Agreed. I just thought that if the cheap cases were still available, Charlie could populate it with standard boards and save some money. Since he was talking about driving I wasn't too concerned about the weight.
But I looked around on the web and even the company that I knew used to have them (I bought my tower from them) doesn't make them anymore. All the "lunchboxes" now open up to a larger screen and cost more than a portable :-(.
I will point out that unless things have changed, a lot of the laptops have difficulty running anything but Windows. Not a problem for most, but if you think you might ever want to run Linux, FreeBSD, etc., be sure you investigate compatibility before you buy - ask the Linux, etc. folks, not the salesman :-).
Why? Desktop computers are faster, cheaper, upgradeable, and more versatile in configuration and expansion options.
I agree. Laptops are optimized for one thing: portability. If that's not an interest to you, laptops are a big loser.
todd
Or (and I hate mentioning this because I just don't need more Ebay competition for them) a tablet computer. I happen to like the ones by Fujitsu quite a bit. and...on Ebay...you can get them for $250 to $350 for PLENTY of machine to do what you want to do. Regards Dave Mundt
mp responds:
Now, I hadn't thought of the the after-Christmas increase. That's a good idea. Thanks.
Charlie Self "Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." Sir Winston Churchill
Whaddaya _mean_ "nobody sells them anymore"?
If you DAGS "lunchbox computer case" you'll find a lot more. Trouble is they're specialized equipment and thus quite pricey. You can get a damned good laptop for the price of the case alone.
I'll third it. The Thinkpad 770 that I got off ebay many years ago is now starting college. Just read all the fine print very carefully, check the seller's feedback before you bid, and plan on 200 bucks or so for a new battery--you may not need it in which case you're 200 bucks to the good, but that's not the way to bet.
Charlie, if that Bedford is Bedford, MA and you're driving something that doesn't burn up a hundred bucks worth of gas on the trip to Hartford you might want to go by Kaplan Computers . He always has used notebooks in stock ranging from dirt cheap and pretty old on up, and usually has several Thinkpads. Not as cheap as the best ebay prices but not bad. Nice thing about Kaplan is that you can see what you're getting before you buy.
One thing to watch for with used laptops though, is the battery--if you can't test before you buy then just assume that you're going to have to replace it--that adds 200 bucks or so to the price. Another is the drivers--if it comes with a wiped disk and no recovery disk (usually the case) then you're going to need the device drivers to get it up and fully functional--IBM has drivers for some rather ancient machines up on their site--you can generally count on being able to get drivers for every operating system that was ever supported on that machine.
On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 21:07:36 -0400, Nova calmly ranted:
.-. Better Living Through Denial ---
Actually, Jinco was the place I was thinking of. But the "luchbox" computers they sell now are nothing like the old lunchboxes which looked much like a Kaypro or the little Compaq. A 5" to 7" screen alongside one or two floppies.
One 36" sleeve, and one 33" one, right? (like lugging a Speed Graphic :)
As for what's going on with lap-top pricing, The _biggest_ expense factor is the low-power-consumption component selection. And it's pretty much a fixed _amount_ increment over the 'regular power' components. So, the price hit on the higher capacity stuff is _relatively_ smaller. Add in the 'quantity buying' power of the big boys, and it's not surprising that they can market much more impressive specs for 'very little' more money than the little guys.
Many people _still_ prefer the little guys, because they have a better idea of what they're getting (component suppliers don't change from week-to-week, depending on who has the better price _today_), and can, many times, specify the precise make/model, etc. of the components they want.
Bah. those are the *BIG* ones.
I can get a complete 'system on a board' that bolts to the side of a 3-1/2" hard-drive. Same form-factor. needs only a power-supply to drive the motherboard and the disk.
If you don't need the big hard-disk, something the size of a pack of playing cards is 'no problem'. :)
Of course, you do have to have keyboard, monitor, and probably mouse.
Actually, even OS/MVS (non-XA), including SPF, _will_ fit on a desktop. If you've got a "P-370" card, it runs _native_ on the co-processor board.
Othewise there is the 'Hercules' emulator, which will run anything from about TOS/360 (that's ape perating ystem -- for sites that couldn't afford rotating mass storage, aka 'disk drives') forward. I think it does XA, and even Z-system. *scary* piece of software.
Factoid: Lady Lovelace had the software ready, but Babbage never completed the hardware required to run it.
In article , patriarch "Swingman" wrote in
I'm going to have to dig up my copy of the product announcement for "OS/VU" 'virtual universe'.
It was noted that start-up was _slow_. the IPL of 'sys1.god' took seven days to complete.
System calls to 'non resident galaxies' had a large latency problem.
As for the Neanders -- *what* operating system?? In the good ole days, all programs ran 'stand alone'. There *wasn't* any such thing as an operating system -- either the functionality was embedded in your application code, or it didn't exist. Many shops came to have a 'standard library' of routines for basic device functions, that you could merge to your code, as needed.
The true Neander is going to 'program on the bare metal' producing direct machine-executable code, handling all required functionality internally, without benefit of an operating system, or even an 'assembler' to do instruction translation.
Don't laugh. I've _written_ code under those conditions, myself.
Win95/SE (second editon) *does* support USB, fwiw. ==
Charlie ...
Slight nit-picking correction. There was no SE version of Win95. You're thinking of Win95 OSR2 (OEM Service Release 2). SE was the second version of Win98.
todd
Kind of an ironic historical twist, isn't it? Probably the only time in history the hardware availability lagged the software. (Well, at least in my world that's the case).
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