Computers are like Cars

[Russell]

The average person get in their car and just wants to go. They don't care how it works only that it does and it cost as little as possible.

I feel about the same about computers. Lately I have been using my smart phone, but sometimes I need a real computer. I have an old laptop with vista but it so slow its unusable. I misplaced the disks in my last move.

I have been thinking about trying Linux or buying an old macbook. Any Linux users? Would a 10 year old / $100 macbook work?

[squirrel]

Kind of depends what you want to do with the computer.

You might be ok with a $200 chromebook or new bare bones laptop.

The old Vista machine probably doesn't have as much memory as you'd want to run a modern operating system.

I doubt that linux is what you really want, though....it can be persnickety. Although the Chrome version might be ok, since it's set up for mass market appeal, and doesn't do a whole lot.

[Barry Donovan]

old can do good, the big thing for incentive to upgrade is heat dissipation (watts needed) and pile of work one can throw at it.

I am upgrading a 12 year old pc, but am here with it now, non-stop for almost 10 years.
Anyone remember 130watt cpu?
they are still out there brand new with many cores for $1300, I am running the very first of them, 2003 pentium 4.
I had to make my own cooling unknown to mankind. Nothing worked.

It is like cars I guess. I built my own hot rod.

[Russell]

90% car forums and Google searches
5% YouTube
3% social media
1% picture storage cropping.
1% file viewing / editing (doc xls PDF)
Needs to be able to print. And at least a USB.

I have not looked at the chrome books. The experience I have had with cheap computers is they come with a lot spam software and no much good. Then the ransom you have to pay to the antivirus racket is more than the computer is worth.

[DanStokes]

You know I'm a hardcore MAC guy so you kind of have to temper what say........

I've had MACs since 1984 or so. I've NEVER had a Blue Screen of Death, NEVER had a virus - they just work. I actually liked the MAC OS better but the Linux works well, to. You're welcome to come over any time and mess with mine to see how you like it. Mine is about 2 years old so it's not hopelessly out of date but not the most modern, either. I'm using a MAC Mini with a generic keyboard and an iffy wireless mouse. The monitor is a AOC (cheap at COSTCO) widescreen. I guess the laptops would be about the same except self-contained. The "issue" with this one is the speed of the Time-Warner connection - the 'puter is WAY faster than the supporting wire.

A year or so back I talked my bro into popping for a MAC, his first. It's taken him a while to get used to it but so far he's in the same situation I'm in - the internet connection is what holds you back.

So yeah, I like my MAC a lot!

Dan

[squirrel]

you never have to pay anything to the antivirus racket, you can just delete all that crap. If you surf carefully, it's not a problem, at all. Oh...and don't open any attachments you get in email, unless it's something you know what it is. Chromebooks run on linux, you know.

If you can find a mac that's less than 5 years old for $100 then go for it.

Older computers are kind of slow, and don't handle video well. But some new cheap computers have the same problem, so make sure to read some reviews if you buy a new one, or get a good demonstration of it's abilities if you get a used one.

If your old Vista computer has at least 1gb of RAM then you can install windows 10 on it, just go to microsoft and sign up to be an "insider" and you'll get to download it. you'll need to be able to burn it to a DVD to install it, and that means you also need to be able to read the DVD with the laptop. Might be beyond your capabilities, unless maybe you have a friend who does computers and is willing to help you out.

[Barry Donovan]

90% car forums and Google searches
5% YouTube
3% social media
1% picture storage cropping.
1% file viewing / editing (doc xls PDF)
Needs to be able to print. And at least a USB.

I have not looked at the chrome books. The experience I have had with cheap computers is they come with a lot spam software and no much good. Then the ransom you have to pay to the antivirus racket is more than the computer is worth.

Where I am now..
the core i7, as much as I can spend, then put it in my box already setup for an incredibly hot cpu. It can do anything.

I would not go smaller than 60w.
I am on my lap top now since my last post, I hate it..the tiny. I am hitting a wrong key in every sentence. But listening to hans zimmer from a dual core realm (2008) . Just the sound upgrades is a nice thing to ponder. Newer the better.

I would do mac only because they stole h.264 and makes it miserable to encode anywhere. Nah. they are not getting my democratic money. Socialists can keep carrying the mac.

the music goes on..

the big thing with anyhting but a mac is the ability for a user to kill their own freedom by all the options,
mac does not give.

I am 70000 hours and 130watts cooking away at 181F for hours sometimes...one build, all mine.
get back to me on the mac stuff.. silly wimps.

[Russell]

I did not know the Chromebook ran on Linux. RAM is just under 900. I did not even know windows was up to 10?

[Beagle]

they skipped 9 altogether, most likely to avoid confusion over Windows 9x (95,98)

Android phones use a Linux core also.

Ubuntu or Xubuntu 14.04 would probably run fine on that machine. I run it on a Toshiba older than yours with 512mb and it's acceptable for what I use it for (jukebox, garage browser). It's a pretty easy install and detects all the hardware. It will run off of the install CD if you want to get an idea if you like it or not without installing it. It looks and feels a lot like XP.

[squirrel]

Chrome is Google's operating system for PCs. Android is Google's operating system for phones and tablets. They are both Linux, with lots of development by google to make it do what they want.

also you can buy a new solid state hard drive, like 120gb, for around $50 or so. Speeds up those old laptops pretty well. Then you could take out the old drive, install the new one and put linux on it, or put windows 10 on it, and still have the old stuff around just in case.

[Beagle]

...

also you can buy a new solid state hard drive, like 120gb, for around $50 or so. Speeds up those old laptops pretty well...

They definitely help a ton. Not sure if Russell's machine is new enough to have SATA connectors.. the EIDE SSDD versions are a little pricier.

Anything but Vista would probably help a ton too - it was a pretty bad resource hog and Toshiba definitely piles a bunch of their own stuff on top of it.

/edit - looked up the Toshiba A215 and it does have SATA... so... nevermind. lol.

/edit two -- that's actually a reasonably powerful laptop, dual core 64 bit... There may be an empty slot for memory, which wouldn't hurt.

/edit three - "Chrome is Google's operating system for PCs"

(putting on nerd voice) technically I think they're called operating environments. The operating system (kernel) is Linux.... (turning off nerd voice) lol. Sorry... sometimes I miss the nit picking arguments we used to get into at work. Maybe I have that wrong and they're called User Interfaces now. Any version of Windows that ran on DOS we called an operating environment...

[SuperBuickGuy]

opened page, expected geekese, was not disappointed.

[squirrel]

we aim to please

[squirrel]

Sorry... sometimes I miss the nit picking arguments we used to get into at work.

Yeah, we're trying to help someone here, this is not work.

[Beagle]

huh, I got dogged for being a goof at work too.

Russell, I believe your machine has 1gb of memory and is using shared RAM for the video which is why it's showing an unusual RAM number in Windows. It's using 128mb for the video memory and the rest for the operating system. On the Linux question, there are several different flavors available. The one I've been playing with is Xubuntu, which is reasonably nimble on a 1gb machine like you have. It has a pretty small memory footprint so it does well on a 1gb machine. It is very familiar feeling to someone like me that has been solely using Windows since the 1980's.

If you are interested in looking at it and using it without having to install it, you can burn a bootable DVD from the downloaded image file and when booted, it will give you the option to either install or run the OS in a trial fashion. Changes won't be preserved but it will give you an idea of what it feels like. I believe the link below has the correct image for your machine:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/14.04/release/xubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64.iso

Your Toshiba probably came with Roxio DVD burner software installed, so there is likely a burn to DVD option if you right click the downloaded file. If you don't have it, there are freeware utilities available from places like ISOBURN.ORG. It's a pretty straight forward tool, but as always, read carefully during the install as a lot of freeware installers like to put additional unneeded software on your machine or modify browser settings.

When the machine boots, pushing the F12 key at the TOSHIBA splash startup screen should give you the boot options to boot from HDD, Network, Floppy, DVD, USB, etc. The burned DVD should be bootable and you can play around from there and see what you think.

If you decide you like Xubuntu and want to run it as a solution, there are some considerations. It can coexist with Windows or replace it but replacing it will format the disk so any data will be removed. If you install it to dual boot with Windows it will want to take available free disk space and dedicate it to Xubuntu. It can read and write to the Windows file system, but Windows does not read or write to the file system Linux uses so it will not be available to Windows afterwards.

Xubuntu includes office productivity software as well, but file exchange with Microsoft Office means paying more than default attention to what the file type is being saved as in both versions. Another alternative might be to install Wine on Linux and run your Windows applications on Linux if you need to. Wine is an application compatibility layer that allows Windows applications to run on operating systems like Linux or Mac OS/x.

As far as the disks go, if it used to run okay and has just gotten unbearably slow over time and you want to clean the slate, I think Toshiba stores the recovery CD images on the hard drive in a special partition. Have a look around page 60 of the manual:

http://support.toshiba.com/support/staticContentDetail?contentId=2021350&isFromTOCLink=false

I'm pretty sure that will wipe all the data off of it as well, so backing up anything you want to keep before performing those steps is a prerequisite.

Windows 10 may well be an alternative also, Microsoft is giving it to anyone with a Win7 or up license or as Squirrel said, by becoming an "insider"

https://insider.windows.com/