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My laptop looks stolen because it has "Property of UCSC" deeply scratched into its cover. It is a sturdy IBM ThinkPad A21m with an Ultrabay 2000 -- floppy. That can be replaced with a modern everything combo for under a hundred dollars (the price of my new tool was $125). It's quite quite functional. I don't know how long the battery lasts between charges. I have downloaded the hardware manual and identified things on it and checked it out -- it appears to be in good shape. Apparently it's not supposed to be charged to 100% unless I know I'm going to work it really hard, and it's now supposed to go down past 30% before charging, and I'm supposed to remove the battery when I'm working on AC.
I bought it legit from the surplus barn and didn't have the wit to by the Apple one for Frank but what the hell, he's a grownup and he can damned well get a job and buy his own.
It has nothing on it to speak of but I will put Word Perfect on it and not much else and use it for writing and not much else. It does have a modem and so I could presumably use it to go online but that is not what I got it for. Also I could apparently get it a wireless card fairly easily.
The nice man at the surplus who sold it to me was the one who checked out the computers so he was able to be quite clear on what was known or not known about them. This one was used by the disability resources center. It has Windows 2000 on it, which I never hated all that much, and 16 gig free on the hard drive, and other than that it appears to have all the better parts where there are choices (memory and stuff).
I know that some of you out there are Mac people: I'm not, but it's just taste with me (I do not like windowblinds, and I hate the specifics of Mac menus and that annoying and snarky Finder apparatus: I just find the Windows way of organizing access more transparent and easier to use). Also I know that some of you are getting the newest and fanciest and making sacrifices to do so. It's not that I'm against gadgetry. It's that I'm in no hurry -- and also I'm seriously underemployed. Anyway, I'm thrilledto have a six-year-old bare-bones laptop that IBM no longer sells the parts to (but other people do!). It's exactly what I wanted.
Except I have to get the new cd-dvd thing before I can install Word Perfect. And it has only one USB port so the fact that I just happened to have acquired a USB mouse for laptops is irrelevant (since I will have one of my jump drives -- either Hermes or Munin -- attached from time to time). I am pleased to discover, since I'm not using a mouse, that I like the little clitoris thing nestled between G, H, and B better than the pad thing on Emma's Mac laptop. Casual investigation revealed no special pain in operation. This is cool!
Its name is probably Hugin. I realize this is skewed, because Hugin and Munin should be the same scale as they are both Odin's birds, but really Hugin is more appropriately applied to a whole computer because it means Thought, and Munin, meaning memory, is more appropriate to a jump drive, and anyway they were named in the order, Hermes first, then Munin when I accidentally acquired a second one, and Hugin last of all.
I bought it legit from the surplus barn and didn't have the wit to by the Apple one for Frank but what the hell, he's a grownup and he can damned well get a job and buy his own.
It has nothing on it to speak of but I will put Word Perfect on it and not much else and use it for writing and not much else. It does have a modem and so I could presumably use it to go online but that is not what I got it for. Also I could apparently get it a wireless card fairly easily.
The nice man at the surplus who sold it to me was the one who checked out the computers so he was able to be quite clear on what was known or not known about them. This one was used by the disability resources center. It has Windows 2000 on it, which I never hated all that much, and 16 gig free on the hard drive, and other than that it appears to have all the better parts where there are choices (memory and stuff).
I know that some of you out there are Mac people: I'm not, but it's just taste with me (I do not like windowblinds, and I hate the specifics of Mac menus and that annoying and snarky Finder apparatus: I just find the Windows way of organizing access more transparent and easier to use). Also I know that some of you are getting the newest and fanciest and making sacrifices to do so. It's not that I'm against gadgetry. It's that I'm in no hurry -- and also I'm seriously underemployed. Anyway, I'm thrilledto have a six-year-old bare-bones laptop that IBM no longer sells the parts to (but other people do!). It's exactly what I wanted.
Except I have to get the new cd-dvd thing before I can install Word Perfect. And it has only one USB port so the fact that I just happened to have acquired a USB mouse for laptops is irrelevant (since I will have one of my jump drives -- either Hermes or Munin -- attached from time to time). I am pleased to discover, since I'm not using a mouse, that I like the little clitoris thing nestled between G, H, and B better than the pad thing on Emma's Mac laptop. Casual investigation revealed no special pain in operation. This is cool!
Its name is probably Hugin. I realize this is skewed, because Hugin and Munin should be the same scale as they are both Odin's birds, but really Hugin is more appropriately applied to a whole computer because it means Thought, and Munin, meaning memory, is more appropriate to a jump drive, and anyway they were named in the order, Hermes first, then Munin when I accidentally acquired a second one, and Hugin last of all.
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If you want to plug in extra USB devices, you should be able to get a USB hub quite cheaply. (I use one to connect my stationary laptop to the mouse, keyboard, printer, floppy drive and a couple of external hard drives, with a port spare for keyring drives.)
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...does it have a WiFi port? If not, thumb-sized USB WiFi adapters are fairly inexpensive and useful.
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