Can This Laptop From 2006 Still Do ANYTHING in 2024?
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- Опубліковано 18 лют 2024
- Hello there and welcome to my video. In today's video, I'm going to be testing out this old Dell Latitude D620 ATG from 2006! I'm going to be seeing whether or not it is capable of completing basic day to day tasks in 2024, and I'll also be daily driving it for a week to get a real good feel for how it does.
Music, in order:
Beyond - Patrick Patrikios
Sunny Days - Anno Domini Beats
Papov - Yung Logos
Nine Lives - Unicorn Heads
Komorebi - Futuremono
Hey there! If you're stopping by down here to drop a comment regarding the screen on this laptop - let me answer that question here instead. I didn't address it in the video, but it seems like this screen was damaged and then someone tried to fix it with some glue of some sort. I have no clue about what's gone on with it, as it's not my laptop and the person I'm borrowing it from doesn't know what happened either. Sorry I don't know the story to it, I'd love to know what happened to it as well!
Also - I have no clue what DaVinci did to the audio during the live audio portion/the final portion of the video. The raw audio and the audio in the timeline were great sounding, but the renders really messed it up. Sorry about that if you're someone who noticed. Not sure what happened there, it almost sounds like there's aggressive noise reduction on the audio but there isn't.
The screen issue (i.e., glue) is from the fact that you have an ATG version of the D620. The ATG version is intended to be used in harsh conditions. There is an extra cover on the LCD which tends to become separated over time.
wow I never thought this knowledge would be useful! the other commenter is correct. this model laptop uses a liquid adhesive to adhere the LCD to a secondary protective layer. With time, this goo seeps out and coats everything else. a pretty severe design flaw IMO.
i think somone tried to cover scratches on the screen with glue if the panel itself was damaged it just wouldnt work right at all
The screen could also have what they call "Vinegar Syndrome" where the layer in the screen start to decay and you can also get the smell of vinegar from some monitors too. BTW just recently Microsoft completely blocked all upgrades from Win 8 and older to be possible anymore. Unless your computer have been activated with win10 once you cannot use an older license to activate it anymore. I tried it. and the end of next year most older computers will not run win11 anyway especially if your computer don´t have the newly added demand for certain CPU instructions it won´t even work with any bypass methods. it even seems like MS is probably gonna block bigger updates on non natively compatible computers. we all gonna have to pay the price of modern capitalism some way
at 8:10 you are NOT playing the real geometry dash, you can focus on the steam game or the cracked versions. The browser versions is only to get easy money, which means the geometry lite is a cash grab. Even worse, they are NOT well optimized, and does not work properly with old CPUs. Whatever you do, DO NOT INSTALL THE BLUESTACKS ONE.
4:59 Ahhh love the state of 2024 UA-cam where scam ads are on the blank home page
Yep, gotta love those ads... missed blurring that one, woops ;D
That particular ad has been a thing since at least 2022, I must have seen it hundreds of times now. UA-cam doesn't care.
@@RetroPlus I've reported it at least ten times.
For those old machines, a better solution would be Windows 10 LTSC instead of regular 10, since it doesn't have the Windows Store bloat that comes with standard, no Cortana and only receives security updates.
I'll have to look into that, thanks!
Uhh Linux?
Linux sucks on hardware that has a core 2 duo or older@@iplyrunescape305
I use LTSC 2019 on my main workstation and I can confirm that it runs around 20% faster than normal Win10 with all the bloatware. Sadly LTSC is not available to private customers and buying it from an online reseller likely violates Microsoft licensing terms. It's not illegal for personal use but still something to be aware of IMO. If the license gets blocked for whatever reason you're on your own.
Tiny10 might be an even better alternative.
I am writing this from my 2007 Dell Inspiron (1520) Core 2 Duo. I upgraded it with125 GB SSD, 4 Gb Ram, Windows 10, etc. My experience so far has been fine. This computer is ON 24 hours and no heating problem. For simple office work such as spreadsheets, Word documents, watching UA-cam videos, etc., it is adequate. I even installed Windows 11 on it once. It worked fine for a while but suddenly it started to act strange. I could not access the Start button. I think it has to do with a corrupt registry or something. I reinstalled Windows 10 and it is working fine. But once in a while it crashes, and I think the problem is with new DDR2 ram. It was a cheap ram. The best thing about this computer is swapping the hard drive. 4 screws and caddy comes out. No need to take the whole laptop apart. I have the original hard drive with XP installed and new SSD with Windows 10. Whenever I need it, I can swap the drive with ease. It has micro card reader and I have 64 Gb card installed and it's working fine. In future I will definitely try Linux but not sure about the drivers...
Glad to hear that computer's doing good for you! The easily swappable drives are really nice on these systems, I wish we had them in modern ones but of course the industry went towards "how thin can we possibly make it" and we lost that.
So true. After I bought the new SSD I kept it in the box for few months thinking I will have to open the top part, takeout the keyboard, etc. to swap it. I had to do that when I upgraded ram. Then one day I decided to do the swap. I looked around the back and saw four screws with some kind of symbol... I was thinking to myself that cannot be hard drive... but took out the screws anyway. And lord be hold, the hard drive caddy with hard drive inside just came out. I put the SSD, screw it back and bios recognized the SSD with no problem....I couldnot believe it!!!! I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 and drivers... and it workd like a charm. It is my daily driver and very reliable. Of course I don't play games on it since the onboard graphics is minimal to say it nicely. You are right on the money when you said these computer could be very useful to students on tight budget. The upgrade can be done on cheap yet the computer is very reliable.
better off just finding an old computer that has 4g of ram thats old and just taking that ram and putting it in it!
Have you tried installing Tiny11 instead?
Tiny 11 isn't an official Microsoft product nor is it OpenSource so could contain any old thing in it like hidden key loggers. @@adriangorgonio2072
UA-cam defaults to VP8 Video and Opus audio decoding. Those are heavy tasks for a Core 2 duo system, due to lack of hardware acceleration.
Installing h264ify extension will switch UA-cam to use the H264 video and mp3 audio decoding, which both can be hardware rendered by a Core 2 duo system.
I'll keep that in mind for next time I mess with this system, thanks!
I'll try it since my c2duo based laptop struggles in YT, thx a lot
This and using uBlock Origin, who the hell uses the web with ads, let alone on such an old computer?
IT WORKS! THANKS!
Ah nice
My friend actually used a D620 for college work... this was just after Windows 7 had lost support but was still used. And he loved it! It's actually what made us friends in the end!
I used one of those for 7 years. Durable, easy to work on, and the swappable extended batteries were cheap. They were workhorses!
@@flotowncomputerguy6243It is a nice machine actually. I used one for awhile.
in 2006, much of the internet didn't use modern plugins like HTML5 and previously the biggest novelty was flash, depending on the website, game, youtube and other things flash was using around the time.
however with the introduction of HTML5 and modern devices that can support it we often take that for granted while older devices prior 2008 will often struggle and have a hard time adjusting to the use of the plugin or will outright refuse to run it citing an error.
i myself use a 2014 Panasonic Toughbook and 2012 dell optiplex for hard work and they get the job done for my tasks, i honestly suggest anything older than 2010 just isn't worth keeping during the time of this writing due to the reasons above.
Educational. Thanks for sharing
If you are going to use an old PC like this, the first thing you should do is open it to clean the fan and heatsink, replace thermal paste and install a new bios battery. You will get a much better experience even with these older laptops with just a little bit of time invested. I rebuild these older computers on the regular for classic gaming it does make a huge difference.
What about updating the bios? I got an old laptop from 2016 from a friend but it has a password lock on the bios so I can't update it without physically soldering out the chip and reprogramming it in a $12 dongle. I asked my friend for the password and who the hell even puts a password on the bios in the first place? And he said it was a company computer. He upgraded the ram to 32gb so im just thinking maybe a more up to date bios would read that kind of ram faster since that wasn't really a thing back in 2016. Who knows tho the bios could be completely up to date and I could very well go through all that trouble for nothing.
Isnt there a jumper somewhere? Or cant you remove the battery and reset the BIOS? Usually there is way to reset the password without buying dongles. Atleast in my experience....@@arashrezaee1464
@@arashrezaee1464 You can just reset the bios by taking the laptop battery and CMOS battery out or using a pin jumper. Password will be gone. And then you can update it.
@@Dogappel that works for desktops but not certain laptop. Monr doesn't even have a bios battery. Trust me I've looked this up. You used to be able to contact hp and give them your specific model number and they'd send you a specific file to flash your drive with. Now because of security concerns they refuse to do that and it's absolutely maddening that someone would even do this
@@arashrezaee1464 Oh yeah it depends on the laptop. My lenovo ideapad does have a BIOS battery.
So many memories using windows xp on my dial up desktop computer I had for years to connect to the internet until my family member introduced to me and my mom to a cellphone for faster internet.
In my opinion it's impossible to replace a desktop computer with a cellphone for proper computing tasks - sure, it's fine for consuming media and playing a few games but nothing beats a proper keyboard for comfortable and speedy input.
For the record, I am an "old guy" because the first computer I used to connect to the Internet was a Commodore Amiga A1200 back in around 1992 running at 14 MHz with 8 MB RAM and the "iBrowse" web browser - and I'd been active in the BBS scene before then also.
I also believe that computer usage should be "disciplined" where the user controls the device, not the other way around. The problem with modern mobile phones is they constantly demand some kind of attention and there's nothing sadder, in my eyes, than watching a population of "phone zombies" stumbling around and peering down at their tiny screens.
I have mobile phones myself, but only de-Googled Android phones with no social media presence on any of them - a secondary advantage being that with Google's 24x7 tracking capabilities removed from the phones, I get 2 to 3 times the battery life out of them also. My phones sit quietly in my pocket unless I need to make a call, send a text or play a bit of media.
I carry around a small Linux laptop when mobile and if I want some computer time I sit down in a cafe with a coffee and dig the laptop out - occasionally looking up and out of the window to laugh at the phone zombies attached to their tiny screens.
so it's less powerful then a G5 super computer🤣
This video is relevant, specially considering these kind of laptops might still be around in third world countries where budgets are much more limited.
As someone who flips the occasional laptop in this context, something that might help:
*If you need to stick with official Windows*
1. Do check the thermal solution: having clean heat sinks, fans and fresh thermal paste helps the struggling cpu a bit.
2. Enter Appearance and Performance in Settings and set everything to performance; not having to render unnecessary animations will reduce the load on the CPU
3. Blocks applications from running in background, as this places, again, unnecessary load on your CPU and RAM.
4. If the laptop and budget allows, do upgrade the RAM, even if only to 3GB. It will be a less painful experience.
*If you don’t need official windows but don’t want to dabble with Linux*
1. Install Tiny10
2. Perform all the steps given above
It will be a much smoother experience
Great tips, thank you!
yes i recommend trying out one of the modded win isos, Tiny 11 and Sceptre 11 works all the way back to Core 2 Duo at the moment
I have almost the same laptop. Running windows 10 enterprise and it works well ebough for what i need. Glad to see others using it too!
I still use D620 for school, it was my first laptop, with t5500, 4GB, 500G SSD, W7, it is very reliable, but not very good for heavy tasks, but for normal office it is really nice and has very good keyboard
The keyboard was absolutely heavenly for all my docs/slides work! If only we could have modern laptops with that kind of keyboard still...
My 2013 laptop has 2GB RAM😞 but the maximum supported is 8GB
This is giving me crazy nostalgia my dad had the same laptop and ended up giving it to me and my sister we used to play the sims2 and oblivion on it some of my earliesr gaming memories is trying to get games to run on it
Back in 2006 UA-cam probably would have runned fine on this Laptop
Probably? I watched UA-cam problem free in 2013 on a Latitude D510.
I really love that Bluetooth light on the laptop
It's cozy looking. My cousin had this and it's nice to use.
Your speaker issues are due to degradation. Basically the seal breaks over time making tne speaker kinda wobble in place. Got the same issue on my 2006 mbp
Man those screens were amazing back in the day. That ATG model had a display that worked in direct sunlight but they leaked goo **EVERYWHERE**
Yeah the screen itself seemed really nice, minus the goo
I had no idea that screens could leak goo, but new mental image unlocked.
@@user-nd7rg5er5g its. Less go and more like crystallized honey. It’s horrifyingly sticky and has this weird smell to it. It’s the adhesive between the anti reflective panel and the display that gave it a usable in direct sunlight on the beach screen.
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials it really shines when you try to use it on a right sunny day. It’s perfectly clear and readable. It turns it into a transflective that works out in the sun.
Still use old hardware here and I love it.
Thanx for the video. Looking forward to the Linux install on this laptop..
Nice vid buddy! I think it would be an interesting idea to max out this laptop & revisit it again. If it has 2 ram slots, it can likely take a total of 8gb (despite the manufacturer stating "max is 4gb"... since 4gb DDR2 sticks came out at the end of DDR2's lifespan - thus the manufacturers had discontinued production of this laptop/not had the knowledge of such sticks coming into existence).
You can also stick a Core2Duo T9500 or if you wanna absolutely max it out the more exotic Intel X9000 which uses the same PGA478 socket as the T5600.
Keep up the vids!
Thanks for the kind words! Definitely thinking to come back to this system with some upgrades like the CPU upgrade you mentioned!
i still love the looks on the faces when i roll up with my dell xps m1710 fully upgraded running crysis
(btw try "windows x lite" as it doesnt have the microsoft bs installed so it uses *way less* ram and cpu usage)
I'll definitely try that! I also got quite a few looks from people while I was using this haha, was actually a pretty great conversation starter which was kind of cool.
I have exactly the same machine as you (M1710) and will have a look at getting it operational again. After all, it’s the laptop that saved the world several times in Stargate SG1. :)
I had one of these D620 laptops years ago, though the non-ATG one. It was a great laptop. Ran Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Linux over the time I had it. I tossed it into a recycle bin years ago without any thought, which I regret...wish I still had it and all of my other old PCs. However, in 2014 it was a perfectly usable computer!
man this is a trip, this was the laptop my mom had when she was finishing college, I was in middle school and I would play half life 2 on it
I used to have one of those PoS things as a work asset. Nice to see all the screens delaminate or melt or w/e the separation is....Thing was an absolute tank tho
Built like a tank minus that screen, wish Dell had recalled and fixed them
Good, thanks!
I got a Dell Latitude E6430 for only 32 and it was in very good shape. i5 3rd gen, 6GB RAM, and I upgraded it to a 500GB SSD and it does pretty good.
Great work. My only suggestion with regard to your initial perspective, a basic user could also attempt a debloat script from a reputable site like Chris Titus Tech and it could help the older hardware handle windows 10 a bit better. Otherwise love your approach and great video!
I used that a lot, windows 10 debloated works completely different.
Comparison is like night vs day.
I've had a Sony Vaio laptop from late 2006/early 2007 that still works to this day.
Japan only machines, they never made it to Europe or the US.
Please but some less then $200 2019 HP refurbished model, why invest in old crab ?
I always get 3 year old Pro models, stopped buying them new. Trust me this works !
Wow my mother owns a dell latitude with windows xp on it as well in the 2000s and the laptop still works but i havent got to fully test it though but its still a cool piece of technology that i got to boot it up and experience the windows xp days
There is a cult following to the thi kpad you mentioned! I actually use a w540 with a few upgraded bits and its pretty darn good
Icy Box sells these spacers that allow you to plug a 7mm SSD drive into a 9.5mm bay. I have bought one for my old Dell D820 when I replaced the HDD with an SSD many many years ago. (I have actually completely forgot about it until I disassembled the laptop recently.)
If you ever want to install Linux on the laptop I'd recommend using antiX as it's a very lightweight Debian based distro and is perfect for laptops of this age. I have a Acer Aspire 5630 from around the same time that is still running it's standard IDE HDD and 2GB RAM and it runs amazingly.
I did this exact test with an old laptop I have, Mine was a 2008/2009 HP DV4 with Turion X2 ZM-80 CPU running at 2.2ghz and surprisingly was upgradeable to 8GB DDR2 ram and was upgradeable to a ZM-82 CPU so I maxed it out. I also put a 128gb DDR sata drive. was super slow like yours but maybe a hair faster. once the process gets below 99% it's actually decent. I even wiped it and added Windows 10 LTSC which is a stripped down version and it ran better.
This laptop is nearly 20 years old. The fact that it was so friendly and similar to modern hardware is astounding in my opinion. Imagine if in 2001 you were handed the original ibm pc. Youd likely have NO CLUE what to do with it.
Or handing a AST/tandy computer from 1993 to anyone in the 2013 era.
Fair, the fact that it still has some more modern features like SATA is really great considering its age
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials exactly. I think this is generally down to streamlining and the sector finding it's feet, not stagnation. Standardization.
I think any laptop after about 2010 would be relatively fine today with some basic upgrades.
I have an old Dell Inspiron 1720 that I have piece mill upgraded over the years with a T9500, 6GB of RAM, and a pair of Samsung SATA SSDs. It could easily be a daily driver in a pinch aside from being a brick, as it runs Windows 10 flawlessly. It even ran Windows 11 briefly, also fine, though it seems 24H2 is the end of the line for that.
These old C2D systems are getting long in the tooth, but if you already have one laying around, they can be decent little systems if you shop around for use upgrade parts.
Nice system! Yeah, they're absolutely still capable of being a daily driver in a pinch, and can still run modern OS's relatively well.
My dad bought a ton of these back in 2008-2010 off of eBay for cheap. He had them everywhere in the house and beyond. He even had one mounted in his work truck just like a police car setup. Had a toolbox with 4 marine deep cycle batteries to keep it, a external monitor, printer, modem/router all running 24/7. Overkill but still cool.
It was also my first ever foray into PC gaming- managed to run the original GTA 3D era trilogy and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 fairly well. I tried Minecraft (early alpha build iirc) and it would crash on launch. Though that may have been due to the specific one I was using being loaded with junk. I think I had IE loaded with 20 something toolbars. The whole of Windows looked like a Vinesauce Joel Destruction video.(I was 7 don't judge!)
Thanks for the throwback to an awesome childhood memory of mine!
That's cool! Happy to hear you enjoyed :)
I am writing this comment from my mid 2000s Hewlett Packard DC5700 and I am currently running stock Windows 11 on this computer. Now my computer has older specifications as it is a Pentium 4 machine. This computer originally ran Windows XP in its day and I got to say it was not as bad as I originally intended it to be. Now, I don't push my computer to its limits so my thoughts aren't the most accurate but it certainly passed my expectations. It plays youtube videos correctly albeit at a lower resolution and it runs fine with a mechanical hard drive. Additionally, I'm not too bothered by speed which probably explains why I'm fine with a mechanical hard drive but it'll be better with an SSD. Overall, great video and love it when old computers get a second chance in the modern era.
Loved your video!But have you installed the drivers for it? My old laptop worked awfully at first in windows 10 but after i installed the drivers it worked good. I recommend snappy drivers for doing that
I used this laptop for college in 2012-15 on Windows 7, it was slow but good enough for Word, spreadsheets, and doing my online test. I now use it to see what Debian has in the pipelines
Installing the h264ify extension should help with the UA-cam too. Core2duo cant hardware decode VP9
i was able to find a 2011 dell latitude e6410 of ebay for 20 dollars with 8 gb ddr3 ram and a i5-m520 came with an SSD runs windows 10 just fine i use it as my travel computer. its honestly one of my favorite computers to use
This is a good video idea
Thanks! I was pretty happy with it when I came up with it. Glad you enjoyed :)
I have that, but not the ATG version. Just the D620, and I'm happy to say it works fine on Windows 10 with an SSD.
Still using my 2006 Thinkpad T60 everyday, those old pc's are still totally usable as typewriters and can run old source games pretty well. I swapped the motherboard for a t61 one, so i can even watch youtube videos and play some esport titles when i connect an egpu (I also played some AAA titles with it just to see my friends reactions, but it ran way too hot)
Great video! I'm actually watching this video on a dell studio 1737 laptop motherboard from 2008. I made a wooden case and put that motherboard in it. It's not that bad actually when using windows 10, it has it's dedicated GPU (Radeon HD 3650). And a pentium dual core T4500 (Originally had T4200, but I had a T4500 laying around to make it a little bit faster.) But it's kinda bottle necked, since when I play a very basic 2D game, the CPU maxes out and the GPU can't go higher. This probably happens because i'm using the wrong power adaper and the CPU doesn't get enough power (BIOS says that). Video playback is smooth when the pc is idle, but when you load comments for example, the video starts to stutter. I did upgrade it a little bit by putting an SSD inside and 4GB of ram.
That sounds like a pretty interesting machine! I bet that HD 3650 is helping the performance of the system out tremendously; my laptop only had the integrated graphics on its chipset, which aren't very good.
I have a old hp dv6000 running windows 11 lite it works just fine surprisingly! I also installed a version of chrome book on it too that worked great but couldn’t plug and kind of drives to it or usb so tried windows 11 and it’s what my nephew uses when his over to play around with it lol
That's awesome man! I'm probably going to try some light version of Win 10/11 on this soon, as a lot of people seem to really like it
I recently upgraded a 2007 dell E520 desktop to Windows 10 and upgraded it to a core 2 quad q6600, SSD, and 8GB ram. It runs extremely well and can handle virtually any web task including youtube at 1080p. It only takes a few seconds to start up as well.
That's awesome!
Nice video about how it's like using one of those old laptops. I tried bodhi linux on a fairly old computer from Dell. It works fine is you don't ask too much. The laptop has a gpu dedicated card that is not recognized by bodhi linux, unfortunately. For very basic tasks, office and things like that, it's fine but comes to struggle when multitasking. And youtube videos...😂
I used a D620 with a Centrino duo from 2015-2019 in high school. I used Lubuntu on it, and it was more than useable for everything I needed it too. The keyboard was AMAZING! It's the best keyboard I've used to date, and I could crank out an essay on it like no other. Everybody made fun of me for using such a thick boy. I was also the weird kid using a click wheel iPod.
That's awesome! I can imagine that Lubuntu helped it out a lot, I'm excited to pick it back up with some Linux and see how much better it is. Also, totally agree on the keyboard!
I use a similarly specced laptop for my daily usage, it's and Acer Travelmate 5320 from 2007 which I got for free, it has a higher tier c2duo cpu and 3gb of ddr2 (tried to go for 4gb but it crashes all the time so 3gb it is), runs Lubuntu like a champ and it manages to do everything, from YT to donwloading music to watching series. These laptops are unkillable and with the right OS they can still go.
Sitting here next to my D630, which is virtually identical to your D620. My machine can run Windows 10 just fine and had a registered license, but I actually run Xubuntu on it. It's a great laptop, built like a tank, batteries are cheap and easy to get, etc. I use this D630 more than my far more powerful I7 laptop, because the D630 is more handy to have just sitting around.
Lol, big fan of old laptops here. My main laptops are a Panasonic Toughbook CF30 from 2008 which is the most bricky laptop you’ll ever see, and a Samsung N130 which is a tiny netbook I got for like 20$ I have running XP. I nicknamed them “The Brick” and “The Feather” respectively.
I have duct taped an 80ish mm fan to the bare motherboard of a Packard Bell from 2007.
Without it it gets to 103°C for 720p UA-cam.Dual Core Sempron CPU at 1.8Ghz .
The fan is also tied to a 12v 2A DC adapter and it is all beautiful.
I can finally play Terraria in 50fps,800x600.
I love messing with old hardware 💚
Me too :D
I am writing this from my 2008 compaq cq70 presario. 3 GB ddr2 ram 500gb hdd (from an old dell it's original drive with vista died) and Intel Centrino 2 and an Nvidia Geforce 9200M GE with Windows 7 Professional fully updated. I can say, it is amazing. The Dvd drive works perfectly with my dvd movies. It plays games with no problems, it burns DVDs without problems. Comparing it to my 3600 Euros gaming pc i would say, it is amazing 😍 I hope everyone agreed 😊
I have a D630 I consider to be an invincible workhorse, but mine runs with 6 gigs of RAM and loves it. I haven't maxed out the CPU, nor installed an SSD yet, but when I need to reluy on a machine to do something besides gaming, It does it. Mine is x64, and has no troubles with 6 gigs of ram, but with yours being a D620, is yours an x86/32-bit limited to 4 gigs? Just thought that was an odd but large difference between two nearly identical laptops. Great looking machine on the outside, but exactly identical to the back, sides, and insides to mine. There is also an extended batter you can get for this laptop to replace the standard one, and it looks like almost a keyboards palm rest when installed, since it sticks out of the front of the laptop instead of the back, like a 5500/6500's would.
I'm pretty sure the chipset in this laptop is a limiting factor, meaning that 4GB of RAM is the max for this laptop. I might have to look into that battery when I revisit this laptop with some upgrades, as that would probably make the battery issues I had much better!
I'm glad that I have a 3rd gen i3 laptop, especially after seeing this
I don't have time for old, slow computers. That PC so for the bin or for email only.
The slowness on UA-cam is due to lack of hardware decoding capability for modern UA-cam codecs like VP9 and AV1.
you should upgrade the CPU if it is a socketed laptop cpu and I own a Dell Latitude D630C but the speakers are blown up on it the dell latitude D620 the laptop speakers sound very bad like there are at the verge of dying both with 2 gigs of ram and an Kingston SSD and in 2019 the D630C was may daily driver now it is a 2020 M1 MacBook Pro
Definitely going to consider a CPU upgrade and revisit on this machine!
ok@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials
You should try atlas os. Its a windows install but without all the bloatware. Got my 2013 laptop running as well as a new one
I still use a ThinkPad T440s with 12 GB of RAM and a SSD running Windows 11. It's the perfect everyday laptop still, and I bet it will be for quite a few years to come.
i got an lg r410 from 2009, it´s runs win 7 and some games very well with the origial configuration, and i can do cpu upgrade and add another ram module
7:15 it got that school presentation speaker sound
speakers is crazy because i have an IBM thinkpad 380 that is actually so godly and the speakers are NICE
I was really hoping the speakers on this thing would be awesome, cuz man, it's got the room for some good ones!
The biggest limitations of most Core Duo/Core2Duo systems is DD2 AND IDE drive interface, although towards the end of its life cycle, you could find Core 2 Duo systems supporting DD3 and SATA support.
Makes sense, this one had DDR2 and SATA which is interesting to me, maybe it was made in a bit of an intermediary time between DDR2/3 and IDE/SATA
Im still rocking an old HP Elite book from 2010, its a tank. I maxed out the CPU to a quad core i7, added an SSD and 16gb ram. Its still very usable.
There's a few things that I want to bring attention to.
1) use chris titus debloater to remove all the background processed as much as possible, also use it to disable or differ updates as long as possible. (maybe even make a minimal windows with the tool too)
2) linux might be a good fit, though you might need to buy an intel wifi card if it has broadcom otherwise you'll be without internet.
3) a $30 HP stream running lubuntu or linux mint would probably smoke this laptop. also you're more likely to get a usable battery, mine is 11 years old and it gets 6 hours battery life.
You could try an older version of windows debloated, like Windows 10 Ameliorated 1903 or Ghost Spectre. You could also try a lighter browser like Slimjet or Waterfox. If Windows 10 acts up too much, try Windows 8 with a custom start menu.
I got a single core AMD64 overclocked by 10% with 2 GBs of RAM. It has Windows XP and a mechanical hard drive but the big desktop one. It works like a charm, can play 720p videos without issues and most games of its age. Office 2003 works too so it can be used to write your thesis. But as soon as I open a browser it dies. Google barely opens, most others websites refuse to load at all. The best part is the browser itself takes almost a minute to open. That's the only piece of software (old versions, as Windows XP is not even capable of running the latest ones) I'm having issues with. Pull the plug and it's perfect.
I do remember *in* 2006, battery life on those monster laptops being pretty abysmal by modern standards. My ex had one that her IT dad picked out for her, but she hated it and preferred an Eee PC running linux for most day to day work.
One problem today is that a lot of universities now have students submit their papers electronically in .docx format with the current version of MS-Word. I graduated in 2009, and one of my last classes before graduating had us do that - so I had to write that paper from a library computer because I had gone through university using a linux box and LibreOffice (and printed them out on my personal inkjet). They gave us some careful instructions for how to save the files as we worked on them to a network drive - so they could be annotated by the teacher or whatever. So sadly you can't just run an older system.
Yeah, even though I didn't set up a license and test it, Microsoft Office was definitely a partial reason that I tested with Windows because several schools/workplaces use it.
My son has desktop with a core2quad, 4GB Ram and 128GB SSD and runs like a charm with Linux Mint XFCE.
The learning curve for basic things like word processing and web browsing is super low and he got the hang of it quite fast.
That's great to hear!
You can also force mobile pages for Internet, to get some better performance.
nice! For this old laptop I think using Windows 7 or very debloated 10 (if Linux is not an option) is the better way to go. I have a machine similar to that and youtube works pretty well still. Also an upgrade to 4GB of DDR2 would make a massive change.
Hoping to revisit the laptop with some very debloated Win 10 in the near future, and I actually did upgrade to 4GB of RAM later in the vid, definitely made a massive difference!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials nice! Also my bad for not noticing the ram upgrade. Lowest I got windows 10 was 1.8/16GB and a friend got it at 900MB/8GB.
I tried this experiment with a HP laptop from 2006 with a 64-bit AMD processor and 512 meg memory. (Weighing in at 5 lbs) I opted for Linux due to low mem. Works fine except for very slow browser updates due to memory constraints. My observation, I think I'll stick with my 2020 laptop.
your initial premise was to give to a school age child. i would be interested to see how well it performed from that POV.
great video
I used it for a lot of Google Docs/Slides when I daily drove it for a week, which is a lot of what school kids would do on a laptop such as this these days. Overall, disregarding battery life and unwieldiness, it performed pretty impressively in those tasks! More than responsive enough to get by, on par and at times ahead of cheap Chromebooks but only in those two applications.
I'm guessing the thermal paste is bad. My 2019 Dell gaming PC ended up needing new paste within 6 months (I'm not sure we're they got such bad paste, but debauer's thermal pads kept it speedy and cooler than the mud it came with) so I assume something this old would need to be repasted.
Also, my speakers blew out like others have suggested could be the case.
I'm guessing it's going to be better quality than modern systems, but thermal paste is just wear and tear.
In my opinion and experience, it's best to dismantle older computers and then give everything a good clean and renew the thermal paste and the cmos battery and then install a lightweight Linux OS., perhaps that process could be the subject of another video.
PS., I have a Dell Latitude D530 laptop which has 2.20 GHz., core 2 duo processor and 4 gig of ddr2 ram., and a 120 gig ssd., and Linux Mint Mate is the OS., the computer works well.
Planning to come back to this computer with Linux and I'll definitely clean it out at that point. Glad to hear that laptop works well with Linux Mint!
I still use my Dell E5530 from 2012. The battery is deceased, and the screen is smashed, so I converted it into a desktop. It shipped with a 7200RPM HDD, I swapped an SSD into it. The HDD speed wasn’t terrible, but I put the SSD in because the drive had 40 bad sectors
Maximum ram is essential, I have the D630, with 8GB, yes, I bought two 4Gb DDR2 sodimms and also 1TB ssd. But now it's almost a practical laptop, apart from the speed, at least once I replaced the dead screen and bought a new battery and bought the dock. I spent too much. Was it worth the effort and expense? Lol...
That’s awesome! Imo Dell business laptops like this are made better than their personal ones.
I daily drove and maintained a D620 for many years until this year. I have a few thoughts:
+The SSD just needs some sort of spacer on the top during insertion, but otherwise will fit perfectly fine with the stock caddy.
+Probably the reason Windows installation went so slow is because this laptops BIOS defaults to USB 1.1 with the option to switch to 2.0 in the BIOS.
+Yeah that speaker is cooked. A good D620 speaker gets surprisingly loud. And it's just a single mono speaker.
+I would usually get just short of 2 hours from the 6 cell battery, my personal record being 2 hours 45 minutes. (yes I was using the laptop) There's a 9 cell option as well as a 2nd battery that slots into the expansion bay.
+This laptop is perfectly compatible with Linux and will give you a great experience *IF* you know what you're doing. I highly doubt many other people on this earth could (or knew how to) enjoy using this as their primary device for as long as I did.
Thanks for sharing that, I appreciate it!
That USB 1.1 thing would absolutely explain why the install would have been slow, it makes a lot of sense. I'm glad to hear you got as much milage out of your laptop as you did, 18-ish years is impressive! I'm working on a video with this laptop and Linux right now, but as you said, you really have to know what you're doing for it to work as well as it can. I'm no master when it comes to desktop Linux, so maybe you'll have some beneficial thoughts to share when that video comes out!
Used an R61e for school and it really got the shit done. Couldn't even distract me due to not being able of running anything more than minesweeper..
You could also install Chrome OS Flex which is free from Google and turn it into a Chromebook. For a kid, that's probably the best option, considering most schools use Chromebooks now and they would already be familiar with it, plus it's extremely lightweight and runs on just about anything.
This particular example is in rough condition and I have a few of this model in my collection. Upgrading the cpu and ram goes a long ways same goes for debloating the windows install. So still kinda useful but with the modern web experience getting to be crappy on new hardware never mind anything of vintage doesn't help at all. For collecting and retro gaming it is worth getting one or two in the collection just for fun. Almost forgot it does have a native serial port so for some types of work it does come very in handy.
Hoping to upgrade the CPU and do another video on it in the future! Agreed with the modern web experience too, it's getting too bad to work well on older hardware and some newer hardware as you said. I don't do any retro gaming myself, but I can see how it could be great for that!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials I'll say that when a modern web browser eats up 10gb ram sometimes more it is ridiculous. Same goes for ads and can easily block several hundred over the coarse of an hour long video here on YT.
Bought a 6th gen I5 for about $100. Much happier with purchase, Had SSD installed.
A dell precision m4300 is probably a much more usable choice for the proposed use case
You could install tiny10 or tiny11 core on that since they are some good options.
Planning to do that soon!
For being XP vintage, it's a pretty advanced laptop, with a 64-bit CPU and SATA drive interface. I recently worked on a laptop with a Windows Vista sticker on it (it had been upgraded to Windows 10 some years ago), but it had a 32-bit CPU and PATA HDD. I could have upgraded the RAM to 4 GiB from 2, but the problem was the CPU being pinned at 100% all the time. Also, the backlight was fluorescent, not LED. Not even worth giving to a kid. And the battery is dead.
and Having Microsoft's full hatred as they do not want it running windows 11 or 12 so when windows 10 looses support and linux will have to run on it due to a lack of support in the future
yup i know the feeling, its similar story with Intel Atom Laptops
@@MrSamadolfoyou mean netbooks? Yeah 32 bit intel atom i have one of these
@@PITASFORLIFE 😊 yup i have a Dell Netbook, my buddy gifted it to me, shes slow but shes kinda cute
I have one like the same except the lid top is different (but it has windows XP as well). I tried putting chrome on it and it worked but it kept saying it wouldn’t work because my clock is off and it wouldn’t let me update date and time.
You might be able to get better UA-cam performance with the h264ify extension, even in Windows.
Oddly, I have found that kids have an easier time adjusting to Linux than adults do (it's not really that odd because kids are more flexible), though there may still be some advantage to having Windows regarding expectations from the teacher when they are trying to use it for schoolwork.
I see you did eventually up the RAM to 4GB.
The battery life might improve with a new battery, if you can find a replacement. This can be an issue, though, because replacements for old battery models vary in quality quite a bit. If it worked it would probably increase the battery life to 2.5 to 3.5 hours, though that is just a guess.
Brooo, u only have 3.8k subs?? No wayy.. I tought u have atleast 100k... damn.
Ich nutze einen Dell Vostro 1510, und weil es geschmeidig laufen soll, habe ich Chrome OS Flex darauf installiert. Läuft super!
Dude; the damn thing's 18 years old! What did you REALLY expect??? Be glad it still posts and boots in to it's operating system.
All the best!
Lol yeah, the expectations were low but I had to give a objective opinion on it haha
Hmm, ATG Dell Latitude D620, legimately a rare variant, in decent shape too!
I had no clue that this was a relatively rare variant, that's cool! And yeah, it's in overall good shape except for the screen (still don't know what happened there)
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials the Bubbly screen is a common defect that happens with a slew of ATG variants, unfortunately, its the rugged bits that ruins the laptop, shame, becuase the ATG is a gorgous latitude model
Edit: Models range from the older D620 Latitude to a far newer E6420 ATG, released in 2014, went on ebay and found almost all ATG models have a bubble in the display, how wasnt this a recall!?
I find these old laptops a bit too old nowadays but if you are willing to go a couple of hears i to the future, like in 2012 you will find plenty of awesome laptops that can still handle everything you throw to them. For example, I have an old hp 8470p, I upgraded the processor from a dual core i5 to a quad core I7, 16 gb of ddr3 ram and a 512 ssd and it works very well even on win11.
I think u may also need to upgrade the cpu and ram. And tiny 10 or even 11 a pretty good choice for os and both of them are really vanilla without any weird stuff from modded windows.
Probably going to revisit this system with upgrades and tiny 10/11 in the future!
Would be good to do speed comparison between Windows 10 and Linux on this.
It's in the works!
My 2009 Dell Studio w an core 2 ultra and radeon 4500 series and ssd upgrade also runs everything(It used Windows 7 but now runs windows 10)
I bet that Radeon helps with things like UA-cam playback!
that'd be nice to make a comparison with linux windows 7 and windows xp trying to run the same range of software to see how much bloat they add/how good the drivers supports are