# $30 daily driver computer, this guy gets it



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Ran across this video and yea that guy gets it.

Whether desktop or laptop, you really want to reseat the heatsink(s) with fresh thermal goo. And clean out any cooling fins or passages. Heat is enemy of computer longevity. Might want to replace the cmos battery while you have it opened up. Easy peasy on desktop, can be anywhere from easy to very difficult on a laptop. Sadistic engineers that design some laptops.

But yea its around $30 for a dual core 3GHz processor computer. It will even outperform some of super low end new stuff. You can find a SATA SSD under $20. Makes big difference on responsiveness and boot time over an old sluggish mechanical hard drive. And like the guy suggested, anymore you really kinda want minimum of 4GB RAM but if you have to, can get by with 2GB. Yea some smaller linux distributions try to brag they only need half GB RAM. Yea the system maybe, but you are not going to be a happy camper trying to run a modern browser on that.

And of course it depends what you are wanting to do with your computer. A $30 computer (think retired dual core win7 era computer) isnt going to let you open 100 tabs on your browser and play some super high spec game or do super high end video/photo editing. But for day to day mundane average user stuff, it works fine. Dont expect miracles and little patience goes a long way.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

It's true. Most home users can find 10+ year old computers that will meet their needs. A 10+ year old computer will run Windows 10 and be fine for routine tasks like email, web browsing, and participating in forums like HT. When I renovate an older computer I always perk it up with an SSD, as @HermitJohn suggested. Just make sure it will take 8gb of memory, because you'll need it for contemporary software.

I practice what I preach. I'm using an HP Envy laptop model with a 4th generation i7 processor. That dates back to 2014, which makes it 8 years old. Since I use a laptop as my primary computer I insist on a 17 inch monitor. I also have 16GB memory, but I don't think I've ever used more than 8GB. This laptop happens to have a quad core processor, but I was getting by fine with the dual core processor in my previous computer. I have a touchscreen monitor but can't figure out why because I've never used it for anything. I found it at eBay about a year ago for $200 and transplanted my SSD in it.

My only reservation is in the system requirements for Windows 11. That's kept me from renovating older laptops. Windows 10 end of life is in autumn of 2025. There are ways to install Windows 11 on older machines, but those methods are basically hacks. To be fully compliant with Windows 11 you'll need an intel 8th generation or newer (or similar AMD processor).


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

Why waste all the cpu/memory with windows and its bloated overhead. Most people can get by with chromeOS, opensource version chromium OS or cloudready chromeOS.

They all offer web tools and most "phone" tools. Since most people usage is web based. these are good alternatives and will run on just about any PC or laptop.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Gary in ohio said:


> Why waste all the cpu/memory with windows and its bloated overhead.


Mainly because corporate America is heavily invested in Microsoft products, and decisions like that are made by people who aren't computer savvy. Corporate managers look at the cost of in-house training for Windows & Office and think changing to another operating system will result in loss of productivity. Making a decision to migrate away from Microsoft will make past training a waste of money, and if the migration away from Windows goes bad he'll be held responsible. He can't get in trouble for leaving things as they are.

The British comedy _IT Crowd_ pokes fun at IT managers who know little about computers. In that show Jen, the IT manager, supervises Roy & Moss, the technical staff, creating hilarious situations. But technically deficient IT managers are more common than most think. That's because companies usually want an IT manager with an advanced degree to handle the enormous budgets they are in charge of. Technical staff seldom hold advanced degrees.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

You can also install Android. Why, no idea but people anymore are as comfortable with Android as with windows. Maybe more so. Seriously most Android is designed for touch screen, a small touch screen, and ARM processor. But you can install it on Intel and at least some desktop type apps are doable with mouse.

i have some decades experience with linux and frankly it has gotten quite friendly though honestly some things easier done using terminal and CL. But when people think of linux, they assume its still 1990s again and its DOS-like. Yea, its not clone of windows, but learning curve isnt any bigger than windows. And honestly no more than I use win10, I find windows more esoteric and painful to use. Win10 goes out of its way to hide stuff and try to force nonsense crap apps that it wont let you uninstall.

I actually watched some youtube video on win11. Ok, several tiny improvements over win10, but mostly think they discovered win10 updated forever wasnt making them the money like when they roll out a new operating system. When win10 becomes unsupported, suppose I will have to put win11 on some computer just cause the software will demand it. I remember when my tax software would no longer run on XP. So not impressed cause I think it could still run on XP, but they had designed it to not to for no practical reason. That first year I spent three days making tax sofware run on WINE. Seriously not fun for software I am only using once, one year. And it will change the next year. So got copy win10 and win10 will happily run unactivated forever, no hacks needed. Wonder if win11 will still run unactivated or if they are going to try and force people to activate like earlier windows. Competition from Android and Chrome means they probably wont.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Actually you are going to see a business model more like this: Desktop as a Service is the future of computing! where you basically rent your operating system in the clouds and you just have a dumb terminal in your home. Its the Chromebook system to next level. Getting people on the easy monthly payment plans FOREVER makes more money.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

Nevada said:


> Mainly because corporate America is heavily invested in Microsoft products, and decisions like that are made by people who aren't computer savvy. Corporate managers look at the cost of in-house training for Windows & Office and think changing to another operating system will result in loss of productivity. Making a decision to migrate away from Microsoft will make past training a waste of money, and if the migration away from Windows goes bad he'll be held responsible. He can't get in trouble for leaving things as they are.
> 
> .


We were not talking corporate, we were talking end user. Most end users can use the web based office products if they really need it. Most apps are web/java based. Aside from video editing and games, most user would be fine with chrome.

Your corporate systems would NEVER work on a $30 computer, By the time you put all the command, control and management agents on your PC the 4GB ram is long gone. 

Heck with many people remote now, your not even using a company PC.. Most larger organizations would be running a more manageable virtual desk top where the PC never leaves the server room of the company and is access from whatever device you have at home. Most of my corporate access is via a VDI desktop. Be it inhouse or desktop as a service. We have internal managed VDI and its More than fast enough for the server management work I perform. I can access my VDI from any device, be it a windows or Linux PC, IPAD, cell phone. I get my full desktop available to me, be it very small on the cell phone. VDI makes patching and one patch fix. got a virus, no problem system halts your VDI, deletes it and and you log back into another node and keep going

Most of the Android on PC are emulators requiring an underlying OS


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Gary in ohio said:


> We were not talking corporate, we were talking end user. Most end users can use the web based office products if they really need it. Most apps are web/java based. Aside from video editing and games, most user would be fine with chrome.
> 
> Your corporate systems would NEVER work on a $30 computer, By the time you put all the command, control and management agents on your PC the 4GB ram is long gone.
> 
> ...


That's all true, but home users don't want to be out of step with corporate America. Some computer manufacturers have tried marketing systems with alternative operating systems but none ever really got off the ground.

Chromebooks have come farther than any other effort. I can't say it's become a competitor for Windows yet, but we'll see.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

HermitJohn said:


> But when people think of linux, they assume its still 1990s again and its DOS-like.


If you watched me work with one of my servers you would certainly get that impression. It's bad practice to install Gnome or KDE on a server. Besides, those graphical interfaces are clumsy to use on a remotely located server anyway. Installing anything more than webmin isn't going to give you the reliability you need.

I use Windows 10 for my workstation and mostly access the server with an ssh client for command line work. To be honest I don't know a lot about Linux desktops. It's been a few years since a looked at Linux desktop operating systems.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Nevada said:


> If you watched me work with one of my servers you would certainly get that impression. It's bad practice to install Gnome or KDE on a server. Besides, those graphical interfaces are clumsy to use on a remotely located server anyway. Installing anything more than webmin isn't going to give you the reliability you need.
> 
> I use Windows 10 for my workstation and mostly access the server with an ssh client for command line work. To be honest I don't know a lot about Linux desktops. It's been a few years since a looked at Linux desktop operating systems.


But most average users arent running a server. I have neutered few windows computers. You get them locked down to where they arent trying to serve multiple masters and honestly not huge difference between windows and linux in using software once its installed. Firefox or Chromium look and act just same on either system. Same with Thunderbird, etc. You can use commandline in windows, its just hidden and rarely used. Windows isnt layered on DOS for decades now, but the commands in windows are very DOS like.

I have enough experience with commandline its just as easy sometimes to do it that way and I use some software that is CL only there is no gui available or else its buggy as heck or requires bunch denpendencies that may not be compatible to modern linux, but most people want gui only interface. Just reality of life. And most people are familiar with windows and anymore Android so dont like doing things differently or learning a different way even if just as easy. They dont have a good reason to change, so they dont. Especially when things are automated, hidden, and spoon fed to them. Why learn to chew food when baby food doesnt require chewing?


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Recently booted up my old HP DC5100 SFF "tax computer", got retired many years ago from daily driver to doing income taxes once a year. Brand new in like 2005. Had to reseat memory and put in new cmos battery. I use it once a year. Originally had XP until tax software sniffed for XP few years back and refused it, so then got unactivated copy win10 installed and locked it down so not trying to phone home and update, etc. I was honestly surprised it would install and run. It boots SLOW, but does boot. Has to be one of oldest computers to handle win10 (its an old version win10, didnt let it update). Old slow mechanical hard drive. Yea its old P4 with 4GB DD2. Hyperthreaded so can run 64bit though its only single core processor. Firefox on win10 several years old and complained and CONSTANTLY NAGGED until I installed new latest version. It was sluggish. Ok not big surprise. Only usb linux could get to boot was Knoppix which did very well by the way, but its 32bit. Then saw it does have SATA connection on motherboad so moved SSD (with 64bit MX19) from my daily driver (borrowed SATA cable from daily driver). Ok, using this as internal SATA SSD made all difference. Assume the usb system is not greatest on this. Honestly this is quite livable. Even boots fast. Yea sure some things be slow that require more processor use, but if one just wanted to surf and word processing, etc, its still quite usable and not painful at all. I booted couple lower power antiques, and they functioned, but really only for the desperate as daily driver. Interestingly the fan stays quiet with MX. Windows, it can make fan do its jet plane imitation sometimes. I imagine win10 would do much better on internal SSD but since I only boot it up once a year, dont care that much. If the tax software didnt sniff for XP, sure it could still run on XP, or win95 for that matter, it doesnt require lot resources. But their lawyers told them to only allow it to run on currently MS supported systems.

I honestly dont mind the DC5100 with MX, but experiment until I get around to do taxes, then it sleeps for another year unless my daily driver goes down. Like say I really dont mind this, doesnt feel sluggish at all, using it right now. Not super fast or anything, but not sluggish. Tough old computer to lasted this long. I looked and the P4 computers on ebay getting few and far between. Well they are now around 20 year old.... Imagine few are even aware some single core processors can handle 64bit system. These were pretty much last of the serious single core processors. After this just the ATOM and Bobcat used in netbooks (and Pentium M in few low end laptops). And those went dual core soon after introduction. Even dual core versions of those were pretty slow.


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