It's upgrade time again.....(woo-hooo)

MikeWalsh

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Evening, gang.

I have to report the passing of the D630 Latitude. I suspect the dratted Nvidia Quadro GPU had undergone a few too many thermal cycles.......more than that early lead-free solder could handle, anyway. And those volcanically "run-hot" Quadros really didn't help with that brittle solder the industry was using in the early days (before they got the mix right). It's no wonder they got whacked with a class-action lawsuit, given the sheer number of failures that got reported at the time....

I started getting multiple lines across the bottom of the screen about 2 months ago, followed by the bottom quarter of the screen mirroring the top quarter. Soon afterward, it was almost unusable, with top and bottom of the desktop all jumbled up together with lines, spots, shears and other artifacts. The very next time I booted it.....no display at all. That was it; she was a 'goner'.

Sooooo.......in Queen's words, "another one bites the dust". So sad.....but it was around 16 years old, with most of that lifetime spent struggling with M$'s bloated offerings. She'd done well, really.

Off to take a troll round eBay, and see what was floating around..!

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I wanted another Lat, TBH, but also wanted to move up the ladder a ways and get summat a wee bit newer and better equipped. I soon found a sweet-looking E6430; Ivy Bridge (3rd-gen) Core i5-3340M - 2.7 GHz base, 3.3 turbo boost - dual-core with HT.....effectively a quad, of course. This was paired with a single 8 GB DDR3 SoDIMM (I'll double this up to 16 GB in a few weeks time).....and a WD 'Blue' 640 GB plate-spinner, adorned with Win 7 Ultimate! This will be getting replaced with a Crucial BX500 480 GB SSD when I get around to it (plenty big enough for Puppy); the date of manufacture on the WD is August 2009, so I wouldn't trust it any further than I could throw it.

The seller was asking GBP £60 for it, which I haggled down to £52. I'm happy with that.

This has Dell's composite magnesium/cast aluminium chassis, with a brushed stainless 'bumper' round the edge and a very smart dark blue (almost black, but not quite) aluminium cover on the back of the lid, with a razor-sharp chromed Dell logo. Apart from one scratch & a coupla scuff marks on one side, it's in nice condition......and built like a brick s**t-house.

Only a 1366x768 14" display, but that's plenty big enough. At least this is true 16:9 HD; the D630 was a strange 1280x800 (apparently termed "WXGA"??? I get completely lost with this stuff, I'll be honest).

I've already replaced the battery (the old one - a DELL original - wouldn't hold a charge at all; like the proverbial dodo, it was D-E-A-D.) Currently, I'm in the middle of setting her up with Fossapup64 and the Debian 12-based BookwormPup64 on a SanDisk Ultra 'Fit' 256GB thumb-drive; that'll do me till I snag the BX500. The Centrino wireless works OOTB, ditto the built-in webcam.....though the latter has only a single resolution available, and very few adjustments. I'll probably still use the c920, 'cos the picture quality is miles better. Even the built-in microphone works OOTB.

I'm quite happy with it!

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The rubberised coating round the keyboard and palm-rest hasn't yet gone 'sticky', and even the dedicated volume buttons to the right of the keyboard work with Puppy, too. And I think y'all can just make out the SD card reader slot to the right-hand side at the front in the second pic....

It's a nice piece of kit, if I'm honest. This one has an Nvidia chip onboard, yet the i5 still has on-die Intel HD graphics.....and most Puppies run with the Intel driver, anyway, which suits me better.


Mike. :D
 
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RIP the Latitude, Mike.

Go the Dells.

Avagudweegend

Wizard
 
@wizardfromoz :-

TBH, Chris, the market is absolutely saturated with cheap, good-condition refurbs and similar. If I spend £40-50 on a reasonable second-hand one every coupla years, I'm quids-in compared to blowing an arm & a leg on a new one, especially given that increasingly better spec'd hardware steadily works its way down the ladder as time goes by.

What could be better? It's a "win-win"......know what I mean? More so for those of us who aren't into all this AI nonsense...


Mike.
happy-small.gif
 
I haven't gone wrong here Mike with refurbished Lenovo thinkpads and a decent price They just mostly work and last. And I don't need the latest and greatest. I'm not a gamer.
 
@kc1di :-

I haven't gone wrong here Mike with refurbished Lenovo thinkpads and a decent price They just mostly work and last. And I don't need the latest and greatest. I'm not a gamer.

I know where you're coming from with that, Dave. Once I figured out all the wee 'workarounds' you need with Dells - many years ago, now - I've always found them extremely Linux-friendly and easy-to-use.

Certain brands have always been in this category. Dells are one. Thinkpads have always been highly thought of where Linux is concerned (there had to be SOME reason why RMS is so fond of 'em)! By & large, the majority of HPs are okay, too.

Acer and Asus, I can't speak from experience. I know some folks have got on okay with them. From what I understand, most Toshibas have always been a big-time pain in the butt for those of us on this side of the fence.....and from what I can make out, some folks have even got Linux running on M$'s Surface gear..?

I'd sooner stick with what I know has always worked for me, I think!


Mike. ;)
 
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The seller was asking GBP £60 for it, which I haggled down to £52. I'm happy with that.
you did well there, fully refurbished grade A, are usualy around £170, grade B around £150 and grade c £125

I liked my old insperon, but I went for a Latitude 5490 as they say the price was too good to refuse. and now there are so many grade A and B fully refurbished [of all makes] about there are plenty of bargains to be had, A couple of weeks back there was a 20 yr old Insperon 15.4" screen I3 twin core+ 2 threads in as new condition for £75
And to our friends abroad, some will be thinking that's expensive, other that's cheap, but for UK prices , excellent
 
Both of my Laptops are Refurbs a Dell Latitude E6530 and a Dell Latitude E6410

E6430 is my main machine, bought mine from Wal-Mart for $219 a few years ago
CPU: Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-3630QM bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache:
L2: 1024 KiB Speed (MHz): avg: 1200 min/max: 1200/3400 cores: 1: 1200 2: 1200 3: 1200
4: 1200 5: 1200 6: 1200 7: 1200 8: 1200
Info: Memory: total: 16 GiB available: 15.53 GiB used: 1.77 GiB (11.4%)
 
I bought a refurbished Dell a while back. I was just testing to see if it'd work and was prepared to replace it with a new computer. It's fine. It's not great, but it certainly meets my needs.
 
I continue to be impressed with this thing.

I noticed the other day that the screen was 'flapping' about a little bit.....and closer examination showed that the hinge-covers were moving in & out slightly in relation to the casing.

On both my previous, older Dells, the only way to 'fix' this would have been to open up the case and tighten a couple of nuts/screws up from the inside. Not so here. Directly below each hinge at the back of the casing, there's a small, countersunk, silver Philips-headed machine screw. These DID prove to be not as far in as they should have been. 3/4 of a turn on both sides, and Bob's yr mother's brother; everything nice'n'tight & 'snug' once more.

Easiest fix I've ever carried out on one of these machines. I've already replaced the old HDD with a new 480 GB Crucial BX500 - nowt special, just a basic SATA 3 SSD - which is perfect for my needs. Next on the agenda is a second stick of DDR3, to bring me up to 16GB. With the way this runs, it'll be a perfectly adequate 'stand-in' for the HP desktop rig if, as & when it should require downtime for any reason.


Mike. :D
 
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Acer and Asus, I can't speak from experience.

I can, at least for Asus. Never had a problem putting a Linux distro on my Asus and it running correctly. Started with Mint 17, then 18. From there to Devuan 2, to Devuan 4, and currently to Devuan 5.
 

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