Friend came into some Acer TravelMate 5720 laptops...

[VirtualLarry]

Have yet to try powering them on, unsure if they have RAM and HDD installed, or a working battery.

Can get a Chinese charger for it for $7 on ebay.

Assuming for a moment, that they are complete, what should my friend do with them, with my help?

They are Core2Duo 2.2Ghz with either 2GB of RAM and a 160GB HDD, or1GB of RAM and a 120GB HDD. GM965 chipset, I think, with the option for a discrete ATI 2400XT GPU.

One review mentions being shipped with Vista Business, downgraded to XP Pro.

Would Win10 32-bit run on this machine, you think? Can Core2Duo laptops usually boot off of USB?

Would be looking to swap in a 32/60GB SSD, probably.

https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-...4-core-2-duo-t7500-1-gb-ram-120-gb-hdd/specs/

Edit: It should be stated that my friend has never owned a laptop before. This would be a nice opportunity for him, and his GF, if they both work.

 

[Blue_Max]

Core2duo w/ USB 2 should boot fine and perform well. Ancient USB1 is too slow and USB3 won't work without drivers.
If they have 1x 2GB stick but room for a pair, I'd raid half the machines and make each have 3-4GB.

Unless you can get those 60GB SSD's for unbelievably cheap, it's not worth the effort.

I'd get as many machines working as possible with what you have there, then donate them all to a charity for a tax writeoff or trade them somewhere for one better thing you can really use. (Two machines worth $40ea beats one worth $60!)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, just got back home from friend's place. He had two of them. He said he looked at one of them, and it had a cracked screen. I just grabbed the one on top, which thankfully did not have a cracked screen, plugged in my Chinese charger from my other Acer laptop, and it POSTed. Good sign.

So, I saw during the boot that it had "boot failure". So I went into BIOS (F2, btw), and there was no HDD listed. So I opened up the back, and there was no HDD physically installed. No caddy either, unfortunately. So I pulled out a 60GB cheap SSD, installed it, but I didn't like the way it was hanging in the air, so I folded up a piece of 8.5"x11" paper, and made sort of a "cradle" for it to fit into. Worked out OK.

It booted off of my Win10 install USB no problem, once I hit F12 for boot menu. Win10 (32-bit, because it only had 1GB RAM installed) 1607 installed fine. Although, no internet, but it did find the wireless card and could find networks.

I call it a resounding success. I still have to talk to my friend about some payment for at the very least the parts I supplied. He wasn't feeling too great at the time, so I didn't want him getting upset and stressing.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'd avoid using paper. It's an insulator. Will make stuff run hotter.

 

[Blue_Max]

I'd avoid using paper. It's an insulator. Will make stuff run hotter.

Agreed. I'd aim for something plastic to wedge in there to hold it steady but not completely block airflow. My last laptop mod worked perfectly with a plastic pen cap.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, I had only considered the drive's thermals, and not overall airflow. It's an SSD, it's not going to get hot.

Maybe I'll look into getting him a replacement caddy, if it's cheap enough. It's bad enough that I feel like charging my friend $60 for getting it working for him. (Mostly parts, and gas money.)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-TravelMate-5720-Laptop-4gb-Ram-120GB-HD-WINDOWS-XP-Complete-/321872136202

Look at the pic of the "guts" of the laptop on that listing. I don't think that filling the bottom of the HDD bay with paper is going to seriously affect thermals of the rest of the system. (Edit: Or is it? Opinions, please.)

 

[xgsound]

Get the ram out of the other if you can end up with 2 GB. It's free.

Jim

 

[you2]

install linux; light weight.

 

[JeffMD]

Yea windows 10 would be the last thing I would put on it. I have a core2 based laptop as well.. it was my last laptop. I have it running windows 7 and won't go any higher. This is kind of because its video is ati x1400 which has no driver support in windows 8+.

BTW your laptop model may have had the option for a discrete gpu, but most laptops of this era if they didn't comes with a gpu which WAS on an addon card, you are given a different version of the motherboard to accommodate the igpu graphics and it does not have the socket for the dGPU.