The worst part was when there was an error in the code, sometimes intentional. You had to figure it out yourself, or buy the next issue of the magazine where they would print a correction.
I once had a friend who had spent an entire day in the Commodore lab, lose 4 hours of typing a program in because of a power sag. There was only 1 dual Commodore 4040 PET drive networked between all the C64’s.
First time I ever saw someone literally snap.
Yeah, I think that might have been what he had… I dunno, it was probably over 30 years ago.
Maybe you’re thinking of Jaguars. Or almost any British car of a certain period. I believe that while Ford owned Jaguar they managed to completely overcome that legacy.
British cars from the 70s and 80s were bad as well, but most of them didn’t have the charm of being an Italian sports car to help them. I don’t think any of the bad British cars set themselves on fire because they used the wrong glue though.
Interesting, I’ll have to try Mint. And I’m not a fan of the newer old Thinkpads, their touchpads are unusable. Is there a Dell coming up used on eBay currently that you recommend?
V.90/X2, or 56Kflex? they have different warbles.
I can whistle a pretty good impersonation of the v.90 trainup. 
So, the real gripe that Louis has is that in order to replace a $40 1 TB 5400 RPM drive with something else, you have to remove that fantastic, beautiful, supremely expensive screen that Apple decided to glue in place with a specific flavor of glue that, if you sub it out with something else, will fail and ruin the screen, which is half the cost of the damn machine.
THAT is where Apple is shooting themselves in the foot. Apple has a reputation and expectation that "It Just Works™ " and people don’t need to compare specs, hire a geek, or wave a dead chicken in order for them to do their thing. If Apple keeps on this road, they will utterly destroy that reputation, which is worth infinitely more than the pennies they are saving by swapping out a slow mechanical drive that’s has a set lifespan than an SSD which will last (in theory) as long as the machine will.
weight savings in a sports car can be expensive. Two four pound motors will cancel out the effects of an expensive titanium exhaust. The interesting point is when a manual mechanism is motorized to save weight.
https://pbocflorida.com/the-savings-and-costs-of-weight-reduction/
Ah well, I don’t drive, so it doesn’t matter that I can’t spend money I don’t have to further pollute the planet.
I was blown away when my dad brought home a Powerbook 170 from work (he was going on a trip so they gave him a loaner).
640x480 not-backlit monochrome passive matrix LCD display. I had never seen anything like it. It looked like someone had made a printout on a piece of paper and stuck it on the screen. When you moved stuff around it would smear, but I didn’t care because it was clear that it was the future. The picture really doesn’t do it justice, those screens were crisp, at least compared to the CRTs every other computer used. The trackball was pretty nice to use as well, shame they were lost to the sands of time and everlasting quest for thinness.
I’ve done SSD drive swaps on a 2010 21" and a 2011 27" - ostensibly turned them into new machines. Not sure about newer machines, but while the process is fiddly there’s a very low risk of anything breaking. Use a guitar pick or some other thin plastic to pry the glass off - it won’t break if you take your time.
Worst bit was removing the wiring from the motherboard, and lifting the motherboard to access the SATA and power connectors - you feel like the MB is gonna snap like a cracker. But it doesn’t.
the powermac 170 was 640x400. Those missing 80 rows were sometimes important-- but by then, games looked awful in monochrome.
Looking at the specs my Dad must have brought home the 140, because the 170 had the active matrix display. It’s hard to remember exact details from the early 90s.
I usually stick with the Latitude series, usually whatever the mainstream 15.6 model is. The EXX70 series are hitting the three year mark now, so should be getting cheap. I’m looking at a 15.6" Latitude E5570, which has sixth gen i5/i7 processors. I’m seeing them as low as $300.
The EXX50 series with fifth gen processors are sub $200 at this point, if you look hard. Beware of cracked bezels and heavily worn keyboards. Those machines were heavily used, not just kept in a laptop bag.
Good tip. I always try to get laptops that spent their lives in corporate docking stations, that are now “off lease”, whatever that means exactly. Use doesn’t get much more benign than that.
And thanks for the tips on the Dells, might be time for an upgrade.
The 917 also had a balsa wood shift knob.
The last edition Acura NSX had a mesh shift lever boot because it weighed 30 grams less than the leather version.
I find this question perennially mockable. Do you really not know what computers are used for?
the inac 5k had that glorious screen… Other companies quickly followed suit. I like some of the ideas behind microsoft’s surface studio.
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