On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 4:53 AM, Per Jessen<per@opensuse.org> wrote:
You could probably do with a bit more RAM - PC100 DIMMs are not really that expensive anymore. Actually, the SODimms are. $25 for a PC100 256MB. However, that is a moot point since that machine, a Thinkpad X21, has a Max RAM of 384MB. The next model up, the X22, can go to 640MB. Just my luck. Ah, sorry about that. Yes, SODimms are still pricey in comparison.
The X21 is from late 2001; that is ~8 years old. It seems entirely reasonable to be that such a machine is going to really struggle to run a current desktop install. Expecting a five year life span from a computer is the bench mark I hear most often.
Or buy a new desktop machine - I bought two 2nd hand Dell Optiplex'es just the other day for use as office machines. 2.4GHz Celerons with 512M RAM. I added another 512M to both, and each machine was still only CHF60.
I use a 1.6GHz P4 / 1.2GB RAM for a desktop and performance is reasonable, not great. But that is about to slide over the five year mark. Upgrading the video card helped *A LOT*.
I have an E1200 overclocked to 3.2Ghz with 2GB RAM overclocked to 1Ghz. Honestly, it gets annoying to be told I need to buy new.
Unless the drives or GPU are seriously lame I don't see why performance on such a box wouldn't be entirely adequate. Unfortunately CPU/RAM isn't the entire performance equation. I've see 'older' machines perform pretty well while newer and [theoretically] faster machines are dogs.
Apologies, I didn't quite mean it like that - I was trying to make a friendly suggestion that you are perhaps expecting too much from a P3/700 with 384M RAM as a desktop.
Yes.
I am all for maintaining support for older hardware, but at some point the older hardware will/must be left behind. Especially for a desktop machine/distro, where it's difficult to utilize the new multi-cores with a couple of gigabyte and make it run on e.g. a P3 with 384Mb at the same time.
It is also just the times. AJAX websites and other content just require more horsepower - even to browse the web. [Which is kind of the myth behind using Google Docs or that ilk to save old machines - it does not work as web applications are horribly horribly horribly inefficient]. The benchmarking we've done in-house shows that the web browser is one of the most resource intensive applications people run, much more so than their office suite or groupware client. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org