[Coco] Another OT post...

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that KnudsenMJ at aol.com may have mentioned these words:
>
>In a message dated 4/1/05 8:04:20 PM Eastern Standard Time, farna at att.net
>writes:

Hey Frank! Long time, no see... ;-)

>>In fact,  I'm looking for something a bit better. Found an off-lease company
>>with some  PII 300 laptops in good working condition with 128MB RAM or more
>>for under  $150 (no operating system or software).

For used laptops, I've had good luck with:

http://www.maxxuminc.com (altho it's best to call 'em, they don't usually 
keep a good inventory on their website)

http://www.tcresale.com

and to a lesser extent (but great for a lot of other stuff):

http://www.isellsurplus.com

In a lame attempt to bring this ontopic, the last two sites carry quite a 
bit of "outdated" hardware (DSDD floppy drives, fer instance) that might be 
useful to a CoCoNut...

>The other good use of old PCs is to fit them with Linux, but you don't want
>to try explaining that OS to any other human who hasn't been thru a few years
>of  UNIX at work or OS9 at home.

After my wife would call me at work twice daily with questions like "Why 
won't my computer work right" and "There's this weird blue screen with 
white lettering" I invested in a DEC 3000 Model 300 (Alpha 150Mhz, 64Meg 
RAM, 2 each 2Gig SCSI hard drives, etc...) for $225USD about 5 years ago, 
running DEC Tru64 Unix 5.0 several years ago, and *never* looked back; and 
my wife is a major technophobe. Admittedly, I set up the machines (she 
couldn't set up Win9x either, to be fair) and got everything working. My 
tech-support calls from my wife went from 10 weekly to 1 in 2.5 years (log 
files filled the root directory; I set up a cronjob after that... ;-).

Saying "Double-click on Netscape" doesn't really matter much if it's in 
Unix, Linux, winders, etc...

Last year, she calls me up, saying "I keep double-clicking on this thingy 
that a friend sent me, but it won't open." I told her "It's just a virus, 
just delete it and don't worry about it!" ;^>

>Anyway, stick with Win98SE.  Works for me.  --Mike K.

Yes, 95 doesn't support enough newer hardware out there, and WinME sucks 
worse than 3.1. 98SE is about as stable as you're going to get; make sure 
there's a good antivirus package on there, tho. (Norton: Bad. McAfee: Very 
Bad. I've had really good luck with Computer Associates e-Trust; go for the 
Workstation version instead of the Home version, tho. More robust, more 
blocking options (you can block by extension, like .pif and .hta) and you 
can disable it by application (disabling nero.exe and peachw.exe in my case 
really helped at work) - a very effective solution.

HTH,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Bugs of a feather flock together."
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers |           Russell Nelson
zmerch at 30below.com          |