I think most people on SDF have an affinity for
retro computing and don't necessarily chase the latest
and greatest. Just reading some of the phlogs I see
a wide diversity of SDF members using all manner of
retro computing devices.
I'm not quite as hardcore as some of the SDF folks
using old PDAs and old phones and things to surf gopher.
But if anyone has read my laptop specs, then you'd know
that my primary computer is a 10 year old laptop from HP.
Specifically, it's an HP Elitebook 8570p. I actually
love this laptop which is really odd. There's a lot
of love out there for older Thinkpads which I can
appreciate but I was never really a thinkpad guy.
The first time I used the elitebook, I thought now
THIS is a laptop. The 8570p is hopelessly large and heavy.
It has poor battery life as well. But in my mind,
it represents the last of the old school business
laptops before the trend went to sleek and thin laptops.
It is easy to swap parts and it is easy to take apart
and repair. I have this massive old school dock for it
which has networking, USB hubs, DVI ports, VGA ports
and all sorts of old school expansion ports.
The laptop itself still has a modem and a serial port
built in. The serial port is especially nice since
you can hook it up to servers and get serial output
without those annoying USB dongles.
I run Fedora on it and everything works perfectly.
It is of course 10 years old so gaming on the machine
is a no go. But it surfs the web just fine and I can
watch youtube or netflix and of course log into SDF.
I think these laptops are pretty underrated compared
to their thinkpad counterparts. The elitebooks have
a full keyboard with numberpad as well as a pointing
nub just like a thinkpad.
Of course old thinkpads have the advantage of being
able to have libreboot and more opensource BIOS and
firmware.
But still, if you can live without that, then I think
the elitebooks are a good option. They are certainly
cheaper than their peer thinkpads of the same vintage.
