$300 for TWO laptops?

[Razor512]

I still use an old Lenovo S21e netbook that I purchased for $120 back in 2015.

While the specs are bad

Intel Celeron N2840 passively cooled but it can maintain its boost speed of 2583MHz indefinitely since it doesn't get hot enough to throttle even under a prime95 load.

2GB DDR3 1333, and a single band 2.4GHz WiFi adapter, though it is in an m.2 slot so it can be upgraded.

32GB storage, after installing windows 10, you are left with around 9.5GB usable (after removing the bloatware from windows such as candy crush and other crap).

 

PS, Ubuntu is far more responsive than windows 10 on these netbooks, though ubuntu has no good audio recording apps.

 

Anyway, I largely use it as an audio recorder, as believe it or not, it is still fast enough to record audio, and you can connect a USB mixer or other audio devices to it, and record quiet sounds, e.g., the ticking of a mechanical watch, and other things that require a very low noise floor, without needing to buy an expensive field recorder, and then use adobe audition right on the device to edit the audio enough to properly analyze the recording to spot issues.

 

Overall, there are good benefits to passively cooled netbooks for highly specific use cases, especially if it is not mission critical.

 

I attached a photo of the s21e when taken apart. Its design has you remove the screws from the bottom, then remove the keyboard, which then allows you to loosen screws on the top to remove a top cover. It has less flex than the walmart netbooks, but still uses a thermal pad.

 

 

 

[panzersharkcat]

On 7/26/2020 at 10:03 AM, kelvinhall05 said:

Lol those are terrible, get a used Thinkpad and it'll beat it in every way possible.

Even a used X230 is still fine. Just make sure it's an IPS panel. It's only going to be 1366x768 but it's usable on a 12.5" display.

[JCHelios]

Shoulda tested the two-in-one's webcam in tent mode. 

[Remove]

On 7/26/2020 at 7:13 PM, aisle9 said:

When W10 was switched out for an XFCE-based Linux distro, there are no words for how amazing the improvement was. So much smoother, so much faster, but still useless for anything other than Open Office and Chromium. Forget about YouTube unless you were cool with watching everything in 720p at best. Still, as a basic productivity laptop, Linux made it extremely usable as a daily driver.

What distro specifically did you use? I've been spending the better part of the last two months trying to use this.

Pop_!OS has been okay, but after installing Audacity and Musescore, I get notifications saying how I've only 2GB remaining.

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, Remove said:

What distro specifically did you use? I've been spending the better part of the last two months trying to use this.

Pop_!OS has been okay, but after installing Audacity and Musescore, I get notifications saying how I've only 2GB remaining.

Lubuntu or Xubuntu would be my go-to in that order for low-spec hardware like this. Lubuntu runs OK on a 10+yr old netbook with an Atom 330 from 2008 and 2GB of RAM. 4GB is a HUGE step up in performance especially if you're not using a SSD.

 

Side tangent, I wonder how hard it would be to replace the EMMC on these laptops and if it would 'just work' to solder a bigger one on there?

[aisle9]

21 hours ago, Remove said:

What distro specifically did you use? I've been spending the better part of the last two months trying to use this.

Pop_!OS has been okay, but after installing Audacity and Musescore, I get notifications saying how I've only 2GB remaining.

Holy necro post, Batman. If I mention XFCE, I was probably using Mint XFCE or Xubuntu, but who knows? My go-to distro for old and/or pathetically weak 64-bit hardware these days is Lubuntu, but there are others out there like MX, stripped-down Arch, even Puppy if you're a masochist.

[Remove]

7 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Holy necro post, Batman. If I mention XFCE, I was probably using Mint XFCE or Xubuntu, but who knows? My go-to distro for old and/or pathetically weak 64-bit hardware these days is Lubuntu, but there are others out there like MX, stripped-down Arch, even Puppy if you're a masochist.

It took this long for me to both find an interest in Linux and watch the video. Had I watched sooner, maybe I would've been able to convince my mom to not buy the gray model when she urgently needed a Microsoft Teams machine in 2021.

I tried Lubuntu, which worked for a week before the start screen started flashing and wouldn't get past the bird logo. Xubuntu had the same issue when I went to boot the installer from the BIOS. Maybe something happened to the processor or board that caused it not play nice with many "beginner-friendly" Debian-based distros. Most systemd distros had a similar issue either before or after install. Mint was too heavy to install; even the XFCE variant asked for "25GB of free storage space".

 

Confused, I experimented with a Devuan (meme distro) Offline Install since I thought systemd was the problem, but it wasn't beginner-friendly. Plus it had no wifi access and the lack of JR45 ports makes that an obvious problem. It worked fine for a couple months but unsatisfied with not having internet available, I trekked on.

 

Tried Pop_!OS, which somehow worked but was a bit too heavy to use after installing Audacity and Musescore. After a a couple weeks, I was told I have 1.1GB remaining, and the number slowly decreased until I uninstalled those programs.

 

Flashed EndeavourOS XFCE this morning and it's been a breeze. I just want to use it for writing and vocal recording, which has been helpful since my main laptop SSD got KO'd by a power surge.