Compaq Presario

About three years ago was the summer of 2006. This was about the time the first Intel-based MacBooks dropped. Everyone in the office bought one, it seems. Within a month they were all in the shop. I bought a Compaq Presario v3000 with dual-core AMD Turion. It was my primary machine for three years. Not a single hardware issue to date. (Admittedly, shiny screen.) The quality of Intel Macs has improved since then, of course. But if your wallet isn't that thick, from what I hear from friends who bought them, Compaq/HP still produce quality kit at an affordable price.

I'm pretty sure Aureal A3D was featured on my family's Compaq Presario 5150[0] back in 1998. The speakers were decently sized units mounted on the side of the 17" CRT and powered straight from the soundcard via 3.5mm plug which apparently was designed to output way more power than a standard headphone jack because it could go pretty loud. A couple nifty demos were included. One was simply a bee buzzing in a circle, and it totally sounded like it was doing loops behind your head. [0] https://aaron.axvigs.com/node/438

I'm currently typing this on a 2008 Sony VAIO FW series laptop, running Windows 10. It has a physical wifi switch, among other great features. (but very slow even with 6GB of RAM, I use it at the kitchen table mostly to read the news because I don't care much if it gets abused, and the battery is good for only about 10 minutes even at full charge), I have a Palm Pilot V along with charging cradle and data transfer cable, must be at least 20 years old but I haven't fired it up for a number of years, but pretty sure it will still power on and I have installable software files in my archives. I have an old tower PC with Win 2K installed, last fired it up maybe five years ago. I also have a rackmount generic PC from 2005 which works fine, running Windows XP. Compaq Presario notebook from 2005, with Linux Mint installed now, built like a tank, cost almost $1,300 in 2005 with 512MB RAM. I have my Samsung feature phone (slider with full QWERTY keyboard), it boots up just fine but no longer connects to anything with the end of 3G service earlier this year. I use an old iPad for running authenticator apps, not sure how old but it will no longer receive software updates from Apple. Have a working Sony PS2 in storage, and still use a PS3 to play Bluray discs and access internet streaming.

I have been having so much fun doing Retro stuff. Vogons is the place to be for this area. I bought a Compaq Presario 4505. Then did lots of upgrades * Ram to 64MB * CPU is a 233MMX * 512KB COAST * Voodoo 3 3000 PCI * IDE -> SATA with a 32GB SSD * Audician 32 Plus Wavetable cards are especially fun. Serdashop sells a bunch of interesting ones. X2GS, Yucatan FX, E-Wave, McFly and X2S are popular ones. Check out this[0] video. The music can be so dramatically different depending on what hardware you have. It is fun switching between cards. Games from this era just had so much passion put into them and you can feel it while playing. I am playing System Shock 1 right now and you can see all the different experiments that went into the game (some good and some bad). ---- Another cool device to check is the WeeCee [1]. If you want to play games on real hardware but don't feel like collecting (and troubleshooting) old hardware. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiQQ7vvW_T4 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHvvSbYmJA

This computer reminds me of my fondness for the Compaq Presario 615dx a little higher spec, but it was that kind of computer the inch-thick ones. That laptop had a really nice keyboard imo. Was using Linux Mint and Bluefish/Kate text editor.