Put away those flamethrowers, pitchforks and torches.
I have a friend whose 2004 era Windows box died. I know it died because when it failed with a "go find me a boot disk" screen, I opened it up and tried both the primary and secondary HDD, neither showed any signs of life. So either the power supply is dead or the HDD is dead. It doesn't much matter. It has IDE hard drives. IDE. It has a PS/2 mouse with a little rubber ball. How quaint. I had to hold my nose just to touch the thing. Did I mention IDE? It was a Compaq SR1130NX and it was not only old, but filled with cobwebs.
So I decided I would drag her into the present by picking up a used Mac mini. Sadly Microcenter was all sold out of Mac minis. All they had left were older iMacs, one of which was only $199 but it was one of the really old white plastic ones.
So I went over to the dark side just to take a peek...
I know she knows how to use Windows and I know if I "drop off" a Mac at her house, she might be able to use it just find but her grandkids will all howl about how they can't play Call of Duty any more. So I walked over to the refurb Wintel section and found a nice little IBM/Lenovo Thinkcentre M57 circa 2008. It set me back a whopping $125. It cost over $800 back in the day.
I powered it on and it booted just fine. I threw her old ps/2 mouse and keyboard on the recycle heap with her old PC and plugged in the USB keyboard and USB optical mouse that came with the IBM. Windows nagged me for activation. I typed in the doggone fricking gall-darned key number. All 395 characters (or so it seemed). It failed activation. Drat. It offered me to call MS. I declined. Then I decided to fish a network cable over to the machine. Once again I typed in all 395 characters and this time it activated. Shame on you MS for putting us through activation but at least it worked (on the second try). Next I downloaded Chrome and made it the default browser. I turned on "show file extensions" so she doesn't click on allaboutviruses.txt.exe. Lastly I installed AVG antivirus and shut off all of its nag screens that were trying to sell her the deluxe suite.
I remember a time when touching Windows was a nasty experience. This machine is not so much worse than my 2008 Macbook used to be. Well ok the OS blows chunks but at least it works and at least I didn't have to dump 50 hours into getting the thing to turn on and activate.
As long as it holds up and she isn't calling me about it every week, I think it's a good choice. I really do wish MC had some refurb minis in stock but this wasn't such a bad deal for a "web browsing only" pc application. When those grandkids complain about framerate and getting fragged, my answer is "go buy your own instead of complaining about grandma's PC."
I have a friend whose 2004 era Windows box died. I know it died because when it failed with a "go find me a boot disk" screen, I opened it up and tried both the primary and secondary HDD, neither showed any signs of life. So either the power supply is dead or the HDD is dead. It doesn't much matter. It has IDE hard drives. IDE. It has a PS/2 mouse with a little rubber ball. How quaint. I had to hold my nose just to touch the thing. Did I mention IDE? It was a Compaq SR1130NX and it was not only old, but filled with cobwebs.
So I decided I would drag her into the present by picking up a used Mac mini. Sadly Microcenter was all sold out of Mac minis. All they had left were older iMacs, one of which was only $199 but it was one of the really old white plastic ones.
So I went over to the dark side just to take a peek...
I know she knows how to use Windows and I know if I "drop off" a Mac at her house, she might be able to use it just find but her grandkids will all howl about how they can't play Call of Duty any more. So I walked over to the refurb Wintel section and found a nice little IBM/Lenovo Thinkcentre M57 circa 2008. It set me back a whopping $125. It cost over $800 back in the day.
I powered it on and it booted just fine. I threw her old ps/2 mouse and keyboard on the recycle heap with her old PC and plugged in the USB keyboard and USB optical mouse that came with the IBM. Windows nagged me for activation. I typed in the doggone fricking gall-darned key number. All 395 characters (or so it seemed). It failed activation. Drat. It offered me to call MS. I declined. Then I decided to fish a network cable over to the machine. Once again I typed in all 395 characters and this time it activated. Shame on you MS for putting us through activation but at least it worked (on the second try). Next I downloaded Chrome and made it the default browser. I turned on "show file extensions" so she doesn't click on allaboutviruses.txt.exe. Lastly I installed AVG antivirus and shut off all of its nag screens that were trying to sell her the deluxe suite.
I remember a time when touching Windows was a nasty experience. This machine is not so much worse than my 2008 Macbook used to be. Well ok the OS blows chunks but at least it works and at least I didn't have to dump 50 hours into getting the thing to turn on and activate.
As long as it holds up and she isn't calling me about it every week, I think it's a good choice. I really do wish MC had some refurb minis in stock but this wasn't such a bad deal for a "web browsing only" pc application. When those grandkids complain about framerate and getting fragged, my answer is "go buy your own instead of complaining about grandma's PC."