elders

Thank you, I needed that!

Yeah, I try to keep it clean. I'm pretty sure the fan has been warped, so one of the blades drags against the housing a bit, and I don't have the tools to open it up that much to try to fix it. It only happens at high fan speeds, though, and that doesn't happen often enough to be truly annoying.

Yeah, I've been meaning to get rid of Windows for a while now. Haven't really used Linux since like 2010, so it feels like a lot to get into. Already saved some websites, articles, and lemmy posts with good info, though.
One reason I haven't done it yet is because I did manage to save up a bit of money (only like $300) after about a decade of never being able to feed myself at the end of each month. The plan was to get a steam deck, something I've deeply wished for ever since I heard about it, and keep the laptop only as a backup. But I got robbed... forgot my card at a grocery store self checkout, and someone took it and somehow managed to use it. Had just gotten money for that month, so no bills had been paid yet. Not only did I lose the saved money, but I had to take out a loan to pay my rent, etc. So any dream of a steam deck or anything else is dead, it will take years to pay off that loan.

Does Nvidia play better now with linux? I run a 14 yr old laptop (Asus k40in) but it's got Nvidia graphics, and it didn't work well last time I tried Linux on it. (several years ago now)

It's on 24/7, running win10 now and does ok, but I mainly use it for my yard cameras and light surfing when my main pc is busy doing other things.

I use GeForce Now. It fits my needs and the games I like to play. Why pay for my own gaming rig when I can rent it and let others cover the upgrading cost?

There are a few services that allow you to play with the actual game being rendered on remote computers, while your pc only shows the image and sends the input commands. I think the more popular ones are xcloud and geforce now. There are also a few smaller services that allow you to run anything you'd like, without limitations.

I use Shadow, you literally get a high-end PC you stream to any device in real time and can do whatever you want with. Other cloud gaming services only streams the games, so you can't use mods, emulators, etc. Currently playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on max settings, and it's buttery smooth. I also use it for anything else that my laptop can't handle like image and video editing, 3d modelling and rendering.

You could probably open that up pretty easy and fix that I bet

First thing that always went in every Thinkpad I've owned is the wireless card lol. Opposite issue for me.

X220 too.

Just corebooted my X230T daily driver. I've had the x220 keyboard for years and just upgraded the WiFi card, too. I want to keep this thing running as long as possible!

Rumor has it he isn't actually a kind soul, just a nerd with a dream.

Asphalt 9 is from 2018. And it's a mobile game ported to Windows.

Nope, MacBook Pro

Yep. Mounted on the wall in my dad's barn, playing an endless shuffle of my music from 15? Years ago.

That's what I'm still doing now. I upgraded the RAM a couple years ago and the GPU last year, both with cheap older parts that were about $100.

The main problem I've run into so far is that Blender no longer runs since they only support CPUs ten years old or newer. But I don't do that stuff anymore really anyway.

...a.k.a. suckers. 🙃

Likely the easiest

Thank you

Thank you

You rinse before you pit in the dush washer (only if it's really bad though)

I see, thanks

It's often too late to realize it's non repairable. When reviews first come out, no one reviews the drm on components. Even those teardown sites only cover how hard it is to open up a device but don't cover if a part is drm'd until moths or years later. Because there is no way to know until 3rd party parts come out and they don't work.

Yea, but what if you already have a laptop from such a manufacturer?

Why not? Let people run whatever they like.

Familiarity mostly

Video games with invasive anticheats obviously

Adobe Audition.

Revit

Netbook Gang. Bring back netbooks, best computers that ever were.

You count lack of biometrics as a drawback?

Pay me back some other time.

You might be able to play Minetest. It's an open-source engine/launcher for games similar to Minecraft, but it's better optimized.

If you want a very Minecraft-like experience, you can install the MineClone2 game (from within Minetest).

Of course, if you're attached to specific game worlds or friends on Minecraft, those may be more difficult to migrate...

yeah it stutters but i got it to playable framerate. (60-70 fps) (performance mods are pretty much REQUIRED, get sodium and like 50 other fabric performance mods,, you'll need all of 'em)
it has a 4 core 4 thread (no hyperthreading) 2ghz amd a6 and 6 gb of ddr3 ram, out of which ~4.5 is usable
also it has a terrible hdd which I don't feel like replacing.
arch with gnome takes 2 minutes to boot, pop os with kde used to take around 5-6 minutes. (windows is painfully slow btw, around 10-30 minutes to cold boot, fast boot or hibernation is not that bad tho)

The game is a little choppy without sodium, its an old Thinkpad from 2013 that refuses to die.

Dust it out? Or is it one of those that isn't possible to open and maintain at all?

I've had old laptops perform almost like new when I remove the mat of hair on their heat sinks.

Hell, my winME lappy could do it withour breaking a sweat.

I played MP3s on a 486DX4 100MHz. Barely. If anything else happened in the background, it would stutter.

I use Windows media player 8 to play music on my netbook from 2009. Works just fine

My Surface 2 and Surface 3 both developed a hardware problems. :(

It peaks about 90 degrees C when playing YouTube videos. The fan sort of ticks every 5 seconds or so but yeah, it's still okay.

You mean a de-Celeron?

I didn't know about how well developed the second hand market was by now, and my budget was 200 euros. I'll try to be more careful the next time.

I was thinking about adding that, but I also don't want anyone blaming their localized fireworks display on me if it does go bad.

First time hearing lubuntu! Thanks for mentioning it. I'll try this on my old laptop.

Why Hmm?

In general, if you are looking for a system to play games with, building your own is the best option, if you have the money, buying from an SI is the next best (they basically do the same as a custom build, it's just that they're doing it instead of you), after that, you can get a gaming focused, used, prebuilt if you like (like an Alienware or something similarly gaming focused) and do some upgrades (GPU, disk, more RAM, etc) as appropriate, or buy a prebuilt office PC and add a good GPU.

The custom built after market is a nightmare of both good and bad deals; for someone who isn't completely versed on hardware, I would say you either need to bring a friend who is, or just avoid it entirely.

With all used/refurbished systems, always set aside some money for a new primary drive or SSD, since the one that's included is probably fairly worn out, and it's not unusual to have it fail within a few years of getting the system.

The only new PC's I would say you should consider, are from SI's. Where it's basically a custom/self built PC, but built by someone else. Only if you have the money and only if you can't do it yourself for any reason. If you have any technical know how at all and can take an hour to look up PC building guides, then spend a few hours on pcpartpicker or similar to spec the system.... Then just do it yourself. I won't fault anyone for using an SI, if they simply don't have the time to learn and do it themselves, or if they have a mobility issue... (among many other reasons). Buying a new prebuilt from a big name should probably be avoided where possible (names like Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, HP, Asus, Acer, etc). Used are fine as long as you can get a deal and the system is part of the business line.... For gaming, not a lot of business PCs are good for gaming. Some can be upgraded to be decent at it (usually by adding a consumer graphics card).

The difficult one is laptops. If you want a mobile system with graphics enough to play modern games at even modest settings, you're going to have a lot of difficulty finding something in the used/refurb segments... Mainly because GPUs have such a significant performance difference between each generation. Any modern generation GPU in a laptop will command a very high price, and it goes downhill fast, especially considering that mobile GPUs are fairly poor for performance, even compared to the same generation of the same series of desktop card.

In those cases, I'd generally recommend a business system with a thunderbolt GPU dock, and just slap in a desktop GPU. It's not as mobile, but you're going to save a lot of time and heartache trying to find a good system that fits both your performance requirements and your wallet. An external GPU dock gives you the flexibility of using less expensive desktop cards with more power, and upgrading that card whenever it suits you.