Coming Out Of Retirement

[raymac46]

No, not me - far too late for that. But my 2005 Dell Optiplex GX620 desktop is out of its basement exile and back doing useful work.

It was an awesome machine back in the day - it has 3 GB of RAM, an early Intel dual core CPU and it can run 64 bit Linux. However it has been sitting unconnected and unloved for a while now.

That all changed when my daughter asked me if I could help out my granddaughter's preschool. They had an old Acer running Vista that was crashing every 15 minutes. Did I have anything better? Well, it's older but probably better built and I can run a modern Linux O/S on it. It'll do fine for basic office work and a bit of Web surfing.

So I installed Linux Mint 17 Xfce, took the old beast to the preschool. We got the Vista machine to work long enough to copy the files to a thumbdrive and I set up Libre Office to read and write in Microsoft Office format. After hooking up the old Dell we copied over the files. This took about 40 minutes. No wifi needed, a wire connection to the router. It was 2005 all over again - even an old D-sub flat screen monitor from the Acer.

Now the problems started. The school had a geriatric Lexmark all-in-one they used to scan docs with. Good luck getting that working in Linux. There wasn't even a 64 bit driver for it. The other device was an HP LaserJet which supposedly had a scanner. I got HPLIP to recognise the printer but the scanner wouldn't work. The lady at the preschool said it hadn't worked with Vista either. Hardware defective I guess.

So we went to Staples, picked up a cheap all-in-one Inkjet, and donated it to the preschool.

But my problems weren't over. Turns out I now had a printer which was too new for the version of HPLIP in Linux Mint 17. Oy...but I knew how to download, build and install the newest HPLIP for Linux Mint and after about 4 hours of futzing around, the new printer and scanner was working.

Pareto's rule in operation - 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. But the old Dell is soldiering on. It hasn't crashed, Web surfing is easy with Google and Firefox, and Libre Office works just fine with all the old docs they have. And Xfce is good substitute for Windows if you choose the right distro.

I told my daughter they should really get a new machine but the preschool is hanging by a thread financially. For now an old soldier is back in uniform and I hope it won't fade away anytime soon.

[securitybreach]

I know the feeling all too well but you got it all configured, nice

[ebrke]

My Dell Optiplex GX260 is still chugging along--13 years and counting. Granted, it was top-of-the-line in its day (bought it as a business expense) but the whole Optiplex line seems to have been really tough. Nice to see one still doing some useful work--mine just gets fired up to get security updates for OpenSuSE 13.1 and occasional use. I usually use my laptop, which is a bit newer and faster.

[raymac46]

What made this Optiplex 620 futureproof is the Pentium D dual core - it allows it to run 64 bit operating systems. The memory is a bit skimpy by today's standards, but a light distro is fine and they aren't doing anything really serious like video editing or games. The case is a desktop style - a little on the thin side but I have an old low profile Nvidia 8400GS card in it. That is better than the ancient Intel integrated video - even with Nouveau as the driver.

This particular Optiplex seems to have escaped the problems Dell had with capacitor failure back in the mid 2000s. The old Pentium D runs a bit hot but the fan seems to handle it, even if it's noisy when it revs up.

After 11 years it wouldn't be my choice as a business machine but it certainly is better than a Vista mini-desktop that crashes all the time.