As the title of this publication indicates, I must tell you that I have experienced problems with my laptop, which is my daily use to publish work on the Internet. It has been failing for a few weeks now because it tends to shut down unexpectedly without the use of the battery and with the direct power source, which, unlike when it is connected to the battery together with the power source can operate for the amount of hours needed but under the risk that the battery itself is worn out by this kind of use. And I know you might ask me why not just use it with the battery? It turns out that the amount of hours I can actually use it this way is not even 45 minutes, since this computer is very old. This being a Toshiba laptop, with 1G of RAM, 80GB of hard drive capacity, and a DualCore processor; whose market launch date in 2002, the same year it was acquired by a relative and then three years ago it was given to me as a gift. Before owning this one I had one due to an HP laptop, which burned the internal piece that fulfilled the task of transmitting the video signal to the monitor, in other words, an internal video card.
So with all these characteristics and adding the serious economic problems that we live in Venezuela, to be able to acquire a new computer is very difficult because they are above 300$, and the ability to generate money per month of an average person is around 50$, so I would not be able to raise the money to buy it because all the money should be used mainly to buy food, so having a little money saved I came up with the idea of wanting to buy a used computer, which may be in good condition and fully functional to perform my daily tasks. Then, when I met with a friend I asked him if he knew someone who sold computers and that he trusted, to which he immediately answered me that he has a computer in his house, that he was not using it and that he could give it to me, and I, when I heard what he mentioned I was glad and accepted, so he told me that he would call me to be pending and make me the delivery. Days went by and he delivered it to me. This computer turns out to be nothing more and nothing less than a Pentium IV, with 3.00GHZ, 1.5G of RAM, 40G hard drive, and with an operating system created by the government of Venezuela under the name of Canaima, a variant of GNU/Linux.
Before starting to use it I had to make some improvements inside it, so I did an internal cleaning to remove the amount of dust that had stored, as well as order some internal cables, having to fix the hard drive correctly because it had only one screw so I had to add more, disable the floppy drive, and change the thermal paste to the processor; and finally, I changed the operating system to Linux Mint 19. 3, which has worked perfectly on my laptop and the only downside is the expiration date of support provided by the developers of this.
Once started the operations of this computer I notice that the video playback in full screen is totally slow, the images are usually played in parts and not continuously as it should be. Apart from that, you can surf the Internet without major complications. So I consider that this machine will be used mostly for the elaboration of text documents and surfing the Internet.
As final words I must say that thanks to some tweaks and the help of Linux, this kind of computers, the 32 bits to be more specific, which are usually destined to oblivion can still be used to do some simple tasks, such as text documents, display images, video and music playback, and old video games, as long as the capacity of the same machine allows it (I have yet to try the latter).
As for you, have you been able to rescue and use a machine like this? Would you give it any functionality or would you prefer to get rid of it? Do you still use old computers in your country?
Write your opinions and anecdotes in the comments box and I will be glad to read them.
Without further ado, I'll see you until the next installment. See you later, friends.
Source of the images:
The cover image comes from: https://pixabay.com/photos/hands-old-typing-laptop-internet-545394/
The computer image was taken with my Amazon Fire 7 tablet.
The rest of the images are screenshots.
We still use old computers in my country..I think that with some changes it will become better than the modern devices we are using now..I also feel it is a waste to throw it away.