What to do with old laptop?

[Shawn]

I've got an old Panasonic Toughbook CF-45. It's got a P2 266MHz processor, 160MB of ram, a 2GB hard drive, usb port (along with vga, serial and parallel ports), cd-rom, floppy drive, and 2 PCMICA slots filled with an ethernet card and a wireless card. Battery is completely dead.

What should I do with it?




More background info if you're bored:

I was going to install Linux on it just to fool around with but had a few problems. I had an old copy of Ubuntu 6.06 that I tried to install but 80% through the install it ran out of disk space. LOL.

I also tried the latest version of Xubuntu but the Live CD wouldn't install. I think it ran out of memory (Live CD needs 192MB of ram apparently). I was going to try the alternate install but ran out of CD-Rs. Damn Small Linux worked, but it sucks ass.

I also tried a few Windows OSes just to see how they would run. Windows 98SE is very fast and doesn't take much hard drive space (~350MB), but nothing works with it anymore. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to download a more modern browser because nothing loaded properly in IE 5, including Microsoft's IE 6 download site. :roll: Then I couldn't find any drivers for my usb stick and every site I visited kept trying to install Flash player only to then tell me it couldn't install because my OS wasn't supported.

That was the last straw, so I decided to install Windows 2000. It ran great and everything but it took 2min to boot up. I had XP installed previously and it didn't take that long so I'm not sure what the deal was.

Anyway I decided to try a copy of XP SP3 with IE7 and WMP11 slipstreamed. It actually works just as well as Win2k with all the extra crap turned off and boots in about half the time as Win2k. The only problem is it uses about 1.8GB. I don't even have enough space to install MS Office.

 

[SonicIce]

Looks like you already found alot to do with it

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Shawn
Anyway I decided to try a copy of XP SP3 with IE7 and WMP11 slipstreamed. It actually works just as well as Win2k with all the extra crap turned off and boots in about half the time as Win2k. The only problem is it uses about 1.8GB. I don't even have enough space to install MS Office.

Have you tried installing OpenOffice instead of MS Office?

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: Shawn
Anyway I decided to try a copy of XP SP3 with IE7 and WMP11 slipstreamed. It actually works just as well as Win2k with all the extra crap turned off and boots in about half the time as Win2k. The only problem is it uses about 1.8GB. I don't even have enough space to install MS Office.

Have you tried installing OpenOffice instead of MS Office?

No. How much space does that use up when installed?

 

[lxskllr]

Put a bigger hd in, and use it as a jukebox.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: Shawn
Anyway I decided to try a copy of XP SP3 with IE7 and WMP11 slipstreamed. It actually works just as well as Win2k with all the extra crap turned off and boots in about half the time as Win2k. The only problem is it uses about 1.8GB. I don't even have enough space to install MS Office.

Have you tried installing OpenOffice instead of MS Office?

No. How much space does that use up when installed?

OpenOffice 3.0... Choose the "Custom" install and only install the components that you need.

 

[phaxmohdem]

I had a similar experience with an old IBM 600e I got (PII 366). I ended up scoring a 20GB laptop drive for dirt cheap, and stuck it in there with Win 2000. Added a PCMCIA WiFi card, and I use it to stream movies and music off my file server (DIVX playback is a bit choppy, but you get the gist of what you're watching). Makes for a great replacement to bathroom magazines

 

[corkyg]

You have several good options already. I pass mine along to my kids and grandkids. I keep the newest one around for their use when they visit - they can install their games on it and leave my system alone.

 

[EULA]

I have several similar old laptops, and my plan is to turn them into digital picture frames for slideshows or such...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Heh, that beats my old laptop. A black & white Compaq, unsure what CPU. I installed Win95 on there, using floppies! Remote desktop barely works, the data streams faster than the laptop can process, so it eventually desyncs.