Well, neat!
Oct. 19th, 2007 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyWhile over at my mother-in-law's house a week or so ago, J's sister said she had an old laptop that was just an old hunk of junk that she didn't want anymore. She was going to throw it out, but it had patient info on it from her PT practice, so she wanted to know if I would security-wipe the drive for her and then dump the laptop, or use it if I wanted to. Sure, I said. I didn't have a lot of hope, usually when people are dumping old laptops, I'm used to them being really old.
J brought it home today. Wow, it's a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz Micron, 20GB HD and DVDROM, 15" 1440x1050 display, USB 1.1 and Firewire. The RAM was only 256M, I dumped in a 128M SODIMM I had sitting around from when I updated my other machine. I popped in a PCMCIA wireless card, security wiped the drive and installed Ubuntu 7.10. Got the VPN client from work installed. It's only USB 1.1 which is a bummer but hey, it's a free laptop and IMHO pretty damn functional. Heck, I could live with this as my only machine, assuming a 500GB external drive (I should get a firewire enclosure). OK, I'd want to dump in a little more RAM, but I could live with it as is.
I just need to find a dial-up service that I can use on the road and I'll have an emergency backup "call in to work" machine. I had a laptop almost identical, but my daughter commandeered it and I probably don't even want it anymore. Besides, it's kind of falling apart.
J brought it home today. Wow, it's a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz Micron, 20GB HD and DVDROM, 15" 1440x1050 display, USB 1.1 and Firewire. The RAM was only 256M, I dumped in a 128M SODIMM I had sitting around from when I updated my other machine. I popped in a PCMCIA wireless card, security wiped the drive and installed Ubuntu 7.10. Got the VPN client from work installed. It's only USB 1.1 which is a bummer but hey, it's a free laptop and IMHO pretty damn functional. Heck, I could live with this as my only machine, assuming a 500GB external drive (I should get a firewire enclosure). OK, I'd want to dump in a little more RAM, but I could live with it as is.
I just need to find a dial-up service that I can use on the road and I'll have an emergency backup "call in to work" machine. I had a laptop almost identical, but my daughter commandeered it and I probably don't even want it anymore. Besides, it's kind of falling apart.
