Janet's dad was kind enough to give me his old laptop, which he found he wasn't using anymore. It was running Windows ME on a 1Ghz AMD CPU, with 160Mb of Ram, and a 20Gb hard disk – it was rather unstable! Seeing the potential, as those AMD processors can be throttled back to ~500mhz to save heat and power - I figured this could be a really good laptop, so I don't need to bother Janet while she's blogging (like right now!). I sourced out a 256Mb SODIMM, a new Li-Ion battery and the appropriate OS to make best use of slightly older hardware – Linux! I went for Fedora Core 6, as it was what I had on hand. Originally I was going to build my home Linux boxes to mirror the Entrust common appliance architecture, and use RHEL – but hey, why bother, the distros are so similar anyway.
I now have the laptop fully installed, with a LinkSys 802.11n wireless card, and it's working out extremely well! The new battery looks like it's going to last ~4-5hrs when fresh (for now anyway) and the wireless access is seamless throughout the house. I couldn't be more pleased with how easy it was to set up and get going.
Thanks a bunch Bert!
5 comments:
Just posted to this on facebook, but I never even thought about Linux. That would be perfect.
Do you notice a big difference in performance with the processor throttled back that far?
I just posted to this on facebook, but I never even considered Linux (reading the complete post here). That would be perfect.
Is there much difference in performance with the processor throttled back?
oops...sorry
S'aright!
In the past when I've posted comments they didn't always show up for some reason. Obviously, they've got that taken care of. ;)
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