Compaq Presario V3010AU
Recently my company bought a few laptops from Compaq. Two of them are Compaq Presario V3010AU. The laptop comes with AMD Turion Dual Core CPU which was very new to me. To this day I still have to deal with only Intel processors and specifically IBM Thinkpads. So, it was quite interesting and a challenge to have Compaq laptops. Besides having brand new AMD processor it has DVD burner, a very cool Altec Lansing built-in speakers, SD-MS-MMC-XD Card reader(hell knows what kind of cards are they), 3 USB ports, wireless (of course!) and some other cool stuff.
The first thing that attracts is the shiny glossy design with a wide screen. The other noticeable thing is the buttons, it’s kinda new approach to design the buttons that way. However I find it uncomfortable. For instance, you can’t feel the volume of pressure when pressing the buttons.
The first thing I did was to install FreeBSD. I failed miserably. After a quick google I found out it can be installed with some patches. So, why not. I gave it another try. Here’s how chfl4gs installed FreeBSD on this laptop. Since it isn’t for my use I skipped installing FreeBSD and installed Ubuntu on it instead. Ubuntu, as I had expected, runs just right out of the box - thanks to Debian Linux and Ubuntu Linux teams!
After 2-3 weeks of using it I did not find it more powerful then my thinkpad but again this is a rough review since I did not test it in detail.
Breathe new life to your old PC
I bet you have some old PC(s) lying around somewhere at home. With the help of Open Source softwares you can still use those old PCs for real work. When I say old I mean it, it can even be your Pentium 486 and above PCs which you think is not up-to-date and which you might think of getting rid of. So don’t do it yet! Try using open source OSes, softwares on them before you say they are of no use. Here’s a list of a few examples you can use it for:
- Extra desktop - I am sure an extra workstation at home won’t be a bad idea after all. You can let your family members, guests use the PC with no worries of viruses, spyware, adware, etc.
- Network Server - Set up a home networking server with Firewall, DHCP, DNS even your local E-Mail Server.
- File Storage - Setting up a SAMBA will not only let you access them easily via M$ Windows and do backup, you can also create yourself a local DOMAIN with some user restrictions for each account.
- Application Server - Are you into application developing? Like Java, PHP or the currently famous Ruby on Rails? You can setup your old junk PC as Application Server and have more or the same platform of your Hosting provider.
- Database Server - Enterprise class databases like DB2, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Informix and lots of other databases can be easily installed on them.
- Media Streaming - Do you have hundred gigs of MP3 or video? You can setup streaming server, so that other users can just tune to your streaming server and enjoy the music and movies.
So, again, if you have some old PCs that you think is outdated and old, think again. Maybe you can find some job for it?
There are lots of Linux/BSD distributions you can use for the above mentioned purposes. I will be posting my experiences setting up those examples on old PCs that I can find in my office and home. So, this post will be like intro for that.
Lenovo IBM Thinkpad R60
Ok, after my first post on my brand new blog, let me write about my beloved laptop.
It’s a Thinkpad R60. It has Intel Centrino Duo T2300 1.66GHz, 2MB cache, 667MHz, 945GM, 1256MB RAM, 60GB HDD and I upgraded to DVD-RW. It has no bluetooth or infrared, but it has - as any of the decent modern laptops - WiFi.
The reason we choose this model among other Lenovo IBM Thinkpads was it does not come with any OS (if we don’t count FreeDOS). This way I’m allowed to run whatever I want without any limitations. I have tried almost all the popular Linux/BSD distros so far on this laptop and currently I have a strip down of Ubuntu linux with XFCE 4-4.4.0.
I will, in the future, posts my experience installing and configuring various distros and softwares on this laptop.
About
Welcome to Arstan's personal blog. This blog includes tips on Linux, Apache, MySQL, Shell Scripts. Hardware/software and internet technologies reviews and updates.
