Repair old netbook (upgrade or dispose of it?)

[Trixanity]

I've been asked to 'restore' an old 10" netbook because he likes the form factor and had it lying around in storage. I told him beforehand that these old netbooks often aren't that good and even if I put in an SSD like he asked it would just move the bottleneck and it therefore might not make sense.

I looked at the laptop and it's a 10" Lenovo laptop and the model number and processor indicates that it's probably from 2008/2009.

 

It's running Windows XP, has 1 GB of DDR2 RAM (half being soldered on), some awful sub-HD TN panel and an N270 Intel Atom CPU @ 1.6 GHz. 

 

As you can probably tell already a lot more than the SSD would need to be changed for this to make sense and given the age of the laptop and the money required, it might be a much better solution to go out and get a more modern system although the form factor is hard to replicate as they've fallen out of favor especially with modern bezel-less designs.

 

The laptop isn't in the best of shape. For instance some of the covering on the hinges has fallen off. When I booted it up, the LCD appears to be damaged with dark blotches in various places. The backlight was quite dim and the hotkeys to increase brightness didn't seem to work but it might just be a faulty software problem.

 

So basically if you ask me the HDD need to replaced with an SSD, the Windows XP install is unsafe and needs to replaced with Windows 10 (which could break hotkey support etc), the single available RAM stick need to be upgraded with a 2 or 4 GB stick depending on what's available and the LCD would probably need to be replaced as I think it's very detrimental to have a damaged display like that. 

 

The question is: am I being pessimistic and am I just looking for reasons to not have to work on this old junk? Or am I being reasonable in wanting to say it's not worth it and just to get a new modern laptop?

[SignatureSigner]

For something like this you should just buy a new one. Windows 10 on that would be unusable with the ram. Just buy a new laptop.

[emosun]

The cpu in that machine is slower than a 20 year old pentium 3 . There's absolutely no reason to attempt to fix this.

There are retro laptops that will outrun this netbook.

[AMD A10-9600P]

For 2021 this makes absolutely zero sense if they want to actually use this day to day. There are machines that mimic netbooks today that would be well worth investing in, instead of pumping money into a pile of e-waste. Try and convince them that things like the Surface Go would suit this use case and actually support modern software.

 

If this is just a restoration project, then maybe tell them that it's not feasible for you to work on, and encourage them to try and work on it themselves.

[Levent]

Hey, thats a MSI Wind U100 (or have identical specs). We had two Medion Akoya E1210 (rebranded Wind U100) and they are completely unusable for anything but windows XP. I have upgraded one to 2G ram, SSD and MSI Wind bios so that I could overclock the CPU but in any scenario, that device absolutely shit to use even back in 2008 standards.

[Trixanity]

5 minutes ago, Levent said:

Hey, thats a MSI Wind U100 (or have identical specs). We had two Medion Akoya E1210 (rebranded Wind U100) and they are completely unusable for anything but windows XP. I have upgraded one to 2G ram, SSD and MSI Wind bios so that I could overclock the CPU but in any scenario, that device absolutely shit to use even back in 2008 standards.

It's a Lenovo IdeaPad S10e but probably very similar. 

 

Edit: Found a review of the model.

[Levent]

2 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

It's a Lenovo IdeaPad S10e but probably very similar. 

Seems like very similiar device yeah but I wouldnt waste a single cent on it as,

15 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

So basically if you ask me the HDD need to replaced with an SSD, the Windows XP install is unsafe and needs to replaced with Windows 10 (which could break hotkey support etc), the single available RAM stick need to be upgraded with a 2 or 4 GB stick depending on what's available and the LCD would probably need to be replaced as I think it's very detrimental to have a damaged display like that. 

You cannot upgrade the RAM to 4G as its DDR2 only nor install W10, as CPU does not support X64 instruction set.

[Trixanity]

11 minutes ago, Levent said:

Seems like very similiar device yeah but I wouldnt waste a single cent on it as,

You cannot upgrade the RAM to 4G as its DDR2 only nor install W10, as CPU does not support X64 instruction set.

Has 32 bit Windows 10 been deprecated?

 

The reason I said 2 or 4 GB sticks is because those were what popped up when looking for DDR2 memory but perhaps it's some fake eBay product page that I mistook as real. Didn't really look into it beyond a quick glance.

 

In any case, given the response and my own opinion the moment I was asked to look at it, I'll give it back and tell him to get a new laptop.