Andys Computer

This time last year I switched back to the Mac after using Linux as my primary desktop operating system for several years. I am still very much a Mac fan, however I do find that software development, particularly software that will ultimately run on a Linux server, is easier to do on Linux, and software development is my plan for 2023. I do have a 4 year old laptop I could press into service, but from time to time I might like to boot into Windows and play a bit of Cities Skylines again and the laptop isn't up to gaming, so instead I decided to go with a new x86 box. Typically I build my own computers so I started to price up a machine with a modern CPU, graphics card and so on but as ever I was getting carried away and the price soon crept well over $2,000. I also wasn't keen on having an overpowered tower on my desk again, so I looked into building a smaller form factor unit, the smallest Mini-ITX I could find and scaling back the parts appropriately to avoid over heating it....

  A couple of months ago I decided to replace my trusty MacBook Air with a Linux laptop. I had a bunch of requirements that I covered in a previous post , but I couldn't find any single machine that checked all those boxes. But then I remembered a machine that was released back in late 2017, the 25th anniversary Thinkpad. Truth be told I'm no ThinkPad fanboy and at launch it was somewhat overpriced for the power on offer but it does have a lot going for it at least as far as my requirements, with one feature that is practically unique. I've highlighted the specs that don't meet me requirements in red, but as you can see it's a much better fit than the machines I previously looked at : Brand Lenovo Model ThinkPad 25 Screen Size 14" IPS 1920 x 1080 Multitouch CPU Intel Core i7 7500U ( Dual Core @ up to 3.5 GHz) Memory 16GB DDR4 (Expandable to 32GB) Storage 512GB NVME SSD (user replaceable) GPU Nvidia GeForce 940MX 2GB Ports 3x USB 3.1 1x USB Type-C (with ...

  With the exception of some employer provided Windows based laptops, for the last 16 years I've only used Apple, and exclusively so with my own money. I started out with a 14" iBook G3, followed by a 14" iBook G4, then a 15" PowerBook G4, a 12" PowerBook G4, 15" MacBook Pro, 13" MacBook Pro and finally a 13" MacBook Air which I bought way back in mid 2013 and which holds the record for the longest I've kept any machine as a daily driver. But I've been considering buying a new machine for the last year and was holding off for a refresh on this ultrabook model before making any decision. The new model was announced by Apple a couple of moths ago and for the most part it was what I had been hoping for, with two major caveats... Firstly, it was only available with a dual core i5 processor. I'd prefer a quad core or at the very least a dual core i7 at a good clock speed but that wasn't the worst thing, no th...

  Windows 2000 SP4 Unofficial Service Pack 5.1 Unofficial Rollup 2 Daylight Savings Fix dotNet 2 7z 9.20 Winzip 14 WinRAR Acrobat Pro 8 iTunes 7.2 mRemote 1.50 Microsoft Office 2003 MS Office SP3 FileConverters (Office 2003 .docx support) PaintShop Pro X1 (11.2) K-Meleon 74 Goanna WinAmp 5.63 FileZilla Nero 

    Retro computing, or to be more specific retro gaming, is something of a trend at the moment. Some people are happy using DosBox to emulate old hardware on their modern PC, but some get a kick out of using real retro hardware. Old desktops can be bulky so if you're not fortunate enough to have the space for one the next best choice is a period correct laptop. A scan through YouTube shows a lot of people hunting down old IBM ThinkPads and their prices on the used market have risen accordingly. The thing is... while you do get very nice build quality (at least in terms of the casing, many models in the early 2000's had problems with failing components on their motherboards ), contrary to what you may be led to believe by recent displays of ThinkPad fetishizing, they were never lusted after by the younger demographic when they were new, primarily because their specifications were business not gaming focused, not to mention they were what I would generously descri...

  There are several ways to tell how long someone has been into computers, and one is to watch how they react when they see a box with the Sun Microsystems logo on it. It doesn't matter if it's a server or a desktop, if they stare blankly at it, you know they're new to the business. You see, for those of a certain age, certainly those of us who graduated college before the millennium, the brand carries serious cachet. Back in the nineties, one of the computers on my "wants" list was a Sun workstation. And now, nearly a decade after they stopped making them, I have one. Sort of... Let me start by explaining what a workstation is, as it may be a term you're not familiar with. A workstation was a machine that sat above what we call PC's. They were more expensive, more powerful and more reliable. I'll give you an example: In the spring of 1992 Sun released a machine called a SPARCstation 10, and PC vendors started shipping their 486DX33 models...