On Wed, 2009-01-14 at 18:35 +1300, Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
5. Feel good that you recycled all those nasties in the old box and kept them out of a landfill.
Feel not-so-good that an elderly person is now paying for an old computer to draw 60W or more 24/7 doing almost nothing.
I have an old Pentium 200 with 128 Mb of Ram acting as my connection to the internet. I run Windows 98 with ICS enabled, and a network card that takes the connection to a 8 port 10/100 Mb/s Switch. I am certainly one that doesn't advocate ditching old hardware just because its old (im old hardware too...), and have to put up with a dialup connection as the Spotswood Exchange isn't broadband enabled. I stay on the internet all night (from 8pm till 8 am) doing what I need to, and am happy to excuse the power that the computer uses as a means to an end, but if the senior person here wants connectivity, why not use an old pentium box that can be booted when needed and shutdown when not needed. I am sure that there are minimal distros of Linux that would work with redundant hardware such as a Pentium 1, I havent gone there since i think why fix it if it 'aint broken. Just a thought. Glenn Morrissey.