4-5 yr. old laptop

[LinuxHippy]

My friend has a 4-5 year old laptop that he wants to sell. He doesn't know what's in it (CPU, RAM, nic cards, etc.), so I'm going over to look at it. I want a laptop to install Linux onto and use for wireless networking.

So, I'm wondering if a laptop this old can use wireless networking, what speed it might be, is worth buying something this old and for how much?

[olivierv]

A laptop that old can't be worth more than $50 (to me, maybe I'm wrong). It really depends on what you're going to use the laptop for, but if I were you I'd just go out and get one of those "budget" laptops from a big PC maker like Dell. They've gotten pretty cheap and can be had even cheaper if you buy refurbished hardware.

I realize that "cheap" is a relative term.

[LinuxHippy]

Could a laptop this old support a 802.11b or g wireless ethernet card?

[ewdi]

yes if it has pcmcia slot or USB, as long as those 2 are there you can buy an external 802.11 card

[fluffy]

I'd imagine you'll be more limited by the CPU/memory if you're planning to run X along with a recent KDE or GNOME desktop on a laptop of that vintage. Try a LiveLinux distro off a cdrom first to get a feel for the overall performance before handing over the cash.........
Of couse if you're not using X then you should be fine along as it got the PCcard or USB slots for your wireless nic.

[LinuxHippy]

good idea-I'll try it out with Slax or Knoppix before I hand over dinero!

[gmontag]

I have dls linux running on an ibm 755cx. 50 meg image just sits on hard drive. this is a pentium 75 with 25 mb of ram and a 540 mb hd. Wireless works.

[imdeemvp]

I have dls linux running on an ibm 755cx. 50 meg image just sits on hard drive. this is a pentium 75 with 25 mb of ram and a 540 mb hd. Wireless works.

which distro lets you operate with such low resources?

[desipher]

I have laptop 550mhz 128mb ram and 20bg hd with wireless card with mandrake 10 and runs good but all I really use it for is connect to my servers and browse and chat.

[kosmosik]

surely it can 4,5 is not that old. it should support USB and PCMCIA. you can get (but make sure that they are supported. prism chipset based PCMCIA NICs are good choice) wifi hardware for that. I use (hardly tweaked: 288MB RAM, 20GB hdd) IBM ThinkPad 600e which is probably older than 4,5 yr. (FIXME) and have no problem with runnong anything (including modern USB, PCMCIA, firewire hardware)...

[gmontag]

dsl linux or damn small linux is a small lightweight distribution based on knoppix. No kde or gnome real small.

[motionb]

I loaded Red Hat 9 on a pent. 266 with 96 mb ram, and it worked wonderfully, i had pcmcia network card, and it worked great, my wirleless card woulndt work though, but thats because i had purchased the cheapest most offname brand i could find, it worked good in windows 98 but couldnt get drivers for it for linux, it was a 4gb hard drive in the laptop and i dual booted RH9 and Windows 98. Dont laugh i had to have the windows 98 for work. :( I want to say it was a toshib tecra laptop. I sold it a while back and now wished i hadnt. Cause my new laptop dont like linux for some reason, and have yet to find a resolve.

[AwPhuch]

I have a Compaq LTE 5300, 133Mhz with 32Meg ram and a 2.1 Gig hd...
Win98 bogs to a crawl if I have more than 1 thing going on...
Damn Small Linux runs like a scalded ape on that thing!!

Once I found the site to get the base station working there was nothing the DSL couldnt do (faster) than the Win98 would!

If you have older "legacy" hardware Damn Small Linux is just what the doctor ordered..hell it even supports SMP on older hardware...so now those 12 Dual Socket 5 Tyan Mobos can have life again!!!!

Brian
AwPhuch

[sej7278]

I have a Compaq Armada E500 dualbooting RedHat9 and Win2K Pro, it is a PIII/500, 320Mb, 20Gb, with a DLink DWL650 wifi PCMCIA card, runs just fine, I've even run Win2K on it with it's default 6Gb/128Mb!

[JordanN]

the biggest thing to look for when trying to find a good laptop to run linux on is memory. You will probably need at least 64 meg, it seems to be the magic number.

I have tried unsuccessfully to get a live CD (DSL) to work with my Toshiba 430 CDS (133 mghz, 16 mg ram).

[mrguytx]

and just use fluxbox as your GUI:
http://fluxbox.org/

=G

[Psquared]

A laptop that old can't be worth more than $50 (to me, maybe I'm wrong). It really depends on what you're going to use the laptop for, but if I were you I'd just go out and get one of those "budget" laptops from a big PC maker like Dell. They've gotten pretty cheap and can be had even cheaper if you buy refurbished hardware.

I realize that "cheap" is a relative term.

I'd recommend going to Ebay and trying to pickup an IBM coming off a lease. I use one at work and its slim and pretty fast. Not a lot of video memory though.

After reading about some experiences with Dell I'd stay away from them.

[heffe2001]

I've had very few problems with any Dell lappy I've ever had. Last 3 ran Linux & Win without any problems (5100, 9100 & 8600). Just do a little research about the model you're looking at, and you'll do fine with whatever Lappy you decide to try..