Tell Me About Your Laptop/PC? (DVD, laptops, desktop, RAM)

[JayAppleBee]

I'm interested to see what kinds of laptops/PC's you are all using.

• What is the name of your computer?
• How many years (or day, weeks, months) have you been using it?
• Has it given you any problems? Pros and cons?
• Would you recommend it to someone else to purchase?

I have been using a Toshiba A135 Satellite series laptop since May of 2007. I've used it throughout college and it has given me absolutely NO problems. The battery life isn't so great anymore, but I also have a lot of stuff on here. I can't complain about that. Oh, and the fan can be noisy at times for some reason, but it's very quiet right. Doesn't really bug me either way. I think I'm going to stick with Toshiba laptops.

[skel1977]

The name of my computer is God. M friend named it when he first saw it because it was so awesome in his words. It is 2 years old. I built it myself by picking out different parts on newegg.com. Its a gaming machine mostly. It had some overheating problems in the past but its fixed now. I think I dropped about 1200 on it. If I had bought the same type of machine on a website it would have cost around 1800 im guessing.

[scarmig]

The name of my computer is "Green Machine". And no, not green like "eco-friendly", green as in rolled steel green on black paneling, green led fans, and green UV reactive cable netting. It's not a happy green. It's a mainframe monitor green. It's green-screen green.

I've been using it for almost three years.

The one problem I have had was a dead motherboard at year one. This has been a recurrent problem for me with Asus motherboards, so as much as I like them, I have switched to Gigabyte boards. This one has a redundant bios and has been rock solid since the day of install.

I would recommend it for purchase, but you can't buy this machine. You must build it. It must be baptized with blood. Your children fear it and the eerie light that seeps from it's ventilation grills.

[mensaguy]

I have several computers. Most of them have brand names on the front, but they have all been modified to a greater or lesser degree, depending on my mood (or the phase of the moon). Most of them are old, some 7 years old with several updates and modifications. I think they are afraid to give me any problems because, if they did, I might just disassemble them. They do as they are told most of the time. I can't recommend them for purchase because they have all been scavenged and modified until they hardly resemble there original selves. None of them have factory operating system or software installations. Computers have gotten so cheap that I'll probably just buy a Dell next time I need one.

[swagger]

Let's see...

#1 (the machine I'm using right now): Name, DESKTOP. Manufacturer, me (home built). Had it about a year or so. No real problems, but I think one of the drivers or applications is leaky - I run out of TCP buffers every few days and have to reboot. We see the same problem on another PC in the house running identical hardware and similar software (both are our "office" PCs).

#2: Name, LAPTOP. Manufacturer, Compaq. Had it since about May '05, IIRC. I've maxed out the RAM to 1.2gb and upgraded the HD from 60 to 120gb. Motherboard fried while it was under warranty, but since it was repaired, no problems at all, other than the battery being on its last leg - will only last about 5 minutes off A/C now. The thing's a rock, though, and I am and have been very happy with it.

#3: Name, EUROPA. Manufacturer, Asus. Had it for maybe 6 months. It's a little netbook that I picked up refurbished for $170, and has a 160gb HD, 1gb RAM, a Celeron processor and WinXP. It's an incredible value at that price, despite the small keyboard and lack of screen real estate. I wouldn't ever use it as my main PC anyway, and its portability comes in very, very handy. No problems, and I'd definitely recommend it to someone that was looking for something to use only occasionally or needs something ultra-portable with good battery life.

#4: Name, VISTA. Manufacturer, me (home built). Had it about 3 years now, and going to upgrade it this summer. It's the HTPC behind our entertainment system.

#5: Name, TRIXBOX. Manufacturer, eMachines. This system runs linux and serves a number of purposes, including running our phone system, fax server, DHCP server, mail gateway, firewall/router for one of our Internet connections and several other tasks. It's got a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1gb RAM and a 160gb HD. It was a cheapie we picked up at Fry's to do the stuff it's doing, and it handles everything very well. I wouldn't use it for a desktop, but as a server without too heavy a workload, it's fine. If something fails, it's cheap and easy to replace, and I'm doing full disk backups of it every week.

#6, 7, 7.5: Numbers 6 & 7 are servers that are colocated in the Los Angeles area. Number 7.5 is another colocated server that's here in Las Vegas, but it's rented. They all have names, but I'm not posting them.

We also have a 2nd office PC (mentioned above), a laptop and a netbook that my girlfriend uses, a desktop PC for the kids and a bunch of systems (including a quad Xeon rack-mount Dell server) that aren't in service at the moment. I guess you could say that I'm a bit of a computer junkie.

[rcsteiner]

Gads. I have 12 of them. But most of them are older boxes that are set up with various boot managers (mostly LILO, IBM's Boot Manager, or XOSL) to run specific older operating systems (OS/2 Warp 4, eCS 1.2, BeOS 5 Pro, some older Linux variants like Mandrake 8.2 and Red Hat 7.2, Win95 OSR2, Windows NT 4, Solaris 7, etc.), and they aren't on all the time. Two of them are out of commission right now awaiting new CMOS batteries (my primary Intellistation and my old Micron Millenia Pro2 running OS/2 Warp 4). Sad. :-(

The ones I actually use regularly are:

Work Laptop

• HP Compaq NC6000 laptop (Pentium/M 1.5GHz) w/Radeon 9600.
• Used it for 5.5 years. Runs Windows XP Pro.
• Solid as a rock. Use it to dial in for support or to telecommute, also plays a nice game of Spring, Tux Racer, and occasionally Tribes 1 or UT2004.
• I really really like this laptop. I'm looking to get one of these on eBay for my own use. This thing was built like a tank. Okay, not quite like a Toughbook tank, but it seems to be able to work flawlessly even though it's been on 24x7 for five years. Did I mention that I really really like this laptop? :-)

Gameboy2

• Compaq Presario SR5010NX Desktop (3.46GHz single-core Intel Celery D 360) with 2GB and a GeForce 7600GT.
• Maybe three years old, running Win2k Pro (5%), Ubuntu 7.10 (10%), and VestaPup+Compbiz Fusion (85%).
• Built as a cheap UT2004 box, also plays Spring, Nexuiz, and various other smaller games, spends its downtime running DVArchive and acting as a virtual ReplayTV to store shows for posterity. I use it most of the time via VNC from my Nokia 770 web tablet to surf from bed using Firefox (the three Maemo browsers I have on the tablet really suck).
• Cutting edge? No. But I really like the box.

HillGiant

• Compaq Proliant 2500 (PPro/200) with 3 little 9GB hot-swappable SCSI drives.
• Using it for roughly six years. Runs Mandrake 8.2 + Samba.
• Reliable as heck. Not very good at gaming.
• Wonderful box for use as a small file server, but maybe a bit heavy. :-)

The idle ones include two IBM Intellistations (6899), two Compaq Deskpro 6200's, the Micron tower, and my beloved Mac IIci.

I don't count my wife's Win2K SR5010NX, her no-name WinXP Athlon box, or her HP Windows Vista laptop because I don't use those. Oh, and she has a little Compaq Presario somewhere in a box, too. We never unpacked it.

[MediocreButArrogant]

Home:

1. Homebuilt, with Core i7-920 running at 3.2GHz and ASUS P6T motherboard, purchased last year during a huge sale at MicroCenter. Quadruple boots Win 7 64-bit, Windows XP, OpenSuSE 11.2, and OpenSolaris. My main PC.
2. Homebuilt, with AMD Sempron 64 purchased during a huge sale at Fry's. Runs OpenSuSE 11.1 64-bit. Acts as media server with 10TB of disk space containing my HD movie collection.
3. Sony VAIO TR3A mini-notebook, running Ubuntu 9.0.4
4. IBM Thinkpad R51 running Windows XP

Vacation Home:

1. Homebuilt, with Core 2 Duo E6300, built from parts purchased from NewEgg soon after Core 2 Duos were first released. Boots Windows 7 64-bit, Windows XP, Windows 98. Acts as media server for vacation home.:

Office:

1. Dell Precision Workstation 390, Windows 7 64-bit
2. Dell Precision Workstation 690, Windows XP 32-bit
3. MacPro Tower, MacOS 10.6.x, also boots 10.5 and 10.4
4. Dell Precision Workstation 370, OpenSuSE 10.2
5. Lenovo T61P, Windows 7

1&5 are my main machines at work.

[mullman]

Apple 27" iMac i5 quad-core, purchased 2 weeks ago.
This replaced an Apple 15" MacBook Pro + 24" Apple Cinema Desktop which was used 13 months.

Absolutely ZERO problems with any of these units.

Absolutely recommend.

[WillysB]

Heh, got this eMach March 15, 2003... 7 years... $650 at Frye's
2Ghz Athlon processor
Came with 256 meg ram, I switched out to 1 gig last month
60 gb HD, added a second for storage. Both are less than 25% utilized. A friend just gave me the second HD (90 G) so...
Added a sound blaster card but looks like I took it out, don't recall.
Added firewire to download videos from cam but don't use it anymore.
Has a DVD read, never used
CD r/w

A few years ago it started shutting down shortly after turn on so I change out the elec supply fan. Been humming ever since.

Also had a Dell POS laptop WinXP, fdisked and put on Linux, used for a Skpye phone for a while
Used to have a Compaq Presario dynamo in a shoe box, Win3.1
Had a no name 286 w/co-proc, MS-DOS
First machine was a 8088XT, lasted about a week, MS-DOS

[SookieStackhouse]

MacBook White
Been using it since June 09 (got it new then)
No Problems...Pro's are I really love it, it works well, it's the fastest one I have ever used. Cons... OK it did cost more than I should have spent on a computer
Yes I would recommend one to anybody.