Want to juice up old laptop

[ChurchOfSubgenius]

I was given a Dell 3800, here are the basic specs:

14" lcd
Celeron 600
128 sdram
10gig HD
Some old wireless chip
old crappy graphics chip and sound.

I started loading Win2000 on it this morning as it had Win98....I wouldn't mind installing Linux but I have very little to no experience in the nix world.

Thanks for any advice or experiences.

 

[pukemon]

for a 10+ year old machine, Win2000 probably is your best bet, especially with only 128MB RAM. I had an old Latitude CP series a few years back, which was similar, except I had 256MB of RAM.

Xubuntu Linux might run on it, but you may need to use the alternate (text-based) installer since I think the GUI based Live install disc needs 256MB.

 

[ChurchOfSubgenius]

I have no problem tossing more ram in there....or a new processor/hard drive/warp drive.....whatever. I just can't find any info on the upgradeability of the machine.

Every Google I have done on "upgrade Dell 3800" has come back with 1000 merchants trying to sell me 128MB sodimms for $195 "Guarenteed to work in Dell!"

I tried last night to load the Ubuntu live CD and it ran for a while then just stopped with a blinking cursor.

Cliff notes: I want the most powerful components the machine can take with the least resource hungry (yet managable) OS available.

 

[IlllI]

not worth the money, time or effort. just donate that old junker

 

[ChurchOfSubgenius]

Originally posted by: IlllI
not worth the money, time or effort. just donate that old junker

I assume you are single with no kids and/or not a hobbyist. I have no money for a "real" laptop, three PC's running different functions around the house (and as many kids) and if I don't have a new tech hobby every 60 days I start making more kids or spending money I don't have.

 

[IlllI]

if you have no money to spend, why spend money on something that you wont notice any difference in. lets say you spend money to upgrade the ram to 256mb. i doubt you will notice anything significant b/c you are still crippled by a slow, tiny hard drive and an anemic cpu and graphics. so then lets say you upgrade the cpu to 800mhs or something. more money spent and maybe 1-2% performance gains. again seriously doubt anyone could tell any difference. same goes for the hd etc. then being so old, probably other parts would be failing sooner or later. what happens if you spend all that time and effort for negligible gains, and then the screen goes black? you either have to sink more money into it or scrap it. either way more money spent/wasted (depending on how you view it). this is assuming you have to buy the parts from somewhere and dont get them for free. there comes a point where its not worth the time/cost investment on something so old b/c the returns you get (in terms of performance) isnt worth the work put into it.

 

[Emulex]

linux

that is how you will go faster. get some cheap ram to bump that sucker up to 256 and rock a small ubuntu distribution.

probably get the ram for near zero.

that 10gb hard drive is really noisy and slow. if you were hardcore you could replace it with a compactflash card and adapter.

 

[Praetor]

Originally posted by: Emulex
linux

that is how you will go faster. get some cheap ram to bump that sucker up to 256 and rock a small ubuntu distribution.

probably get the ram for near zero.

that 10gb hard drive is really noisy and slow. if you were hardcore you could replace it with a compactflash card and adapter.

You would probably see the greatest increase in speeds just from doing this, IMHO.

 

[ChurchOfSubgenius]

Excellent ideas guys, I will look into the CF adapter and boot options as I wasn't aware this was an option.

IlllI....you could have just left some cliff notes like "I don't know", junking it isn't an option when for under $50 I can get a machine that my kids/wife can write school papers on from anywhere in the house and quit taking up my F.E.A.R. time.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Forget Ubuntu, get Damn Small Linux, or TinyMe Linux those will run on it as is.

 

[IlllI]

Originally posted by: ChurchOfSubgenius


IlllI....you could have just left some cliff notes like "I don't know", junking it isn't an option when for under $50 I can get a machine that my kids/wife can write school papers on from anywhere in the house and quit taking up my F.E.A.R. time.

oh that funny. sounded to me like you were about to spend $195 on some ram for it. yeah..

anyways, sorry for trying to have a logical discussion. in the future i'll try not to bother with people wanting to waste money on something that could crap out on them at any moment.

 

[rhayes]

I have a 9 year old Compaq Presario 1200 475 mHz, 6 GB drive, that I *just* maxed out to it's full 160MB of RAM (for $12. delivered).

It came with win98 on it, and I've loaded and run Win2000, and for several years now Debian linux. And I ran all of those on 96MB of RAM.

If you want to see what the machine is capable of, download a copy of Knoppix on a live CD. You may be surprised. It will probably be slow because 1) it's running off a CD instead of a hard drive, and 2) it's loaded with full installations of KDE for desktop installations. Once installed on a hard drive, though, you'll see a speed improvement, and you can pick and choose what you want to install.

Currently I'm running a Debian stable installation on the machine with enlightenment as the window manager, and selected gnome apps. OpenOffice and Opera provide everything I need and more (mail, newsfeeds, browsing, and word processing).

Download a copy of elive (http://www.elivecd.org/). You'll be *amazed* at what that laptop will do, and how cool it can look while doing it.

 

[fire400]

14" lcd

Celeron 600 - FS/TR and find the socket or e-bay this, get a Pentium III chip

128 sdram - bump this up to 256 or 512mb, easily

10gig HD - hit up a cheap 60 gig IDE notebook, 5400rpm

Some old wireless chip - find a USB wireless adapter - slow on USB 1.0, but a PC card wireless adapter will take up quite a bit of processor power but might be considerably faster

old crappy graphics chip and sound. - prolly running on PCI graphics or if you're lucky it's got AGP. as far as the sound, if it's not going to cut it for you, get an external mixer for 60 bucks from guitar center or go to best buy and buy a creative external; or just get an Audigy 2 ZS notebook with PCI lat. software tool

good luck!

 

[stockjock]

Churchy....wow you got yourself quite a dinosaur there. I have something similar and it's running XP Pro...its slow all right but I call it my old battle axe.

Laters

Stock

 

[fire400]

yeah, come to think of it, you could find a faster laptop for a hundred bucks!

 

[Praetor]

Originally posted by: fire400
yeah, come to think of it, you could find a faster laptop for a hundred bucks!

But where's the fun in that??