Nice suggestions Arun, In fact we can use them especially with dot-matrix printers to print pre-printed stationary. Fortunately dot-matrix printers are available today. With any preliminary RDBMS like dbase, we can put them on cash counter with dot-matrix printers to give receipts. It is really fun to use command line on them. You can really use them in various ways. In fact exploiting their power is a great skill that students should learn. I started my computer journey in 1989 with IBM pc XT, 4.77 MHz (Not GHz !) and 64k ram. I enjoyed working on them (mouse was not there on most of the machines). 486 is a feast for me !
On Tuesday 26 July 2016 12:58 AM, Arun Khan wrote:
On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 8:53 AM, Harsha Godavari h.godavari@shaw.ca wrote:
I am looking for information regarding the use of older hardware from i486 and up. Ofcourse I am only thinking of end users who consider a computer as just another tool to get done whatever they are doing.
Considering that many distros are beginning to require 64-bit CPUs running at Ghz speeds, needing Gigabytes of RAM and HD space, I was wondering if the old hardware is really E-waste or can still be used for some Email/Web surfing , nothing fancy . I would appreciate any info / sources you can provide.
The problem with email and web surfing -- the content has become *bloatware* People send MBs as attachments and links to video material and they require fairly high speed 'net access and cpu/ram on the client side. Today, this is the *expectation* of the average Joe/Jane user. In my experience, most video content is still Flash and it tends to consume CPU/RAM (htop is great as a monitor).
Virtualized desktop may be the nice middle ground. You use these legacy hardware as "thin" clients to connect to a LTSP server and maximize the usage of old hardware. On the flip side, they need legacy power supplies running in the range of 250W per seat - definitely not green.
My 2 cents.
-- Arun Khan