Luke122
11-05-2008, 12:41 PM
Hey guys,
I'd like to talk about obsolete hardware.
There's a craze of staying with the cutting (or bleeding) edge in hardware, and I have to say that I am guilty of that as well. That new thing always looks so great and wouldnt life be better if I had that? Well, that's not always the case. You pay a premium for the latest and newest, of course you are the first to experience bugs and shortcomings.
A little while ago, I decided that I would try to get my hands on some previous generation hardware and see what could be done with it. Just because something is a bit older, it's usually a whole lot cheaper, so why not see what can be done with some cut-rate or free hardware?
I was fortunate enough to have a Acer TravelMate C100 donated to me today, and I'm having a pretty good time playing with it so far.
http://www.acersupport.com/notebook/assets/images/tmc100.jpg
P3-800mhz, 256mb Ram, 30gb Hdd, 10.4" LCD (1024x768 ), built in wifi, and an external USB cdrom drive. This thing weighs 3 lbs. Yes, more than an EEEPc, but still.. it's a 10.4" tablet! Battery life is pretty decent if you turn on the power save features (short timeout on screen/hdd/power off) and it wakes up fast so no worries about that.
Before you say "Upgrade the ram!"... I cant. 256mb is max. I installed Itunes to see if I could use this as a touchscreen control box for my jukebox setup (oops, spoiler!) but the gpu isnt powerful enough to run the album cover view. ;)
I'm currently stripping out the unneeded sofware and junk from the hdd, and updating the software. Wifi is pretty good (Orinco card.. niiiiiiice) and the onboard sound isnt exactly breathtaking, but it's not horrible either. I'll call it "adequate".
The touchscreen is pretty responsive, and works well enough for handwriting notes. I'll be testing this device as a remote to control an XBMC installation through the web browser over wifi. If it works as intended, I will be very pleased. The next step after that will be removing the keyboard and touchpad (to lighten it a bit) and removing the hdd to replace with a CF adaptor, so I can run a CF card instead. 2gb should be plenty for what I need it to do. :) Yay for Nlite. :)
Does anyone else here have an interest in "obsolete" equipment, and trying to make more with less?
I'd like to talk about obsolete hardware.
There's a craze of staying with the cutting (or bleeding) edge in hardware, and I have to say that I am guilty of that as well. That new thing always looks so great and wouldnt life be better if I had that? Well, that's not always the case. You pay a premium for the latest and newest, of course you are the first to experience bugs and shortcomings.
A little while ago, I decided that I would try to get my hands on some previous generation hardware and see what could be done with it. Just because something is a bit older, it's usually a whole lot cheaper, so why not see what can be done with some cut-rate or free hardware?
I was fortunate enough to have a Acer TravelMate C100 donated to me today, and I'm having a pretty good time playing with it so far.
http://www.acersupport.com/notebook/assets/images/tmc100.jpg
P3-800mhz, 256mb Ram, 30gb Hdd, 10.4" LCD (1024x768 ), built in wifi, and an external USB cdrom drive. This thing weighs 3 lbs. Yes, more than an EEEPc, but still.. it's a 10.4" tablet! Battery life is pretty decent if you turn on the power save features (short timeout on screen/hdd/power off) and it wakes up fast so no worries about that.
Before you say "Upgrade the ram!"... I cant. 256mb is max. I installed Itunes to see if I could use this as a touchscreen control box for my jukebox setup (oops, spoiler!) but the gpu isnt powerful enough to run the album cover view. ;)
I'm currently stripping out the unneeded sofware and junk from the hdd, and updating the software. Wifi is pretty good (Orinco card.. niiiiiiice) and the onboard sound isnt exactly breathtaking, but it's not horrible either. I'll call it "adequate".
The touchscreen is pretty responsive, and works well enough for handwriting notes. I'll be testing this device as a remote to control an XBMC installation through the web browser over wifi. If it works as intended, I will be very pleased. The next step after that will be removing the keyboard and touchpad (to lighten it a bit) and removing the hdd to replace with a CF adaptor, so I can run a CF card instead. 2gb should be plenty for what I need it to do. :) Yay for Nlite. :)
Does anyone else here have an interest in "obsolete" equipment, and trying to make more with less?