Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with OS and laptops

Tweak my speculative shitbox

poweredbybeard — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 02:03:01 -0800

SpeculativeUsedLaptopFilter: If I wanted a laptop that was relatively, in order of necessity, cheap, fast, running an OS with an efficient but possibly low-tech GUI, and light, what might my optimal setup be, in both hardware and software? Basically what I'm saying is: I'd like to get a cheap (under $500?), relatively portable, used laptop I could use without drastically sacrificing speed of use from working with XP on a modern(ish) Pentium/1.5Ghz setup, and I'd be willing to change my OS and have less "range" with the computer to accomplish the basic needed tasks efficiently within the price range.

What I'd like to run on it, in order of necessity: text editor, basic word processing, web browser, image viewer, photo editing, MP3 player, basic sound editing (ie. Audacity).

I'm sure there's some sort of statistical or economic term for the point of balance between cheapness and efficiency I'm imagining. Don't know what it is, though.

I'm assuming the OS would likely be some variant of Linux - if so, please suggest flavours, bearing in mind I've no experience. (But maybe not... maybe a Pentium 1 with Windows 3.1? A random guess. I don't know.) Opinions?

Where can I buy a reliable laptop computer without paying the Microsoft Tax?

gd779 — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 23:07:08 -0800

OS-less laptops: I'm in the market for a new laptop computer, and I've got a couple of unused XP licenses currently going to waste. Where can I buy a reliable laptop computer without paying the Microsoft Tax? Thanks in advance for your suggestions. My google-fu only turned up tiny vendors offering laptops of indeterminate quality.

What OS would work on a Dell Inspiron 3000?

signal — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 15:05:14 -0800

My wife's Dell Inspiron 3000 (200 Mhz, 96Mb) does not play well with Windows ME, crashes, slows down, etc.
What OS would work on this old but trusty laptop?

How do I install a new OS on a laptop with no bootable media besides the internal drive?

jaded — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 11:44:14 -0800

I need to put a new OS (hopefully linux) on a laptop with XP and no bootable media other than the HD that's already in it. I've got this old Toshiba portege3010 currently running XP. Installing XP was a
big mistake. It simply does not have the horsepower to do anything useful in XP. So, what I'd like to do is somehow get linux or win98 installed.

Here's the problem: the only place this computer looks at boot time is it's own internal HD. It used to have a floppy drive, but I lost that 2 years ago. And it can't boot off of a bootable CDROM because it needs drivers to see the CDROM (PCMCIA). What I originally tried was booting linux on it with loadlin, but loadlin doesn't appear to work under XP - and with XP I can't find any way to get to a REAL dos prompt. A prompt running in a window doesn't work.

I have one solution that I know will work but it is a major time sink and pain in the ass. I will outline it so that nobody else bothers: I take the HD out of the laptop and plug it into this miniHD to USB adapter that I have. Then I install win98 (gotta be OSR2 for USB support) onto another machine. THen I plug the USB-HD into the win98 machine. Drop to DOS. Sys the USB disk (so that it will boot to DOS) and copy the win98 install tree over to it. THen I put the hard drive back in the laptop and install win98 on the laptop from it's own HD.

'Course, now I'm wondering which will take longer - y'all coming up with an answer (most likely NO) or me just doing it the hard way.