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I had been looking for a replacement for my old Acer Aspire One for years. It was my favorite computer, small form yet capable. It’s had problems with age, so I bought a used HP laptop at a pawn shop a few years ago, but it’s far too big for a lap. They should call those big “laptops” portable desk computers.
I bought another used one from a computer place last year. It, too, was way too big for a lap.
I finally looked on the internet, not expecting to find a lap-sized laptop. But I did. A Dell, only an inch bigger than the Acer. But Dell’s web site refused to sell it to me.
So I bought it from Amazon for about two hundred. Dell had wanted three.
I charged it and turned it on, and was faced, of course, with installing Windows when it should be ready to run; the “new machine setup” was far more onerous than installing Mandrake in the early 2000s.
Then I was faced with the horrible Windows Ten. This is the absolute worst operating system I’ve ever used (I never used eight). Microsoft is the only entity I’ve ever encountered that would remove usability, functionality, and features and then call it an “upgrade”.
Case in point: File manager traded menus for that awful “ribbon” interface and lost the drop down that allowed you to quickly select which app opens a file. Now you need a right click. Usability? Who needs that?
They added ads to Solitaire and took away the function that quickly ends a game.
They mangled the start menu.
But what’s worse, in Windows 7 they added something incredibly unintuitive and annoying, and made it a hard to change default, since they completely change the interface with every iteration: gestures. I’d forgotten bout them since I’d disabled them in the Acer a decade ago.
Gestures make lots of sense on a touchscreen, but not on a touchpad. I finally found the setting to shut them off, and the right mouse button stopped working. Fixing it was frustrating.
Getting on the network, finally, was no problem. Now to install all the programs I need. The computer refused to install programs, while showing me how to go to its unintuitive process for shutting that particularly annoying “feature” off. In fairness I do know folks for whom it would be essential.
Then I finally started paying attention to the hardware. There was no network jack, but doesn’t really need one with wi-fi, even if its wi-fi is old and weak. But it does have an HDMI jack, which I thought might solve a problem I had.
Disney launched its streaming service for seven bucks, and I wanted to see the beginning of Star Wars Episode 3 in 4K. It was awesome in the theater. So I signed up, since I had a smart 4K Sony TV. The trouble is, the app locks the TV up. Disney works fine on the tablet, but if I cast it to the TV the sound and picture are out of synch, and it isn’t 4K.
So I fired up Firefox, logged on to Disney+, and there are multi-second screen freezes. Chrome, Opera, and Edge all did the same thing. I don’t know if it’s a hardware or software problem.
While on the internet I discover that this is the first computer I remember owning that had no page up or down keys; rather, its page up/down keys move up and down one line. I also discovered that it had no LAN jack, which isn’t much of a hassle since it has wi-fi, even if the wi-fi is slow. However, using this computer to back up a terabyte of data from one network drive to another was a terrible idea; it’s been going for a full week and is only 91% complete.
There are also four USB ports and one new port I’d not seen before that probably isn’t very useful.
It does have a touch screen, making Windows 10 less awful, but not much less. It’s a convertible; the screen bends all the way around to the computer’s back, making it a tablet. However, unlike any other tablet, it has no way to automatically discern screen orientation. You have to tell it manually, which is a pain.
As I mentioned, it’s a replacement for the ten year old Acer. It has twice the processor speed, twice the memory (more memory than any computer I’ve owned) and half the drive space. I only use the drive for application and temporary files, since I have a 3 TB network drive, so that’s no problem.
But it boots no faster, apps load no faster, and Audacity is dog slow. It was ten times faster on the old one. At first I thought maybe the old computer was 32 bits and this is 64, and I got the idea that maybe I was running a 32 bit program on a 64 bit computer; none of my old 32 bit games will even install.
So I logged on to Audacity’s site and found the answer at https://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/.
WINDOWS VERSION............RECOMMENDED RAM/PROCESSOR SPEED.MINIMUM RAM/PROCESSOR SPEED
Windows 10 (32- or 64-bit).4 GB / 2 GHz....................2 GB / 1 GHz
Windows 8 (64-bit)
Windows 7 (64-bit)
Windows 8 (32-bit)
Windows 7 (32-bit) (except Starter) 4 GB / 2 GHz............1 GB / 1 GHz
Windows 7 Starter ..................2 GB / 1 GHz............512 MB / 1 GHz
The Acer had Windows 7 starter with two gigabytes of RAM. So I installed the latest 64 bit version, and it was actually a little faster than the Acer.
In short, it isn’t a bad little computer as long as you’re running newer 64 bit programs, but on a scale of one to five, I give it a two. I wouldn’t recommend it.
A question: does anyone know how I can run those old 32 bit games on a 64 bit machine? It seems someone should have written an emulator.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:25PM (1 child)
It has 4 GB of RAM, right? It *may* be possible to upgrade to 8 GB of RAM. Need more exact info on what you have. That's probably not a solution to any of the particular problems you have, but a good idea anyway. That should cost $20-30. An upgrade to SSD from HDD would almost certainly speed things up. But suddenly the machine is not $200 anymore.
https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Dell/inspiron-11-%283180%29 [crucial.com]
4 USB ports on an 11.6-inch laptop? That seems like a lot. Are two of them Type-C?
AMD A9-9420e [cpubenchmark.net] is almost twice as fast as my A6-3400M [cpubenchmark.net] in single core, similar in multi-core performance but with just half the cores. It also appears to be a fanless chip at 6W TDP [cpu-world.com], which makes it relatively slow. But that obviously doesn't explain why it feels so much worse than the older Windows computer.
What version of Windows 10? If it is the locked down Windows 10 S, you might want to upgrade that (free).
32-bit games and applications should not have issues running on 64-bit, other than various compatibility issues. Are you sure you don't mean 16-bit? You'd likely need DosBox for that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday January 20 2020, @07:15PM
OOps, that was a typo. 3 USB ports. From a review I read before buying it, the hard drive is the bottleneck. And yes, they're all 32 bit games although I do have some sixteen bit games. The 32 bit Audacity ran, but barely. The 64 bit version is faster than the old Acer. I suspect another bottleneck is Windows 10, every iteration of windows has always been slower than the last.
It was the locked down one but I did upgrade that. The locked down one only lets you install from their app store.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 4, Funny) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:39PM (1 child)
For gaming, Wine is better Windows than Windows for quite a long time, more often than not. But the future is bleak, Linux is heading to 64bit only, with distros maintainers incapable to keep up with both 32bit and 64bit code in runtime.
But, games are going to 64bit too. Actually, it was a big relief, major performance gain when Skyrim engine migrated from 32bit code to 64bit, on Windows 7.
So, here is my recommendation for ancient games: Install an old 32bit Linux with Wine, in a virtual machine, on a 64bit Linux host. You may need to compile more recent versions of Wine in your inner Linux yourself.
Picking suitable graphics suitable for virtualization is another difficult problem. I would not recommend notebook toys for gaming, you should build a true machine.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:43PM
https://appdb.winehq.org/ [winehq.org]
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 18 2020, @05:07PM
Classic Shell/Open Shell is great for restoring classic menu and other functionality to Windows 8 and 10. I use it on those machines whenever possible.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday January 18 2020, @05:09PM (1 child)
I got this from work: $600 laptop for $200.
Started it up and was greeted by the Windows and Siri. First thing: disable Siri... so annoying! "Hi...this page is for doing blah!" "Hi, this is for blah blah!" Noooope.
Next was "Sign into your Microsoft account!" and i was out of there.
Took out my Manjaro disk and installed (although i did get stuck by the bios: needing to turn off the Secure boot, etc)
Everything worked out of the box. No problems (although if someone can tell me how to switch the keyboard so that F12 opens guake instead of turning off the internet........!!!!!!!!!)
My vote is for Wine too....can you run Wine on Windows? (Or can you dual-boot!)
My vote also: wipe windows, install linux.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:50PM
For the keyboard switches, check which modules are loading for your keyboard. You can probably pass an option on the kernel commandline (ie. grub) or at startup with a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ to switch to function keys being normal without the fn button.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:21AM (2 children)
> They added ads to Solitaire and took away the function that quickly ends a game.
On Win7 (64-bit) I loaded a copy of SOL.exe from Win XP. Works like it always did. Don't think it took any installation, but you could google if you have a problem.
The auto-updates on Win 10 might get rid of older software like SOL.exe, I know at least one person with this problem--all the old games disappear after every forced update. I guess you could rename it or put a copy in a folder where Win 10 can't find it easily?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:01AM
Would changing attributes to read-only work? Maybe change ownership to the local user only. Again, knowing MS, they'll ignore the attribute bits, but it might be worth a try.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday January 20 2020, @07:18PM
Yes, I found a replacement like the old Solitaire. Still annoying.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:25AM
Otherwise they act like regular arrow keys.
The view tab in the folder options has a thing for showing the regular old menu bar [always show menus], and you can minimize the ribbon with the arrow thingie way over on its right side. You're going to have to experiment and find everything, but you can make it look and run fairly normal. Make a spam catching hotmail account to get more internet goodies.
Your games must be awful sensitive to not install. You know how to run the installers in compatibility mode, right? Or can you make an XP virtual machine and run them there? You'll only need a gig of RAM. The machine has 4?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Tuesday January 21 2020, @06:26PM
In some cases game communities have been quite avid and have provided mods for old games that get them to work on newer hardware.
In most cases, you'll be stuck using something like VirtualBox to run an OS that will let you do what you want.
Or maybe the likes of something like sandboxie may have an answer. Unless I miss my guess, Windows hasn't actually gotten rid of 32-bit compatibility in any version of it's OS, yet. What you're running into an issue with is 16-bit games running on modern hardware. Such as the likes of Civilization II. Last time I really tried looking, I was able to find some mod to make it work, but it's a shame the publisher has left it languishing.
I would love to see GOG dig it's claws into Civ2 and come out with a polished product that works on modern computers.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"