honeyaureus wrote:
Hard drive sounds best, since I'm not sure I want to put up with more crashing (Toshiba10 did a bit of that) and this one doesn't take floppy disks. It's also just young enough that it could probably handle Windows Vista. It says right on the sticker Vista capable. I might have to expand the RAM, though. It already gets eaten pretty badly.
Vista era = dork age of computing hardware. What I mean, is that computers made around that time tended not to be very good, with laughable CPUs, GPUs not powerful enough to drive their widescreen displays, etc. At least yours has a Centrino Duo, which is actually a somewhat OK CPU, basically like a dual-core Pentium M. Of course, that also means that it likely has Intel onboard graphics, which are pretty much the WORST EVER for playing any sort of games. To put it in perspective, my Pentium M Acer, a 2004 model, could run most games from 1999-2001 decently, as well as Command and Conquer: Renegade which surprised the hell out of me, but as soon as I introduced Counter Strike 1.6 or the Halo demo, it choked. Both of those games came out before my laptop was even manufactured, and aside from the PC port of Halo being notorious for its poor optimization, my laptop should have theoretically handled CS without a sweat.
I have a Toshiba laptop made around the same era as yours that I picked up from a recycling center of all places, in amazingly good shape, and I've run a number of different Linux distros on it. Now, mine is different, as it has an Athlon 64x2, (crappy) Radeon graphics and twice as much ram, but yours should be just as capable of running something like Crunchbang, Puppy, or if you're OK with trying a more obscure distro, Semplice.
Actually, Semplice is a pretty good one to use, as it's like Crunchbang, but more user-friendly. The biggest difference is that its right-click app menu actually updates automatically, whereas the one on Crunchbang has to be edited manually. The downside is that Semplice is heavier and not as easy to customize. I'm not sure which one I would recommend more, Crunchbang is lighter and more customizable, but it also requires more knowledge to use, and you're going to spend a LOT of time editing configuration files when you use it.
But anyway, check your BIOS to see if you can boot from USB. It might be listed under hard drives, so plug a USB stick in before you boot up just to see if it shows up on the list. Brand shouldn't matter too much, though SanDisk drives tend to be troublesome. Also, make sure you use at least a 4GB stick if you decide to go with a "full fat" distro like Mint (which I don't recommend doing), or 2GB if it's something lighter.
16 Jul 2014, 5:41 am
