How old a computer could you go back to?

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

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10 May 2004
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Hypothetical or real question here. I was away from home for a week recently with an old Dell Insprion 5150. It's late 2003 era. Specs are: hyperthreaded P4 2400MHz, 512MB of PC2700, 60GB hard disk and dedicated Geforce 5200 graphics, running XP Home. Standard wired optical mouse as input. It's been passed down the family to me, so I use it as a spare or travelling computer.

Firefox annihilates the RAM so I bunged in an extra gig and it's fine on 1.5GB. It can just about play 720p videos, which is pretty much the limit in CPU usage. I can do all the normal stuff I'd do on a desktop PC, wireless internet, browse, chat, draw, program disco lights, play the synthesiser through it (Sigmatel C-Major sound card) and play Age of Empires II which is quite frankly the best PC game ever :-)

So yes, I could use this as my full time computer, perhaps for a month. After that though, I think I would want to go back to my blu-rays and would need my more recent machine. Just wondered how far you guys could go back if you were stuck with an old computer for a bit.

I remember in 1998, I borrowed someone's old 386 IBM PC at 16MHz. Was a bit slow with Windows 3.1. Should had kept it as a DOS machine tbh.
 
the laptop ive got at home is from ~2005, but its a damn sight worse than your 2003 PC. its got horrific onboard graphics, AMD sempron 3000+ processor and 1 GB DDR1 RAM, and i can just about manage with that. it cant even play the simplest games at lowest graphics, and it cant play videos in anything above 480p, but its sufficient for general use (porn and emails)

i'm not sure what stuff was available all those years ago, but i could probably manage with a top end PC from ~2000
 
My laptop is also from 2003, P4 2.8GHz, GFX card Go 5500 FX I think it is. 0.5GB DDR1.
It's just manageable but takes 6 weeks to boot and the battery is completely cream-crackered, not that it ever lasted more than 20 mins while playing a game.....
 
I still have my old computer with the first install of xp (early 2002?). An old old old old old old old old Penitum III, 256MB of RAM and 32GB HDD.
I turned it on last week and it only just loaded windows.
Seriously though, I go on it every now and then, its now my daughters computer to learn on.
 
weird_dave said:
My laptop is also from 2003, P4 2.8GHz, GFX card Go 5500 FX I think it is. 0.5GB DDR1.
It's just manageable but takes 6 weeks to boot and the battery is completely cream-crackered, not that it ever lasted more than 20 mins while playing a game.....
Click to expand...

Similar / slightly higher spec than mine then :-) Likewise with yours, I still have the original battery and it lasts 20-25 minutes on a charge now.

Seems like we're mostly agreed on 2003/4 era if we were stuck!
 
Up until about a year ago I was using an old Win ME pc with onboard graphics 1gb of rams and a celeron luckily it was only very occasionally
 
ok, i'm stuck with my knackered laptop for the weekend, and i can tell you i would not be happy to use this for more than that. here are the epic details:

processor: AMD sempron 3000+ single core @ 1.6Ghz. passmark score 417
RAM: 1GB DDR1
graphics: ATI Radeon Xpress (128MB shared memory). passmark score 30
HDD: 60GB
Battery life: 5 mins at best

this is truly horrific. i keep thinking its crashed, but its just the processor taking about 10 years to load any applicaltions
 
atleast your laptop can power for 5 mins without having the charger plugged in.

mine which im using now, wont power on unless i have the charger plugged in, and this is 1 1/2 years old.
 
I can just about tolerate using my sister's PC, which is one I built for her about 5 years ago for Xmas. Its got a S939 4200+, 1 gig ram 200 gig HD & XP. Been meaning to do an upgrade as she said she could get a copy of W7 cheaply through her eldests grammar school.
 
Well I still have a pentium II 0.3 Ghz with 256mbs of SD ram with a pci VGA adapter (and some other rubbish which I can't work out) and it works absolutely fine On windows 98SE. I have loads of old documents which I need on it and it still has the internet working. also runs bridge commander and flight simulator 95!
 
Talking of old software, I still use Office '97 here! It came with my 1999 Pentium II PC, professional version including Access, and I just transferred it to my next PC every time I bought one and erased it off my old. Works fine with Windows 7, although I did have to re-record my Word macros.
 
Still have my first PC in my garage: Pentium 90MHz, 8MB RAM, S3 Virge and 500MB HDD. Great machine for the authentic Grand Prix 2 experience ;D (a bit choppy on max settings though).

As for daily use. It'd have to be capable of HD playback, so I guess something around 2005 would suffice for a few months if I really had to let go of modern hardware ;)
 
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