25 Sep
2007
25 Sep
'07
7 p.m.
A professor has asked me where one can find decent used laptops. That is,
he needs something close enough to the bleeding edge where he can run
current applications, but far enough away that he won't have to pay much.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
25 Sep
25 Sep
7:18 p.m.
On Tuesday 25 September 2007, David Griffith wrote:
A professor
<snip>
that he won't have to pay much.
I'm pretty familiar with that problem. :)
Unfortunately, laptops hold their value pretty well. His best bet
(being a professor of some sort) is to try and get some company to
donate one to him/his university department.
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
7:27 p.m.
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 19:00, David Griffith wrote:
A professor has asked me where one can find decent
used laptops. That is,
he needs something close enough to the bleeding edge where he can run
current applications, but far enough away that he won't have to pay much.
I've been kinda wondering that myself... :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
7:59 p.m.
At 4:00 PM -0700 9/25/07, David Griffith wrote:
A professor has asked me where one can find decent used
laptops. That is,
he needs something close enough to the bleeding edge where he can run
current applications, but far enough away that he won't have to pay much.
How close to bleeding edge would that be? I use an IBM T41p for
work, and it while it is fast enough, RAM is starting to become an
issue (not worth trying to upgrade as the laptop should soon be
replaced), and it is flaky (mainly because my original died, and was
replaced with one of the same model that was someones old trashed
garbage).
Looking at the local place that sells used laptops I can see that for
what they want for a model this old, you'd almost be better off
buying a new laptop once you factor in wear and tear.
Has he considered looking for laptops being clearanced out? Hmmm,
that could be of interest to me as well. Not sure where you would
look.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
8:06 p.m.
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Zane H. Healy wrote:
At 4:00 PM -0700 9/25/07, David Griffith wrote:
A T41[p] is about close enough. The trick now is to find one without
flakiness.
A professor has asked me where one can find decent
used laptops. That is,
he needs something close enough to the bleeding edge where he can run
current applications, but far enough away that he won't have to pay much.
How close to bleeding edge would that be? I use an IBM T41p for
work, and it while it is fast enough, RAM is starting to become an
issue (not worth trying to upgrade as the laptop should soon be
replaced), and it is flaky (mainly because my original died, and was
replaced with one of the same model that was someones old trashed
garbage). Looking at the local place that sells used laptops I
can see that for
what they want for a model this old, you'd almost be better off
buying a new laptop once you factor in wear and tear.
Just out of morbid curiosity, how much?
Has he considered looking for laptops being clearanced
out? Hmmm,
that could be of interest to me as well. Not sure where you would
look.
I would have directed him to Computer Renaisance, but corporate decided to
close it. Oh well. It was a good source of older but still good stuff.
I know of some local turnkey suppliers that might have turn-ins.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
9:23 p.m.
At 5:06 PM -0700 9/25/07, David Griffith wrote:
$800 for a T40p or T42.
http://www.budcom.com/html/hi_end_laptops.html
A T41[p] is about close enough. The trick now is to
find one without
flakiness.
This one looks like it has been dropped or kicked repeatedly.
Looking at the
local place that sells used laptops I can see that for
what they want for a model this old, you'd almost be better off
buying a new laptop once you factor in wear and tear.
Just out of morbid curiosity, how much? I would have directed him to Computer Renaisance, but
corporate decided to
close it. Oh well. It was a good source of older but still good stuff.
I know of some local turnkey suppliers that might have turn-ins.
I've no idea if our local one is still around. I used to like them
years ago, and around '99 got a killer deal on a DEC PWS 433au (they
didn't really know what they had, what to do with it, or who would
buy it). I was also able to buy a PowerBook 540c for less than a new
screen for my 520c would have cost, probably around '98.
I'd just like to find a nice dirt cheap Thinkpad with a large screen
to run Linux or OpenBSD on. For me the screen is the most important
part.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
26 Sep
26 Sep
10:13 a.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
I'd just like to find a nice dirt cheap Thinkpad
with a large screen to
run Linux or OpenBSD on. For me the screen is the most important part.
If I might make a suggestion, look at the Thinkpad A31p. Big screen,
high res, and has two Ultrabays, which means you can run three
batteries, or a DVD-ROM with a DVD-RW, or any of dozens of other
combinations.
It's a Pentium 4M. Available up to 2GHz, which should be enough for
pretty much anything.
Peace... Sridhar
10:48 a.m.
Keep an eye on Office Depot for their Red Tag sales. I got a brand new
toshiba laptop there a few months ago for $310 after tax.
On 9/26/07, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
Zane H. Healy wrote:
I'd just like to find a nice dirt cheap
Thinkpad with a large screen to
run Linux or OpenBSD on. For me the screen is the most important part.
If I might make a suggestion, look at the Thinkpad A31p. Big screen,
high res, and has two Ultrabays, which means you can run three
batteries, or a DVD-ROM with a DVD-RW, or any of dozens of other
combinations.
It's a Pentium 4M. Available up to 2GHz, which should be enough for
pretty much anything.
Peace... Sridhar
8:03 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
$800 for a T40p or T42.
You can get entirely new laptops for $800 so I'm not sure I'd recommend
that course of action. Yes, I love my T41, but I wouldn't consider it
worth $800. After three years, the battery is shot and the battery is
$130 right there.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
8:40 p.m.
On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Jim Leonard wrote:
Zane H. Healy wrote:
That brings me to the question of "do you buy a new battery or a new
laptop?". My T42's batter is starting to get just a wee bit old.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
$800 for a T40p or T42.
You can get entirely new laptops for $800 so I'm not sure I'd recommend
that course of action. Yes, I love my T41, but I wouldn't consider it
worth $800. After three years, the battery is shot and the battery is
$130 right there.
9:04 p.m.
David Griffith wrote:
On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Jim Leonard wrote:
If the laptop is good, then the battery of course. My T41 has a gig of
RAM and a 1.5GHz CPU. I use it for everything that doesn't need heavy
lifting (games, video editing) and for "everything else" it works great.
It's three years old; the battery is shot; the battery is $135 to
replace, so I'm going to replace the battery. I doubt I could replace
the entire machine for $135, so my choice is easy.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
Zane H. Healy wrote:
That brings me to the question of "do you buy a new battery or a new
laptop?". My T42's batter is starting to get just a wee bit old. $800 for a T40p or T42.
You can get
entirely new laptops for $800 so I'm not sure I'd recommend
that course of action. Yes, I love my T41, but I wouldn't consider it
worth $800. After three years, the battery is shot and the battery is
$130 right there. 
25 Sep
25 Sep
11:22 p.m.
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, David Griffith wrote:
A professor has asked me where one can find decent
used laptops. That is,
he needs something close enough to the bleeding edge where he can run
current applications, but far enough away that he won't have to pay much.
What do YOU mean by "decent"?
UC Berkeley surpluses PII 266MHz Chembooks and Dells in the $100 - $150
range.
26 Sep
26 Sep
12:43 a.m.
On 25 Sep 2007 at 16:00, David Griffith wrote:
A professor has asked me where one can find decent used laptops. That is,
he needs something close enough to the bleeding edge where he can run
current applications, but far enough away that he won't have to pay much.
Craigslist can be a good place to start, as
http://www.shopgoodwill.com and some of the "off lease" places.
Cheers,
Chuck
2:35 p.m.
While others are talking about these prices..
Those PII 266mhz notebooks for 100 is not worth taking.
The eviroment do demand 2000 Pro or XP requires PIII 1GHz minimum &
512MB ram. PIII notebooks look in 150-300 range.
Centrino/Pentium Mobile notebooks you can have one now for about
350-500 range complete these days which are best choices.
My favorites is Dell D600, patiently waiting till funds is available.
:P
Just watch out for those that needs battery. This explodes the total
"reasonable" cost of a used notebook to a low end new notebook with
warranty in a instant.
Cheers, Wizard
7:04 p.m.
Personally, I use a Dell Latitude C610 (1GHz Pentium IIIm)
Anyway, I have just got my copperlist working (sort of) on my (emulated) Amiga and
wondered if anyone here has experience in creating visual effects with the copperlist?
I'm not expecting code, but some advice on keeping things efficient wouldn't go
amiss :)
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
jpero at sympatico.ca wrote: While others are talking about these prices..
Those PII 266mhz notebooks for 100 is not worth taking.
The eviroment do demand 2000 Pro or XP requires PIII 1GHz minimum &
512MB ram. PIII notebooks look in 150-300 range.
Centrino/Pentium Mobile notebooks you can have one now for about
350-500 range complete these days which are best choices.
My favorites is Dell D600, patiently waiting till funds is available.
:P
Just watch out for those that needs battery. This explodes the total
"reasonable" cost of a used notebook to a low end new notebook with
warranty in a instant.
Cheers, Wizard
7:14 p.m.
Those PII 266mhz notebooks for 100 is not worth
taking.
It's working fine for reading and writing this, using PINE on my ISP.
Oh, wait. I think that this one is 233MHz.
"MHz" is "Mega-Hertz"
If "mhz" is milli-hertz", then it would be too slow to be practical.
But, if somebody wants to run current versions of MICROS~1 Weird, and
Officious, then you might need hundreds of Giga-hertz and TeraBytes of
storage.
9:01 p.m.
New subject: Amiga copper programming
Andrew Burton wrote:
Anyway, I have just got my copperlist working (sort
of) on my (emulated) Amiga and wondered if anyone here has experience in creating visual
effects with the copperlist?
I'm not expecting code, but some advice on keeping things efficient wouldn't go
amiss :)
There are still many Amiga "demoscene" diskmags available (check aminet)
that have a ton of visual effects and the code that makes them. I'd
grab a few and check them out. google search for things like "amiga
demo programming" and "amiga demoscene diskmag" to get some useful hits.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
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16 comments
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aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk -
cclist＠sydex.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jpero＠sympatico.ca -
pat＠computer-refuge.org -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
rtellason＠verizon.net -
starbase89＠gmail.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org