Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

[GreyGeek]

with 512 MB of RAM and a 120GB hd.

Works very well. Reasonably fast. Watched about 40 minutes of "The Divinci Code" via YouTube and it was smooth and seamless. Had to disable desktop effects though, because the ATI 9200 video wasn't up to it.

[claydoh]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P$ Sony VAIO RS420

My Compaq Evo is also 8 years old, and mostly works just fine. I luckily have 1 GB of ram. 512mb is OK but I tend to have kontact, Choqok, Quassel irc, and some other things running so that would be close to maxing me out. It's video GPU is still a bit dodgy for full-screen youtube, though. Natty definitely seems to use less ram overall than Maverick on this box, and its Ati 7200 can even run a few effects without bogging down. Wobbly windows FTW

Now that I just received my 3-years-young dual-core Dell D630 from ebay, the 'ole Evo may play second fiddle, but it by no means is ready for retirement. I am so amazed at how well Natty's combination of kernel, video drivers, and KDE 4.6 runs on our old hardware, I almost regretted getting a newer laptop. Almost, that is, until I saw the blur effect, experienced super snappy effects in general, and found Activities to actually be usable and useful

[GreyGeek]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

The D630 is a nice laptop. I used a D620 for a couple years at work, before I retired. It ran PCLOS p93 and 2007 better than it ran XP.

[claydoh]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

Yes, so far I agree. The only slight tradeoffs I seem to have made are a lack of parallel port and a mono speaker in place of stereo. No big deal there in either case.

This thing had Vista on it, won't have to comment on how much better any Linux runs compared to that. I did give it one day before dual booting it to natty, and another couple before getting rid of it completely. I can always run it in a VM if I had to. Oddly, I have not yet seen another similar laptop on ebay sell for what I paid for this one - and it seems that models with XP might sell for slightly higher than Vista models

My Evo is already in its second home in the kitchen as a recipe/music/video machine, replacing the even more ancient Thinkpad 770 running Puppy (233 mmx Pentium 1)

Go Natty!!!

[verndog]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

...
My Evo is already in its second home in the kitchen as a recipe/music/video machine, replacing the even more ancient Thinkpad 770 running Puppy (233 mmx Pentium 1)

Go Natty!!!

So now that the Thinkpad is push out of the kitchen, where else can it go but the bathroom or in the toilet.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

Wow! A Linux powered toilet!

The mind boggles at the multi-tasking possibilities....
voice commands controlling the streaming of music while you "work",
or playing a video,
automatically controlling a heating element to warm the water that fills the Bidet to make sure it is at just the right temperature,
voice command to flush the toilet,
automatically lowering the lid and turning out the light when you leave the bathroom,
tracking the spare toilet paper rolls to make sure that you don't run out of paper before your paper work is done,
answering the phone,
or calling 911 if Tux detects heart or breathing irregularities, or if you fall off the commode,
voice command to control the volume and temperature of the shower,
...etc, etc, etc...

Testing the applications would be necesssary to eliminate embarrassing bugs: making sure your mic and/or webcam doesn't accidentally turn on, being hit by ice water in the butt because you mixed up the F vs C units, having the lights go out and the lid come down just as you are settng down ....

[claydoh]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

naw. a tablet device is better for that room, but as it may take a while for me to get one, sadly I will just have to do without - unless one can hack a Kindle which is perhaps more appropriate for that room (and affordable )


My kitchen counter has this thin top drawer, it may be just deep enough to house the laptop base, and then I could maybe mount the lcd to the cabinet door above. Would be a neat project if I get some ambition...

[verndog]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

Wow! A Linux powered toilet!

The mind boggles at the multi-tasking possibilities....
voice commands controlling the streaming of music while you "work",
or playing a video,
automatically controlling a heating element to warm the water that fills the Bidet to make sure it is at just the right temperature,
voice command to flush the toilet,
automatically lowering the lid and turning out the light when you leave the bathroom,
tracking the spare toilet paper rolls to make sure that you don't run out of paper before your paper work is done,
answering the phone,
or calling 911 if Tux detects heart or breathing irregularities, or if you fall off the commode,
voice command to control the volume and temperature of the shower,
...etc, etc, etc...

Testing the applications would be necesssary to eliminate embarrassing bugs: making sure your mic and/or webcam doesn't accidentally turn on, being hit by ice water in the butt because you mixed up the F vs C units, having the lights go out and the lid come down just as you are settng down ....

The Japanese beat you it with their Toto toilet lineup. Very high end equipment. If you've ever been to Japan you'll know what I mean. What a contrast though from traditional Japanese toilets and the Western style Toto's.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Natty on an EIGHT year old P4 Sony VAIO RS420

Well, there's another idea that is a day late and a dollar short!