I'm so weak...

tlmiller76 · 2017-12-29 21:14

So i was browsing ebay (anyone who knows me knows when I start a sentence with I was browsing {ebay,craigslist} it's probably a bad thing), and found a Lenovo Thinkpad E450 (5200u/8GB/500GB/1080P) for pretty good price (a fair amount under $300 shipped). So now I have another laptop coming to me. Going to pull the 16 GB out of my E5430 and put it in the E450, then put the 8 GB in the E5430. Also going to put my spare 128 GB SSD into my T430 (my q4os laptop) and take the 480GB SSD to put in the E450.

I counted it today, I have 8 laptops when this Lenovo arrives. One is for sale though at least!! I need to stop buying these, but I just love playing with new hardware. And this hardware I know works because my wife has an E450 (i7 though instead of i5) already!

Last edited by tlmiller76 (2017-12-29 21:15)

crosscourt · 2017-12-29 23:11

Ive got 1 tower, 1 sff, 4 usff, 2 laptops, 3 smaller laptops and 3 mini laptops all Dell, plus my wifes two systems and two older gaming rigs.

I completely understand where your coming from tlmiller....;)

ichbin1199 · 2018-01-01 18:13

Hi!

I had the same kind of "sickness" before so I understand too! Anyway, when you begin to lack money, you quicly begin to heal

crosscourt · 2018-01-01 18:45

I dont have a lot of money, but I sell, trade and even find some systems that are thrown out and put them to use. Average cost of my systems is between $50 - $100. Staying a bit behind the curve means you can get some pretty capable hardware for a very low cost. its also cheaper to buy a system for spare parts for $50 rather than try to buy the separate parts that end up costing a lot more.

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-01 23:57

Yeah, I do a lot of trading and selling. I can occassionally canabalize parts from work, so I buy a laptop with no hard drive and 2 GB ram, upgrade to a 500 GB and 8 GB, resell, and that gets enough profit to fund buying something I actually want to "keep". Although even my "keepers" I usually only keep 6 months to a year. Up until recently I did have a Latitude E5450 that I had for over 2 years, but I found a E7450 on Craigslist for a great price (base E7450 other than the 1080P lcd), so I bought that, put the drive, memory and wireless from the E5450 into it, and it's parts in the E5450, and then sold the E5450 (the E7450 is a bit more thin and light, so looks better, otherwise identical).

I am a big fan of my q4os machine. Found that I've been using it more and more if I know I won't need it for longer than ~90 minutes. I'm considering getting a new battery for it so it'll last ~4 hours again. Not sure if I will or not, will probably depend on what happens with the newer (and wireless-ac equipped) Lenovo when it gets in. The funny thing with the new one is that the processor (5200U) is a 15-watt Ultra Low Voltage, so in order to get it to run with that low a voltage, the actual processing power is LESS than that of the older Lenovo (3360M). With an SSD in the 3360M machine, it runs faster than almost any brand new U-series laptop until the latest 8th generation, since they are now quad-core hyperthreaded for the i5 and i7 mobile U's.

Last edited by tlmiller76 (2018-01-02 00:19)

crosscourt · 2018-01-02 01:59

Ive got a swap shop in my area plus I do a lot of business on Ebay and locally so its pretty easy to keep costs down.

Its as close to a hobby as I can get, as i enjoy working with different systems, OS and apps.

Last edited by crosscourt (2018-01-02 02:08)

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-05 03:12

Good news, it's in and it's in FANTASTIC shape.

Bad news, it's a 720p LCD, not the 1080p that was advertised. And it would be like $25 to ship it back, which is more than 10% of the cost of it (yeah, got a good price)...so I'm just going to suck it up and live with it.

I did swap some parts between laptops. I took the 16 GB ram out of the Latitude E5430 and put in here, put the 8 GB from here in the E5430. Removed the 500 GB hdd and put in my 480 enterprise SSD. Also, and I was AMAZED this worked, removed the Intel 3160AC and put in an Intel 8265AC (mumimo). I'm amazed because the 8265 came out after this was released, and Lenovo does whitelisting in their bios for wireless cards. Which means you can almost NEVER put in a newer card that wasn't offered at the time of build, or the laptop won't even boot. But I swapped them just to try, and not a peep, and it works in Win10 and Fedora so far.

So as it sets:

Intel Core i5-5200U
16 GB (2x8) DDR3L
480 GB enterprise-class SSD
8265AC + BT 4.2
Intel HD 5000
1366x768 ugly ass TN panel (ok, for a TN panel, it's actually rather bright and SEEMS to have good color saturation to me, although I am color blind)
Fedora 27 KDE respin

Yeah, even with full plasma 5, it flies. Me thinks I might install Trinity just for the S's & Giggles. I defintely wouldn't NEED to...but why not, haven't tried it on Fedora yet.

Last edited by tlmiller76 (2018-01-05 03:14)

crosscourt · 2018-01-06 01:20

With that size screen i think you can stand 720P. Its actually a pretty good TN panel but given the price you got it for, its a great deal.

Throneberry · 2018-01-06 14:15

crosscourt wrote:

Ive got a swap shop in my area plus I do a lot of business on Ebay and locally so its pretty easy to keep costs down.
Its as close to a hobby as I can get, as i enjoy working with different systems, OS and apps.

You're lucky you still have a swap shop in the area. All the ones in mine closed down years ago. How does that one keep staying in business?

crosscourt · 2018-01-06 18:40

Welcome to the site Throneberry! The swap shop has morphed over the years, they started doing online sales as well but are very well known in the area. They service as well as trade and also break down unwanted hardware and recycle it for cash when they can. They carry older server hardware, printers, monitors to name a few and get business from all over the Wash DC area.

They have one of the best collections of retrogaming hardware and accessories, so I can pick up joysticks and other items for older games.
I still have my original CH flightstick, throttle and pedals.

If you want to do things on the cheap, between Ebay and the swap shop its a great combination.

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-11 00:52

Well, that didn't last long. Couldn't tolerate the 1366x768 resolution, I sold it today for exactly what I bought it for. Still a very good deal for the guy who bought it, but I just couldn't deal with having that low a resolution. Also one of the Dells will be sold here in a couple days. It's up on ebay, and there's already bids, so just waiting on it to end...

Which of course means I'll have to get another laptop now (that has a good resolution)...

Last edited by tlmiller76 (2018-01-11 00:53)

crosscourt · 2018-01-11 03:15

I actually run at 1280x1024 or there abouts depending on the devcie as i use desktops and laptops. Only when I game do I prefer at least 1600x1200 but it gets tough on the eyes.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

JimW · 2018-01-11 03:23

I run 1024 x 768 and on this forum I have a 133% zoom. And I still have problems reading sometimes!
And my hearing is getting bad too!
Couldn't be because I'm getting old! I'm only 68!!

crosscourt · 2018-01-11 03:27

Im 64 and Ive got vision problems so I make changes to suit my eyes. Gaming its images so 1280x1024-1600x1200 I can take but with everything else I have to use lower resolutions. I use a 19 inch monitor but sit rather close to it so it works out but the way Im going its going to be 1024x768 very soon.

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-11 06:46

On my desktop I use a 27" and a 24"', both 1080P. Uncorrected, I have something like 20/450 vision. But with contacts, I can see perfectly fine. My prescription actually changed for the first time in 10 years this year (got worse, not surprisingly).

I actually found a Lenovo Thinkpad T450S for a little bit more. 1080P, 5300U, I upgraded it to 12 GB ram (4 GB soldered and 1 slot), upgraded to the 480 GB SSD I had. I'll be putting Arch linux on it tomorrow during work. It's got dual batteries and so gets REALLY good battery life, while still being quite light (both batteries are tiny). Overall happy with it, would have preferred the E450 had the LCD been the one it was advertised with. Yeah, the T450s is a bit smaller, a bit lighter, and a bit more "upscale", but I really liked the design of the E450...and that it could do 16 GB ram in dual channel.

crosscourt · 2018-01-11 19:59

Glad you found something that suits you. I just picked up a Dell E5430 and installed MXLinux 17 on it, nice distro thats Debian 9 based. 8gb ram 500gb hard drive, fits my needs pretty well.

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-12 00:08

That's the same laptop as I use for Fedora. Named it ogre, because it is BY FAR the heaviest laptop I still have. But yeah, great laptop, and in terms of sheer processing power will brutalize any Haswell i5, and most Broadwell i5's (at the cost of using 3x the power).

crosscourt · 2018-01-12 00:38

Really loving MXlinux 17, Debian based just like Q4OS but uses XFCE so you would need to use another DE.

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-12 01:12

Yeah, I've build a few antiX/MX machines into plasma5 machines. In the end, the whole systemd-free thing is, for my preferences, the only reason I'd want anti-X/MX, and it's not THAT big a deal to me (I dislike it, but not enough to go out of my way to avoid it).

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-12 01:26

Got the T450s installed and mostly built. Had some issues (cups didn't enable by default after installing), but overall fairly smooth. Libinput works with this touchpad fully, so that's really nice. Didn't have to do anything to get it to work other than enabling tapping. 2 finger scroll worked out of the box, and once tapping was enabled 1-2-and 3 finger tapping worked just fine.

crosscourt · 2018-01-12 01:26

I just like MXLinux, particularly the attention to detail, MXTools a nice feature particularly for newbies. They make an effort to include many features to make users lives a lot simpler. I was a long time Mepis user and remained in contact with that community, so MX17 for me was a really nice OS to use.

Last edited by crosscourt (2018-01-12 01:27)

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-12 01:33

crosscourt wrote:

I just like MXLinux, particularly the attention to detail, MXTools a nice feature particularly for newbies. They make an effort to include many features to make users lives a lot simpler. I was a long time Mepis user and remained in contact with that community, so MX17 for me was a really nice OS to use.

A majority of the Anti-X users I know are like that. They use the MX linux because they loved Mepis. I did use Mepis, I did like Mepis, but never really became all that passionite. The only OS that I was REALLY passionate about was Libranet. THAT was an amazing distro for it's day. I was very sad when it went away.

crosscourt · 2018-01-12 01:36

Mepis was only one of many distros I liked Mandriva,PCLinuxOS for instance. Im not wild about antix, prefer MXLinux. I use mainly because i like it, not because i was a previous fan of Mepis.

tlmiller76 · 2018-01-13 02:17

So found out something today....trinity isn't available in the Arch AUR!! Threw one of my spinning rusts in my q4os machine, threw arch on it to see how whoever implemented it for Arch did, and to my astonishment there is none...surprising. Not really all that important at the end of the day, but surprising.

crosscourt · 2018-01-13 03:36

Not available? Ive been playing with the PCLinuxOS Trinity version, as its matured quite a bit since I fist tried it.

Q4OS Forum

#1 2017-12-29 21:14

I'm so weak...

#2 2017-12-29 23:11

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