Which OS for new(er) home computer(s)?

[George]

I have several questions if anyone is willing to lend a hand to a crusty old luddite trying to figure out what's going on in with computers here in 2015.

We need at least one new home computer. It must be able to plug into our printer. I don't know the printer specs offhand but it's a HP laser printer and I know it works with PCs. I don't know if it works with Macs or Ubuntu. I have used all three types of computers and like them all, so I'm open-minded. Also needs to work with our scanner. I don't have that info handy either, but it's a Canon not more than two years old and works with PCs, at least.

Currently we're running WinXP on two PCs at home, but one has a hard drive that I believe is dying. It randomly restarts and makes all kinds of creaks and groans, and I know it's old, so I'm not surprised. I have backed up all files to a USB Flash drive, so I'm ready to say goodbye to this old box. The other is a WinXP laptop that is so bogged down with malware that it's virtually impossible to use. I need to figure out a way to get my wife's files off it, but I'm wondering if whatever pop-ups and browser hijackers and possibly viruses would transfer over to a USB Flash drive and then to other computers. If I could get the old files off, I'd reformat this one to Ubuntu (I have done this once before) and see if it will work a little longer. The laptop is old too, so if it doesn't work with Ubuntu, it's no major loss.

I read on another forum that Windows 7 is not going to be supported any longer. I've never tried Windows 8 but everything I've seen of it makes me recoil in terror. Too much change for this retrogrouch to handle, methinks.

I've always loved Macs. I was a serious Mac nerd 20 years ago and was the de facto system administrator for a small network of Mac IIci machines, Syquest drives, dial-up modems, etc. Believe it or not still have a working Power Performa from about 1999 running System 8. I don't know why I keep it around other than to say I have even older Mac stuff than Cam :cool:, but I must say it works better than the two old PCs we have, except no Wi-Fi capabilities. It has to be plugged directly into the router to get online. It's a low-res web surfing device, at best. Oh, and it's a CD player, too, and I can still play the famous old Risk game from the '80s and Hellcats Of The Pacific. All I'm missing is Leisure Suit Larry. :up: I haven't sat behind the wheel of a Mac newer than the '99 Performa, so I don't know if I still like Macs or not, but I assume I do.

We have two kids in elementary school. I'm sure their computing and printing needs are just beginning and that's why I'm trying to think about this as a household need rather than just what makes me happy.

I'd love a newer Mac for the basement, for web-surfing, emailing, perhaps the hub of our future home theatre (I am 100% clueless there!) and especially GARAGE BAND! I have GB on an iPad but the iPad is better suited as a musical instrument than a recording studio, whereas GB on a desktop Mac looks like much more of a recording studio with the mouse, keyboard, and large monitor that the iPad lacks. I think the kids might enjoy GB, too (I'm practicing my sales pitch for my wife). Plus the kids use Macs in school now and my six-year-old son says they are the best! Hee hee.

I'm also thinking a laptop or smaller desktop PC running Windows of some variety would be good to have for the printer and scanner and also file compatibility with PC apps, such as Open Office working with MS Office files. Is there Open Office for Macs? That's a good example of the 5,000 things I don't know about computers these days, but I'm thinking of a Mac in the basement and a Windows laptop to move around the house and plug into the printer when necessary to print something.

I read on another forum that MS is stopping support for Windows7 soon. Is that true? I use Win7 at work and like it just fine. I have it set to the Classic style in every way, so I can party like its 1995 all day long with my grey taskbar, solid teal desktop, and square windows with solid color bars at the top - I even take out the gradient pattern in the window tops to look extra-old-school, rather than all the strange see-through effects Win7 comes with. I haven't used Windows 8, but it looks like a version I'd be happy to skip, in the hopes that Windows will get back to something more traditional in an upcoming version. I just don't know if Windows is a good option for our family at this point due to the constantly changing versions and lack of support for the older versions, which I believe means we're going to get viruses and such from surfing with an old OS. Is that right or do I not understand what going on with Windows these days?

I have reformatted an old WindowsXP machine to run Ubuntu previously, and I know a good used PC store where I could get a Windows box that's not too old and decrepit to install Ubuntu on. Would it be reasonable to try to use a Ubuntu computer as a home computer for the family? I'm only worried about compatibility with things like wireless modems, printers, scanners, digital cameras, etc. The last time I "made" a Ubuntu box, it wouldn't recognize a wireless USB "stub", despite it saying Linux Compatible or something like that on the box. I plugged the "stub" into our WinXP desktop PC and it started working immediately, and I never got back around to using the machine with Ubuntu on it for that reason, but I remember thinking Ubuntu was really cool, and apparently fairly secure since hackers spend their time trying to mess with Windows machines instead.

Sorry for the long and rambling post, but that's how I roll. Any recommendations for upgrading our home computer setup would be much appreciated.

[thesameguy]

Windows 7 ended mainstream support last week, so that means you can't call Microsoft and get help for it, they won't be adding new features to it, and won't be correcting any remaining functional issues. Security patches will continue for another five years. For comparison, XP ended mainstream support in 2009, and lifecycle last April.

I kinda think you are overthinking this. Wrapping in supporting an old printer and scanner is probably not productive, as neither of those devices are terribly expensive and brand new ones are going to be more capable and probably less expensive to run versus working in ongoing support for them. I think they're a boondoggle.

I don't think there is any issue buying into Win7 now in terms of support or security risk, but the simple fact is that it's a dead architecture. Like or not, luddite or not, going to extra trouble to buy a dead OS seems like a waste of effort. I'd go 8.1 and not think twice about it, even if that means spending $200 on a new laser printer and scanner. You'll probably save $200 not having to seek out a Win7 machine, or buy Win7 after the fact.

I'm not a big fan of OSX - I think Mac hardware is pretty darned good, but OSX is a throwback from virtually every user-facing angle (the underpinnings are quite good!). That of course is personal preference, but whatever. Macs are not less susceptible to security problems and there are plenty of exploits both demonstrated and executed, but of course being relatively uncommon, OSX doesn't get the same attention from people who develop the exploits. It is quite literally security through obscurity which *to me* isn't all that reassuring. My opinion. Finally as was recently pointed out, Apple drops support for old versions of OSX quite regularly, so as tough as it is to have a long term relationship with Windows, it's even tougher these days to have one with OSX. OSX tends to release every 12-18 months, with Apple dropping support after 2-3 additional versions - and when they drop support they *drop* it. No more anything, generally up to and including 3rd party (like, say, Skype ;) ). If you're lucky you just keep upgrading OSs - if you're not, they drop hardware support for your platform and then you buy new.

All that said, I wouldn't buy for the past. I wouldn't buy for the future. It just isn't how computers work - especially these days. Buy what works right now, come back in a couple years and do it again. Budget accordingly. :)

[Rikadyn]

I'd run Win7 on a desktop and wait for 9/10 whatever the next iteration is. I don't mind 8.1 on my laptop, but it has a touch screen. I think being stuck with a mouse only would piss me off.

[JoshInKC]

tsg is 100% correct regarding older printer/scanner issues. For years and years I spent an absurd amount of time screwing around getting an older multifunction device working every time a new computer entered my house; then, a year or so ago, I finally broke down and bought a new one. No exaggeration, it's really one of the best computer-related purchases I've ever made. Makes life about a billion times easier, especially with wifi printing.
Regarding ubuntu/linux - assuming you go with a well supported distribution like ubuntu, or better yet- linux Mint, issues with things like plug and play usb stubs should be the exception, rather than the rule. When I got the new printer mentioned above, it took me maybe three minutes to get it set up and fully functional on my linux desktop.

Edited to add: I haven't really had any major issues with Windows 8/8.1. It/they have a few aspects that bug me, but nothing even remotely near a dealbreaker.

[George]

Windows 7 sounds like the way to go if it is still viable for five more years. I didn't know that. I'll grab a used but not too old PC with Win7 installed from my local used PC emporium: www.actionpc.com. That's what I did last time I needed a computer, only it was WinXP back then, and I got a few years out of a ~$200 box, so I have no regrets.

I assume the printer and scanner will work with Win7, and then my wife won't have to keep emailing me stuff at work to print and bring home.

Then I'll get what I want in a Mac as time and money allow.

Thanks, everyone. I'll stop over-thinking this.

[21Kid]

I was pondering the same topic as I was thinking about TSG's recent post about the gaming PC. MS just announced that you can upgrade to Win10 for free (from Win 7 or 8) during it's first year. :up:

[George]

Well, that was unexpected, or "why I don't go shopping with my wife very often":

I'm off work today. My lovely bride and I went out for some errands and shopping while the kids were in school. First stop was MicroCenter, so I could show her how wildly expensive new laptops are.

Second stop was a used PC store where I've bought two computers before.

"See?!" I said triumphantly. "Look at all the great deals in here!"

Well, maybe not. Their prices were higher than I remembered, their selection smaller, and we realized for not much more 3-4 year old laptops, we could buy a brand new one with better specs.

So back to MicroCenter we went, and now she is the proud owner of an ASUS N550J laptop, with Win8.1, a 15.6 screen, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't yet know about, including Bang & Awfulson (or something like that) audio with a separate subwoofer (!).

I sure hope this won't suck.

Signed,

The guy who agonizes over every penny but who is married to A Decision Maker

[thesameguy]

Glad things went that way. I was going to comment that used PCs that are still relevant are rarely a good deal, but I don't know the used market around there.

Remember, new or not, back it up often.

[MR2 Fan]

Remember, Windows 10 is a free upgrade for all Win 7 and 8 users

[Blerpa]

Remember, Windows 10 is a free upgrade for all Win 7 and 8 users

THIS. THIS. THIS.

[Jacee]

Here is the link to the free upgrade (blog) http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/01/21/the-next-generation-of-windows-windows-10/

[Yw-slayer]

George, dude, you're starting to remind me of someone who was trapped by a Tetras Simulator. Lol

[SportWagon]

George,

When you ran Ubuntu before, was it in a separate partition, or via wubi? (Or did you not set up a multi-boot choice at all?)

If a partition, did you do the "defrag/repartition" rinse-and-repeat thing? (defrag might be advisable for wubi, too?)

Other people insist on using virtual machine technology so they can truly run both OS at the same time.

[George]

SW, I didn't set up a multi-boot choice at all. It was an old PC and I made it a Ubuntu-only machine. I liked the OS just fine, except it wouldn't recognize a supposedly Linux-compatible USB wireless stub so I couldn't get online with it, once our former home office became our son's bedroom. The router is still in his room because I'm too cheap to pay the ISP $99 to come to our house and move it downstairs, and because if I'm going to pay anyone to do that, I think we want the router in the basement, and I don't think that's a $99 job - probably more. So right now we're all wi-fi at home with nothing plugged into the router.

I need to try to install the current version of Ubuntu on my wife's old WinXP laptop - because hey, why not? But, I want to get her files off it first, and it's so darn slow and besieged with pop-ups and crap-ware that I don't know if I'll have the patience to get through all that, and I'm concerned about malware getting on a USB flash drive along with photos and whatever other files she has on there.

Does anyone know if I can browse and copy her files from the old laptop without dealing with malware if I booted WinXP in Safe Mode With Networking? Or can I use a USB flash drive in just regular Safe Mode to get that stuff? Or, should I keep all USB flash drives far away to prevent infecting other computers that we might plug them into?

I was okay with this stuff some years ago but nowadays me working on a computer is more trial-and-error than anything else. I'm grateful for you guys and gals who are "in the know".

[thesameguy]

If you are concerned about malware, what I would personally do is remove the drive from the laptop, connect it up to a USB->SATA adapter ($10) and plug it into a computer that has modern, up to date anti-virus installed. That's your best, safest bet and will probably take the least amount of time to boot.

* Do be sure you remove the drive before buying the adapter to ensure you don't need a USB->IDE adapter instead. ;)

[George]

Thanks for that, TSG, but that just starts a bunch other questions, such as how do I remove a hard drive from a laptop (YouTube video?) and how do I know if I need a USB->SATA or USB->IDE?

I don't expect you to answer these - I'll google, but that's an idea of how behind-the-times I am with tech stuff.

[thesameguy]

1. Probably very easy. Most hard drives are "external" and slotted in on the side or under a bottom cover. Usually only a couple screws, maybe four, and zero effort. Goes double for older computers. On newer computers sometimes the drives are small enough they can be buried somewhere, but that is *rarely* the case on anything old enough to run XP. For example:

http://www.data-r-us.com/ima2/laptop-disk-remove.jpg

2. You'll know. SATA is a blade-looking connecotor, IDE is a bunch of pins. They are impossible to mix up. Once you get the hard drive out you can also google the part number and it will tell you.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/ComtronBob/SATAIDE.jpg

[George]

Wow. Thanks for taking the time to post pics! Much appreciated.

[thesameguy]

No worries. ;)

[George]

I remembered my Dad bought something like you describe to rescue data of an old PC some time ago. I called him and he is going to loan it to me. I might be able to get this done for free. If not, I'll spring for the $10 item and it will be like getting a "new" laptop for $10 plus time spent, and it if doesn't work, I'm only out the $10 and my time, and then I can confidently walk away from the old laptop. We're trying to de-clutter and old computers in the basement are pretty near the top of my wife's list, and mine too. They will either work and have a purpose or out the door they go.

[thesameguy]

A desktop SATA adapter will work with a laptop SATA drive, but a desktop IDE adapter will not. SATA is always SATA, but there are different form factors for desktop IDE and laptop IDE.

This thing:

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B001OORMVQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422478025&sr=8-2&keywords=ide+sata+usb

will handle all three.

[SportWagon]

1. Probably very easy. Most hard drives are "external" and slotted in on the side or under a bottom cover. Usually only a couple screws, maybe four, and zero effort. Goes double for older computers. On newer computers sometimes the drives are small enough they can be buried somewhere, but that is *rarely* the case on anything old enough to run XP. For example:

...


How dare you save my time by giving me a few key diagrams plus a concise, easy-to-read text description, rather than posting a video which I need to spend many minutes to watch for the few tens of seconds I need to comprehend!

Modern Ubuntu, and possibly the one you had then, should be able to "do DHCP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Host_Configuration_Protocol)" to get on to the Internet. Or you mean the PC was so old it did not have any ethernet built-in? (Modern Ubuntu should handle your WiFi, oh wait you don't have WiFi do you, or do you finally? Oh wait. You imply you were trying to get WiFi to work. Do hard-wired ethernet first, if you have it available on router and computer).

No really, regarding DHCP, I was flipping between bootable systems for several months before my friend said "your Ubuntu partition will probably connect to your router automatically". And it did. Blush. And my world was changed for ever. Ever see 18 months of unapplied updates go in successfully?

[Jason]

Open Office exists for Mac, but honestly I'd get an Office365 subscription... you get MS Office, the web apps, and unlimited cloud storage (they are rolling this out). The reason I suggest MS Office is pretty simple, it's what future courses for your kids will use, it's what they'll be using in the workforce, it just makes sense to use MS Office.

[Cam]

Signed,

The guy who agonizes over every penny but who is married to A Decision Maker
:lol: Dude, we totally need to hang out. :D

[Yw-slayer]

Open Office exists for Mac, but honestly I'd get an Office365 subscription... you get MS Office, the web apps, and unlimited cloud storage (they are rolling this out). The reason I suggest MS Office is pretty simple, it's what future courses for your kids will use, it's what they'll be using in the workforce, it just makes sense to use MS Office.

Not only that, but with even a SINGLE O365 subscription you can install it on 5 computers, 5 phones AND 5 tablets. At US$99.99/year or US$9.99/month, that's just unbeatable (maybe even AWESOME!!!) value.

Another reason to get O365 is that OpenOffice sucks balls, or at least it it did when I played around with it around 10 years ago.

[thesameguy]

Open Office is quite good and has been for many years. It's every bit as good as Office 2003, which as far as I'm concerned is a benchmark suite.

Office 365 is only a let down if you, like me, tend to keep Office for many years. I bought 2003 in in 2003 and used it until 2008. I've been happily running 2007 since. At $100/yr, I would have paid for 2003+2007 many times over.

That said, what Jason suggested is spot on. Going into the workplace not knowing MSO would be hamstringing yourself. Additionally, the side benefits of 365 - such as OneDrive - are worth the $100/yr in and of themselves. A full-on 1tb+ backup option for $100/yr is money well spent. Apple charges $20/mo for the same feature, Dropbox $99/yr! Office 365 is definitely money well spent.

[Yw-slayer]

I repeat, that price allows full installs on 5 computers, 5 tablets, AND 5 phones. To someone like me with tons of devices, that pays for itself in minutes.

[George]

Typical of my life, I got home last night after working 8:00 am to 6:30 PM and was immediately involved with the wife and kids for dinner and family time until bedtime for everyone, when I zonked out like a dead man. This morning I awoke and just before leaving for work, remembered my wife was at my parents' house yesterday when I called Dad about his hard drive rescue device and she brought it home.

I took about 30 seconds to look in the grocery bag and saw what appears to be a hard drive enclosure. It’s a black box, not just a bunch of wires like this thing:


This thing:

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B001OORMVQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422478025&sr=8-2&keywords=ide+sata+usb

will handle all three.

There are two big silver Phillips-head bolts on one end – the kind that imply “these are for you to use”, rather than tiny, recessed black screws that typically hold devices together. I'm guessing a hard drive slides into this device and then the cover is screwed on to hold it tight. There were a few different inputs for cables, and a curved chrome stand that suggests this would be displayed vertically on a desk near a computer. On the side it said Micro 1, I think, as the brand name, and below that it said SATA and IDE hard drive something-or-other, so that’s probably a good sign.

Hopefully I'll get some time tonight to mess with it.

[thesameguy]

I repeat, that price allows full installs on 5 computers, 5 tablets, AND 5 phones. To someone like me with tons of devices, that pays for itself in minutes.

Totally, but you're an unusually competent person in an unusually equipped situation. :)

[thesameguy]

I took about 30 seconds to look in the grocery bag and saw what appears to be a hard drive enclosure. It’s a black box, not just a bunch of wires like this thing:

Okay, he has a hard drive enclosure which is often recommended in these situations, and is more aimed at long term use rather than the short term you'd use the cable thingy I linked to. If your laptop has a SATA drive, you'll be able to use it (albeit maybe a little clumsily). If you're laptop has an IDE drive, you will not.

[George]

:lol: Dude, we totally need to hang out. :D

Dude, be careful what you wish for. I'll be back in Charleston for a weekend in November. Compared to distances between cities out west, that's practically next door to your fair city.

[Cam]

Noted. :D

[mk]

Knoppix is handy.

[George]

Thanks mk. I just googled Knoppix and that probably would have worked for me also.

Update: my wife's new laptop is now running Classic Shell and emulating Win7, which we both are more comfortable with for file management, such as my copying the stuff from her old laptop to the new via USB flash drive. It works fine, with one exception: when I googled Ubuntu download to get what I needed to re-format her old laptop, the address bar added something about Vosteran when I hit search. I had downloaded NOTHING prior to this.

I wouldn't have known what that meant except for seeing a thread about Vosteran here in the Tech forum. I've read it and it looks like I'll have to follow Jacee's advice to get rid of it. How the heck does that get on a BRAND NEW laptop? I'm the guy who opened the box and it looked to me like I was the first...or might have the store taken a returned laptop and re-packaged it? I hate to think so but how else could Vosteran could have gotten on that computer?

Other that Vosteran, her new laptop seems to run super-fast and even gets a good Wi-Fi signal in our basement, which makes it the only of our several devices to do so. The others get a signal but they perform noticeably faster upstairs, closer to the Wi-Fi router.

I bought her old laptop from a used PC store for Christmas 2011, so that means it's at the youngest, a 2011 computer, but I think it's probably a couple years older than that. At any rate, it's now running the latest Ubuntu version and, while I have to wait for it to boot up and then give it a few minutes to "warm up", as we used to say, once it gets going, I can get around fine, and print from it to our HP laser printer with ease. Ubuntu doesn't recognize our scanner but I assume the scanner will work with the Win8 machine.

The only mystery I have at the moment is with one USB flash drive. It has been on a shelf for maybe a year or more, and no computer I've put it in can read it - not the Win8.1 machine, not Ubuntu - although I might not know where to look for it in that OS - and not my Win7 machine here at work this morning. I haven't stuck it in a Mac yet, but I've only ever used it with PCs. How can I get my files off it? It's full of photos of my kids when they were younger, my resume stuff, and lots of other personal info that I need to keep...or would like to keep, anyway. I guess if it's gone, it's gone and I won't know exactly what I lost, but I hate to think it just stopped working.

[thesameguy]

If nothing is recognizing the drive, it's probably dead.

You can check Device Manager to see if it detects any new USB device, and you can check Disk Management to see if it recognizes any storage device - but based on your description I think you have a failed drive. Any chance it's a PNY or HP flash drive?

[George]

It's a Micro Center flash drive. I've used it off and on for a couple years, probably, but lately it has been sitting with a few others on a shelf. I went thorugh them all this weekend while playing IT Director at home and that's the only one that wouldn't read. Win8 and Win7 both gave me a taskbar pop-up, like "USB device inserted" or something like that, and Win8 even showed me the drive in "My Computer", but I couldn't open it as I could all the others. Win8 also didn't show the bar with space used and space remaining, as it did for all the other ones, and the C: drive.

It's dead, I guess.

I suppose I'll throw it on the trash pile along with a couple of Zip drives (yes, Zip drives!) that click and spin but won't read.

[thesameguy]

Yeah, it sounds dead. The symptoms are that the partition table got scrambled. You could try opening it with diskpart and seeing what's there. Maybe create a new partition table (though data would be lost). Really, though, if it failed in this way I wouldn't personally ever use it again. It's worth throwing diskpart at it before chucking it, just to see if anything can be retrieved.

[George]

Thanks TSG. I'll try that.

I'll send you a couple Zip discs for your time and trouble.

100 MB, baby!

http://home.kpn.nl/a.dikker1/museum/zipdisk.jpg

[thesameguy]

Those will be recycled.

[Yw-slayer]

LOL, talk about junk.

[George]

If I had a working camera, I'd show you a short stack of them, and a working Zip Drive attached to a working 1999 Macintosh displaying the GTXF.

I'm digging Ubuntu! Being the benevolet despot of a family of four and having checked out the Ubuntu Software Center, I'm tempted to present a quartet of Jacksons to the concierge at Ye Olde Used Computer Shoppe and directing him to produce four dusty old desktop boxes that I can reformat and host an ongoing LAN DEATHMATCH PARTY with whatever the Ubuntu FPS du jour is. My son and I would dig it.

I doubt anyone cares, but for any museum archivists who are tracking antique machines that have somehow snuck onto the internet, I'm posting this from a Dell Latitude D620 with Ubuntu version 14.04 LTS.

From the old-school, Mac-like "About This Computer" option:

Memory: 984.5 MiB
Processor: Intel® Core™2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz × 2
Graphics: 984.5 MiB
OS Type: 64-bit
Disk: 77.6 GB

Not mine, but a pic from the World Wide Web (I think it's catching on!):

http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/10564.jpg

[Yw-slayer]

A T7200, while pretty old, is not THAT old. It'll run Quake3:Arena with aplomb. Probably at max res. It'll also run Quake 4 reasonably well.

[mk]

Isn't that Zip thingy suppose to be at least partly cycled regularly?

For flash disk use linux ddrescue and save raw image of it,
*quick* format it and try recovery.

On other topic, I use Asus AOA150 with ext. controls for exclusive banking.
It's almost too slow with lubuntu and mozilla.
(from now on Mint is rejected, upgrade hazzle)
Is probably a bit faster if left on longer.

For future machines I think I change to mini PCs and raid stacks.
Since my table is always too small and if possible I use regular keyboards anyway.
(I hate laptop control keys area, if any even available, and touchpad area selects)
And a screen you can always bolt to the cealing if nothing else.

[SportWagon]

When using a laptop, I nearly always use a mouse. Touchpads make my head hurt. I actually find very compact keyboards (e.g. for 7 to 8" tablet) easier to use than the only-slightly-smaller-than-standard keyboards on 10.1" netbooks. The latter can make my head hurt too. So an external keyboard helps a lot.

An upgrade to Galoula Linux chroot for Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.galoula.LinuxInstallPRO&hl=en) stopped its icons from working, and forced me to figure out steps to get it to work again.

[SportWagon]

Not mine, but a pic from the World Wide Web (I think it's catching on!):

http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/10564.jpg

Yes, that sure looks like the Microsoft Windows teletubbies hill. Not Ubuntu.

Sort of surprising 14.04 runs nicely on something with that little memory. Do you or it turn off most animation? You are using Unity? (A horrible column of animated icons down the left-hand side). True, it does have two pretty fast processors.

Does the old beast have USB 2 at least? (Finds specs; so 4 USB 2.0 ports? Sounds good. Oooo. It has a PC card slot!)
http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/dell-latitude-d620-review-pics-specs/
Pretty powerful when it was released, I think.

[thesameguy]

I'm digging Ubuntu! Being the benevolet despot of a family of four and having checked out the Ubuntu Software Center, I'm tempted to present a quartet of Jacksons to the concierge at Ye Olde Used Computer Shoppe and directing him to produce four dusty old desktop boxes that I can reformat and host an ongoing LAN DEATHMATCH PARTY with whatever the Ubuntu FPS du jour is. My son and I would dig it.

Two bills would buy two or three used X360s, and probably provide more gaming for the dollar.

Just throwing that out there.

[George]

Shet yo mouf about more XBox 360s! :lol:

We have one and the kids are really good about taking turns playing Minecraft on it but my son is already asking for another so they can play in the same game world together from different XBoxes and different TVs!

My typical reply:

http://fcdn.mtbr.com/attachments/off-camber-off-topic/960937d1422799574-funny-picture-meme-thread-1622073_547231542072767_7032413961264961862_n.jpg

S'Wagon, no one loathes touchpads more than I. I must say the touch screen with Win8 is fantastic. Instead of trying to accurately point and click on a large screen with your finger on a tiny touchpad, you can just point and click on whatever you want. It's still nice to have a mouse also with Win8 to easily drag and drop or click and drag to resize and move windows, etc. but overall I'm a big fan of the touch screen. It almost replaces a mouse, which the touchpad cannot come close to claiming. My wife's new laptop with the touch screen is like an enormous iPad with a permanently attached keyboard. :up:

I have no idea about animation or Unity, although when I minimize a Firefox window in 14.04, there is a little animation of it zooming off to the distance. I don't remember the older version of Ubuntu I had...well, still have, I guess...on an even older desktop PC doing that. Soon I will be dropping that PC and two other old towers, a broken digital camera, an old mouse with a ball and no scroll wheel, a dead Netbook from the last decade, and about a zillion cables and adapters to the local PC recycling place. I'm going to hook up everything we have that works and anything left over is OUTTA HERE!


For flash disk use linux ddrescue and save raw image of it,
*quick* format it and try recovery.

Thank you. I will look into this and also diskpart when I get a chance - next weekend, maybe.

[SportWagon]

Yes, touch screens have made touchpads obsolete, and mouses almost so. It was the natural interface which pointer devices poorly attempted to emulate. Remember when Scotty tried to talk into his mouse?

[Random]

"Computer!"

My favorite of the ST movies, even though, or perhaps because, it's so cheezy.

"Everyone remember where we parked!"

[George]

You'd think a man who kept a suit of armor in his quarters and wore a kilt as part of his dress uniform would be interested enough in history to know what a mouse was.

If we went back in time 300 years and saw a feather in an inkwell, wouldn't we know what it was used for?

/takes Star Trek seriously

[George]

Ubuntu is working great with this old laptop! I'm running two monitors, playing Open Arena (a Quake III clone) at a good resolution, printing at will, and, now, scanning, too. I haven't had a "home office" this efficient in years--not that I've tried.

Here's a scan of me with a morning's work of firewood splitting done with my 1991 Mitsubishi Mighty Max pickup. This picture is at least 20 years old. This was in North Carolina and shows that Australia and Mars aren't the only places where you can get red dirt stains on your shoes.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/1991Mitsubishi-2_zps4e1d85f5.jpg

Scanned with a CanoScan LiDE 700F with Simple Scan on Ubuntu. Easy!