My $20 laptop

[wolfen69]

i was fortunate enough to pick up an IBM Thinkpad X30 for 20 bucks from a junk man i know. i went to his place of business to look at it, and at first i didn't take notice of its condition. i was more worried about it booting, etc. so i flipped him $20, and off i went.

i get it home and do a thorough inspection, and my eyes popped out of my head. it was in near immaculate condition! there was only 1 thing though. no hard drive. no biggie, i'll just do a pendrive install for now.

i found out the hard way that Thinkpads can be very tough to install linux on. long story short, puppy 4.2 worked great, and i am enjoying a very nice lappie for $20. YEAH!

it also came with the charger, laptop bag, and decent battery.

specs: 1.2ghz cpu-512 ram-12" lcd

:guitar: :guitar: :guitar:

anyone else ever get "lucky" and get a nice computer for cheap?

P.S. i also have another story or 2, but i'll save those for later. it's nice to know people.

[init1]

Wow, that's a great find! I once bought a Mac Plus for $2. I ended up giving it away, but I really should have kept it.

[swoll1980]

i was fortunate enough to pick up an IBM Thinkpad X30 for 20 bucks from a junk man i know. i went to his place of business to look at it, and at first i didn't take notice of its condition. i was more worried about it booting, etc. so i flipped him $20, and off i went.

i get it home and do a thorough inspection, and my eyes popped out of my head. it was in near immaculate condition! there was only 1 thing though. no hard drive. no biggie, i'll just do a pendrive install for now.

i found out the hard way that Thinkpads can be very tough to install linux on. long story short, puppy 4.2 worked great, and i am enjoying a very nice lappie for $20. YEAH!

it also came with the charger, laptop bag, and decent battery.

specs: 1.2ghz cpu-512 ram-12" lcd

:guitar: :guitar: :guitar:

anyone else ever get "lucky" and get a nice computer for cheap?

P.S. i also have another story or 2, but i'll save those for later. it's nice to know people.

I've got a HP laptop 3Ghz P4 1 GiB RAM my friend gave me for free. It needs a screen, and a hard drive. I can take the hard drive out of the dell I have, I'm just waiting to buy a screen for it. He also gave me an old compaq a year ago with 128MiB RAM and a 700 Mhz Celeron. It run great.

[chris4585]

I've gotten a 2.4ghz xeon cpu x2, 1gb of ram (now its 2gb), 40gb hdd, dell precision 450 for free (from family who thought it was dead), turned out all that was wrong with it was the video card was dead, so I bought one for $2 and I was set.

[MaxIBoy]

Pentium II, 128 megs RAM, Voodoo 3DFX NEC Ready-series Media Center PC.

Got it free after using Puppy to back up the old lady neighbor's files from it (Win95 had been so screwed up, not even explorer.exe would run.) Replaced the old 10-gig HDD with a new 80-gig one (don't trust old hard drives, I've lost data to them before.) Been using it as a server ever since.

[zmjjmz]

I've gotten most of my old computers free, but notably I got a Dell Dimension 3000 and a Dimension 4600 for free from my grandparents, a Dell Inspiron 1200 from a friend, and a Gateway Solo 5300 from my aunt, which is now my server.
The Dimensions don't have anything on them yet, and the Inspiron and Gateway both run Sidux.

[gymophett]

I wish I could get such a great deal.
Recently, my dad had a 8 year old laptop stuffed in a drawer. I pulled it out, hooked up an external monitor, an external keyboard, and external mouse. I loaded Ubuntu 9.04 on it and my 9 year old sister uses it as a desktop computer in her room. :)

[myusername]

gateway desktop 2.0 ghz pentium 4 512 ram for free. i bought an imac g3 for 50 bucks it runs fine

[Mehall]

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
256MB RAM
built-in gfx, but has an empty AGP slot ;)
Has a card-reader on the front too, and a DVD writer.

Got it free on freecycle. Woman probably thought it was dead (she never told me it wouldn't boot when I was offered.)

Turns out all that was wrong was the HDD partition table was trying to address more space than existed on the HDD.

One quick boot of any linux OS later, gparted sorted it :D

[benj1]

atari 2600, my dad brought it home from work one day.:P

[chriskin]

i have taken a hard disk , 2 cd/dvd writers , a whole dual-core desktop and one or two cpus the day the university chose to buy new equipment and left all the old ones outside the gates along with a sign saying that anyone can take anything he wants until the next week, when they would give the computers away for scrap metal :)

(asking 20$ for a computer is rather strange by the way, a reasonable man would either give it for free or ask a higher amount of money. 15euros is just the keyboard's worth :P)

[gn2]

I got a P3 Dell Optiplex GX110 SFF on eBay for £10.
After some silencing modifications and adding a hard drive, it's still in daily use as a dedicated jukebox.

[mips]

i found out the hard way that Thinkpads can be very tough to install linux on.


The opposite is usually true.

Anyway, go and buy yourself a 2.5" PATA HD for the beast. Those are truelly great laptops.
www.thinkwiki.org


.

[MaxIBoy]

atari 2600, my dad brought it home from work one day.:PMaking room for the gamecubes, eh? I want your dad's job.

[SculptusPoe]

Heh the best deal I've found was a sub 200$ toshiba laptop on ebay. I use it mostly as a backup if one of my computers go down and I need net access or something to carry anywhere I need troubleshooting. It still holds up for my uses after 3 or so year, so I'm pretty happy with it.

[HappyFeet]

The opposite is usually true.


www.thinkwiki.org
[/I]

I too have a Thinkpad X30, and found that not many distros will boot on it. It could be just that one model that is a hassle.

[cookieofdoom]

i was fortunate enough to pick up an IBM Thinkpad X30 for 20 bucks from a junk man i know. i went to his place of business to look at it, and at first i didn't take notice of its condition. i was more worried about it booting, etc. so i flipped him $20, and off i went.

i get it home and do a thorough inspection, and my eyes popped out of my head. it was in near immaculate condition! there was only 1 thing though. no hard drive. no biggie, i'll just do a pendrive install for now.

i found out the hard way that Thinkpads can be very tough to install linux on. long story short, puppy 4.2 worked great, and i am enjoying a very nice lappie for $20. YEAH!

it also came with the charger, laptop bag, and decent battery.

specs: 1.2ghz cpu-512 ram-12" lcd

:guitar: :guitar: :guitar:

anyone else ever get "lucky" and get a nice computer for cheap?

P.S. i also have another story or 2, but i'll save those for later. it's nice to know people.

I'd recommend giving CrunchBang (http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/downloads) (or Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/)) a try. You've just about got the resources to run regular old Ubuntu fairly well.

[mips]

I too have a Thinkpad X30, and found that not many distros will boot on it. It could be just that one model that is a hassle.

LiveCD or Alternate type install CDs?

[HappyFeet]

LiveCD or Alternate type install CDs?

There is no CD drive, so I just tried pendrive installs. But most distros won't even boot. Puppy, as wolfen stated, works great though.

[mips]

There is no CD drive, so I just tried pendrive installs. But most distros won't even boot. Puppy, as wolfen stated, works great though.

Oops. But you can always move a Alternate install iso to a USB stick as well as other methods.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_on_ThinkPads_without_CD-ROM_drive

[HappyFeet]

Oops. But you can always move a Alternate install iso to a USB stick as well as other methods.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_on_ThinkPads_without_CD-ROM_drive

Thanks, but I'm really happy with Puppy on a pendrive. It's really fast and does what I need.

[amg181270]

i was fortunate enough to pick up an IBM Thinkpad X30 for 20 bucks from a junk man i know. i went to his place of business to look at it, and at first i didn't take notice of its condition. i was more worried about it booting, etc. so i flipped him $20, and off i went.

i get it home and do a thorough inspection, and my eyes popped out of my head. it was in near immaculate condition! there was only 1 thing though. no hard drive. no biggie, i'll just do a pendrive install for now.

i found out the hard way that Thinkpads can be very tough to install linux on. long story short, puppy 4.2 worked great, and i am enjoying a very nice lappie for $20. YEAH!

it also came with the charger, laptop bag, and decent battery.

specs: 1.2ghz cpu-512 ram-12" lcd

:guitar: :guitar: :guitar:

anyone else ever get "lucky" and get a nice computer for cheap?

P.S. i also have another story or 2, but i'll save those for later. it's nice to know people.


Why am I never this lucky. I always do odd jobs for people but all I get are a few beers (appreciated anyway) and an appointment for the near future. Sometimes I hate to know what I know. :frown:

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Slightly off topic. I give away my old computers. The last one I gave away about 3 weeks ago was a Dell laptop with a 2.4 GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 60 GB HDD. It dual boots Windows XP Home with 25 GB of free disk space and Ubuntu 8.10 with 15 GB of free disk space. I gave it to a cute 45 year old female friend that was grateful ;). Keep in mind I'm in my 60's; therefore, cute is relative :P.

[Mehall]

Slightly off topic. I give away my old computers. The last one I gave away about 3 weeks ago was a Dell laptop with a 2.4 GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 60 GB HDD. It dual boots Windows XP Home with 25 GB of free disk space and Ubuntu 8.10 with 15 GB of free disk space. I gave it to a cute 45 year old female friend that was grateful ;). Keep in mind I'm in my 60's; therefore, cute is relative :P.

If I had money to get more computers for myself I would give more stuff away, but given that all the tech I get, I get for free or virtually free, I can't afford to give what I have away ;)

[boogers]

I got a free toshiba satellite im on now. The screen was busted and ended up costing me $80 bucks on Ebay. Now its not 20 dollars but still a good deal.

[scottuss]

I got a Dell laptop given for fixing my house mate's new laptop that she'd managed to break. Her new one just needed a hard drive replacement, now I've got a laptop. Arch is running on it at the mo but I'm going to stick 9.04 on there when I get time

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

If I had money to get more computers for myself I would give more stuff away, but given that all the tech I get, I get for free or virtually free, I can't afford to give what I have away ;)

I remember those times when I was young. My first computer cost 2 months of my yearly salary. Now they are about 1 week of my salary. Trying to sell old computers costs me more in terms of my time than giving them away. I also get to help others that aren't as fortunate as I am. I will retire soon hoping someone will return the favour, and help me with my computer needs.

[I-75]

I once got a G3 Mac from my brother in law for free. And once I bought a generic computer desktop with Windows 2000 for $2. I also got a good deal on a old E-Machines computer with XP Home for $10 at a flea market.

[TombKing]

I have had various surplus or second hand computers in the past. The last one ran Debian for at least 5 years. A year and a half ago it worked out that I got some extra play money so I finally got a shiny new out of the box laptop.

My kid has a compaq presario with an AMD athlon processor and 1GB from a acquaintance who was getting frustrated with it and just wanted a new computer. I helped her set the new one up and move the data from the old one over. I made one more data backup to a dvd then wiped it and loaded Edbuntu on it for him and made him just a user level account. He likes it a lot, especially after I got the dvd codecs loaded and he can watch his DVDs in his room.

[drawkcab]

I left an old pIII on the curb a few years ago so someone else got lucky at my expense. The luck hasn't been returned.