I need computer advice.

[heartssdesire]

Well, it seems that the half-decade-old hand-me-down computer we've been limping along with at home has finally given up the ghost. And the next hand-me-down computer that somebody gave us recently sorta worked, except its modem appears to have been unprepared for actual use, and gave the death rattle the first time we tried to use it to actually

Comments

[rocketgeek]

May I suggest an old IBM Thinkpad (i.e. pre-Lenovo) laptop? We have one at work we bought as a floater for various purposes three years ago for $300 at Action Computer & Surplus (http://www.actionsurplus.com/) down in Silicon Valley. We use it for various field and shop data acquisition purposes, toss it in the back of trucks, and mistreat it in all sort of creative ways. We even managed to get smoke to pour out of it at one point, with no detectable ill effects. The only problem with it is that the BIOS battery died a few months ago, which only means it's a bear to start.

Action is a good place -- they guarantee their work, and they are the source of the most awesome score I've ever had -- I bought a $150 computer with a $1500 data acquisition card in it.

[anonymous]

Well... I don't think we should use donations that way. There are too many projects that are much more directly related to the nonprofit's purpose that need funding. We use our computer far more for personal than for business, so it would be a stretch, and I don't want to mess with people's generosity that way.

[black_reaver]

I would like to respectfully suggest that the environment up there may not ideal for high technology. If nothing else the dust and dirt factor is a little higher out there than in most computer using places. There might (and this is sheer speculation on my part) also be issues with your power supply. I don't know if it's regulated or not, but you could be getting all kinds of peaks, surges and noise that could be hard on a 'puter.

[heartssdesire]

Yeah, probably true on both counts. Not much I can do about it at the moment though. A pure-sinewave inverter costs at least $1200, which is why we don't have one. We get plenty of dust from the driveways and stuff, but there's not a whole lot I can do about that.

In the meantime, what am I gonna do, just not try to have a computer?

[covenantscave]

They do make "ruggedized" computers for pretty rough environments...

http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/products.asp

http://www.buytough.com/index.asp

[heartssdesire]

Those are cool, especially the GPS options (for my map-geek side) but... totally beyond my budget. Alas.

[femmahaze]

Just wanted to say that Dell, in my opinion, is not the way to go. They screwed up the "customized" computer I ordered, not once, but twice, and I spent a whole evening on the phone with a tech guy who was advising me how to fix a problem inside the tower. I felt like I was inside The Tower dealing with them, and then once I returned everything because I couldn't fix the problem, they somehow lost one of the components and charged me for it anyway.

[bellamagic]