest of base model Dells was $579. As I too am in the I want a million dollars and a pony club, there will be no new laptops forthcoming. That would be a mighty cool gift though.

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shesingsnow

Jun. 22nd, 2008 02:49 pm (UTC)

New MacBooks might be great graduation-from-high-school presents...

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also_huey

Jun. 22nd, 2008 05:12 pm (UTC)

I cheated and voted for both. XP will be a little doggy, W2kaypro probably wants a clean install anyway, and if you're going to install from bare metal, might as well do XP anyway, missing is option #3, these machines would run Ubuntu just fine, blah blah yackety smackety.

Looks like useful tips here if you're sticking with some flavor of M$, should probably try some of this stuff out myself.

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webwyrm

Jun. 23rd, 2008 02:26 am (UTC)

Wow, and here I was...

...thinking I was gonna be the lone "get a Mac" voice! Another thought would be Apple refurbs- either directly from Apple or through a nice company like Small Dog Electronics...

If they didn't have to be laptops, I can see if a local school system has any iMacs (gumdrop style) to re-home... I'm a little while out from re-homing any Ivy silicon & plastic...

Don't know the nieces, how geeky they are- Linux could be interesting...

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netcurmudgeon

Jun. 23rd, 2008 10:19 am (UTC)

Re: Wow, and here I was...

As I said below, Mom is a Windows girl, and their classrooms are Windows-centric, so a Mac or even Linux is probably not a good choice. They're both bright girls, but not techy ... so, again, it's 'path of least resistance'.

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