every now and then, my employer issues new Laptops to their users. Not all at the same time mind you, it is a progressive rollout. And as you machine reaches end of life, they issue you a new one, and take back the old one. This means that every couple of tears they have a mountain of old, but serviceable laptops in the store room. All information on them has been deleted, and they are basically expensive doorstops. Then they have a sale. An email goes out to the whole company (local office), and on a first come first served basis, they SELL them off. Yup, not give away, oh no, sell them. OK, so ZAR114.00 is not a lot of money, but still.
So, in the last offer they had 700 machines available. I shot out an email saying I would take one - and got picked. So, for ZAR114.00 I now have an IBM Think pad - model T41. Old, I know, but it makes a damn fine doorstop! Much better than those rubber wedges which keep disappearing, or which the dogs get hold of and chew up into tiny little pieces.
Also, from a previous roll-out, I had a extended battery at home, which I subsequently find out fits this model! Great! So, today I downloaded UBUNTU - and have created / made a boot up file on a memory stick. neat. This weekend I will install it on my machine back home, and start to play with the "new" OS.
Whats even neater is that I can boot up UBUNTU from any PC / Laptop with the memory stick, and as it's 8GB, I can store loads of stuff on there as well. So if I'm somewhere away from my PC / Laptop, and need to access a file, which happens to be on the stick I have in my wallet, as long as someone gives me a PC, I can access it, and open it, make changes, save it, go on my merry way. Well, in theory, that's how it should work.
Either way, I will have a laptop, with a free OS, which is NOT Windows, and which most people tell me does not keep crashing, with a load of apps (free) which can do lots of stuff (great), including open and read and change MS Office stuff! Nice. And it's all free.
Will let you all know how it goes. Hope I don' permanently damage the "door stop"!
I'm also going to check the on-board memory, and maybe see if I can scrounge some additional to upgrade it a bit, if it can be upgraded. Anyone out there have some memory looking for a good home?
Not too sure what I am going to do with this laptop, but might just use it to store pictures and music on it.
Salagatle!
2 comments:
My asus has windows and I'm ok with it. My wife is a type setter and graphic designer so we'd rather have a mac, but who wants to pay 1800.00 (dollars) plus a gazillion bucks for soft ware.
My son has a mini-mac we got him for college. He doesn't use the windows that came with it. He has downloaded every thing and more free from the internet. I know at one time he used ubuntu and/or other linux based systems and it runs twice as good as mine.
There are almost no viruses for linux, and he can find most of the graphic software on line. I just use mine for an E-machine.
He bought an extra hard drive for all the programs he put on it for all the programs he backed up and can use.
Unfortunately he never gets off it. That's what he is going to school for.
loaded Windows XP just to get the machine to run. Will load Ubuntu next, and make it the primary OS. If it works ok, will delete the Windows.
Salagatle!
PS - I for one am glad u have a PC - love your posts!
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