FINALLY I'm getting a laptop for xmas

[mas]

Actually if anyone needs it for their son or daughter let me know I'll ship it to them for their first laptop

[Tanooki]

Dell Latitude Black 2100 Atom 1.6GHz Processor 2GB Memory 60GB Hard Drive? http://www.pcworld.com/article/169421/d ... _2100.html

This isn't a laptop, it's a netbook meant for work and education first, not games. It's small with a 10" screen and a 1024x576 screen resolution, and it either has 1 or 2GB of RAM in there, that's it. I had an ASUS netbook years ago before this laptop and the i5 one before it which had 2GB of RAM and a sort of similar setup. It's solid, it will run fine for 8bit emulators, GoG level release of older games with DOSBox or intended for the earlier 21st century. If it only had 1GB, make it your mission to get the 2nd chip as your performance increase will be notable and worth it.

It runs an Intel 950GMA video chip in there and has to share the system memory to work. 2D games fine, Genesis/SNES emulation maybe pushing it, GB/C/Advance, NeoGeo should work, but if you're going into 3D it's going to be very very hit and miss. PS1 probably would work too. N64, NintendoDS, Saturn, PS2 anything as taxing as that or worse, forget it. You'll find even newly released pixel based games should work or current 2D only point and click types as well. Ideally just need a game to run at 30fps or better to be fine. Don't even attempt anything FPS wise from probably Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 forward, if it even fired up, it would be a disaster.

Here's a generated list from 2010 that shows games that work with that video chip: http://codebuzzz.blogspot.com/2010/06/l ... l-945.html



Also about our conversation in text the other day. Does this thing have an SD card slot? If not, it must have some USB ports? You can use this to load and re-load your everdrive. A USB SD card adapter can be had super cheap.

[isiolia]

Later emulators may still be fine - 16-bit and the like. They were possible on Pentium IIs and IIIs, so not out of the realm of what an old Atom can do. IMO, that's more the thing - expect a netbook to perform like a Core series computer, and you'll be disappointed. Look at it like an ultra low power Pentium III or something...and that's more in line with what it'll do. As mentioned, used as an XP machine for 15-20 year old stuff it'd be quite serviceable.

Generally though, that class of product was meant to be a secondary machine that does an okay job at basic computing. I wouldn't put much into it, since the end result won't be better than the sub-$200 class of modern Windows laptops and tablets.


If you really truly don't have a computer at all though, I can see what I can scrounge up.

[Tanooki]

He doesn't we got to talking before I knew about this. I was encouraging him if money is tight to hit up newegg or even ebay with computer shops on there. If you can wrangle up a keyboard, mouse, and a LCD on the side for upwards of $300 you can get an i7 computer with a 512GB-1TB drive, on board audio/video, dvd-cd/rw, 8GB of ram, and you can expand later.

I'm in the same boat with the wife. I dug out my 8 year old Dell Inspiron 530 for her because my i5 laptop those douches at Adobe dropped support for because it uses the intel HD3000 chipset. The older PC had Vista which it blocked, put 8.1 on there and it has a 2GB Radeon 65XX card in there and it performs alright but not great due to 3GB of ram.

Because of that I had been hitting crucials website and others, to get an old stick of memory in the 1GB-2GB size for a desktop or laptop which would work for him shouldn't cost more than probably $15-25+shipping. Totally worth it on that computer he's getting to get it up to 2GB if it's not already maxed out with that. That laptop is a gem for what he'll need it for, maybe not perfectly ideal, but very good and usable.

[isiolia]

I'm in the same boat with the wife. I dug out my 8 year old Dell Inspiron 530 for her because my i5 laptop those douches at Adobe dropped support for because it uses the intel HD3000 chipset. The older PC had Vista which it blocked, put 8.1 on there and it has a 2GB Radeon 65XX card in there and it performs alright but not great due to 3GB of ram.

Did you try installing an old version to get around that? Should be something you can do with Creative Cloud, unless it's plan dependent. I can elect to install back to Photoshop CS6 on this machine, for example, but it is a corporate style license (Creative Cloud for teams).


Adding a Windows license, and other essentials like a PSU and case to that will raise the build cost up a bit. Not that it isn't worthwhile, obviously, but it's a lot more expensive than what a basic refurb business machine or something might cost. Something like that wouldn't be much of a gaming PC, but still quite serviceable for a lot of other things. Probably better than a lot of current Atom or Celeron machines, since those seem to be a bit limited in how you can upgrade them.

[mas]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Tanooki and I have been talking and he's right for my case money is tighter than me winning the big one on a two dollar ticket. So I can't do anything till like mid January. Maybe I'll look at the cl ads for free and ask around from family for a free computer they don't use anymore.
I just want to maybe start getting into pc gaming and retro gaming without always going downstairs and playing in my room. Also was thinking about older pc games

[Tanooki]

isiolia: Trying to keep an annoying story short here. Yes. Originally I looked to the laptop as it has 6MB in it but shares with the Intel HD3000. For Photoshop CC 2016 and 2017 it blocks the older Intel HD and pre-HD level chips entirely. She has a subscription to it, so we couldn't just go find an old copy of CS6 to get the job done so that option was void. I tried the computer (happy to see after 2 years on a closet shelf fired right up) but it even faster when trying to install moaned about Win7 and up required and blocked it. So got 8.1, blipped the computer 100% complete, total reinstall, just threw on bit defender, MS office(comes later when she'll need it), a few internet tools and Adobe CC with 2017 and LightRoom.

I did read and research, the motherboard in mine Dell claims caps at 4GB of RAM, but the truth is with a BIOS upgrade it takes 8GB. 2GB chips (there's 4 slots in side now with 2x1gb and 2x512mb) cost like $20/ea. Someone on here offered me spare ram if they had it, but if not I may go after a pair of 2GB sticks, to see what happens with them and the pair of 1GBs in there. 6GB would be plenty. That dell of mine is the quad core q6600 version of the inspiron 530 and I did that on purpose knowing cpu+mobo are hardest to update vs ram and video cards.

Takes a bit to buffer the program into the lousy 3GB of ram there, but once it's up, it's fine. I need to get more memory for it, or save the $ and get a PC like I suggested to mas there for a few hundred bucks off newegg with a refurb 1-3y warranty included from whatever factory.


mas: Trust me when I saw you're not screwed. That laptop is actually pretty powerful for what I think you're wanting to do. Talk to me off site, we can work this through easily as you'll be surprised. Just find out if you have 1GB or 2GB of ram in it. I can poke around a bit more and see what RAM it uses, and if it maxes out at 2GB or not. What you have there is like the highest level PentiumIII lowest brow P4 type equal there with basically a decade old-ish video chip too. I think I have a feeling what you want to play and it should work. Remember I had a netbook before a notebook, an ASUS with the atom core in it and 2GB of ram in an Win7 environment, maybe even that same intel chip. I got quite a lot to run, even an online game like the original Guild Wars ran usually around 20-30+fps which was a surprise. It's not awesome, but it's not crap. Given the tiny size of it from my reading, don't bother with the touch pad it sucks, go find a thrift and get an optical or corded mouse for like $3-5.

[Tanooki]

Sorry to double post but it's easier, this is about that Dell.

I did more research on it. When they were sold they came with 512MB or 1GB of RAM. They like my ASUS (eerily similar build really) have one extra easily accessible port (1 screw to hold it likely) memory slot on the bottom of the computer. You can add +1GB (2GB total) to the system. THIS IS VITAL for it to work well for you just because the Intel GMA 950 will use some of your memory as it is shared. This is DDR2 800mhz speed memory, very cheap to acquire and nearly Lego stupid easy to install.

Now possibly bad news, it could have Windows Vista which is a bug ridden pig of an OS that eats twice the RAM of XP, Win7 or 8. I'm guessing it probably won't have this if you have 512MB or 1GB in there because Vista sucks and runs horribly on 1GB using up nearly all of it so the system would crawl.

Hard drive on this it's an oddity. It could have a dopey early SSD only 16GB in size, but it could have a HDD at 250GB which is fantastic compared.

Good news here, it has wifi, wired, and bluetooth built in. Easy internet, and all those fun bluetooth game controllers and other devices will latch on just fine. If it has the optical drive, it came with a DVDRW 8x speed. It also has a SD CARD READER -- PERFECT, for that Everdrive!

All Dell systems come with a service code on a sticker somewhere. If you can find out what that code is, you or I can pop that into the Dell service site and we can get a part by part breakdown of whats included. That'll answer a lot of questions.

Oh and I was off, the memory for it is $14.99 for a 1GB chip new from crucial.com
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatibl ... itude-2100

[Ack]

I actually went out and intentionally bought a 2100 a few months back, so I could have something to run older DOSBox titles on and a word processor. The general rule of thumb I have for it is not to run anything which came out after 2003. Truth be told, the little guy runs some older games better than my desktop. Win10 just isn't as compatible with the older games as XP was.

A couple of suggestions: disable the built in mousepad and buy a USB mouse. I am using Panda for my antivirus; AVG's free version used to be my go to option, but nowadays it's loaded with pop up ads which will often knock you out of games. Even going into their options and disabling pop up messages won't block the "special offers" messages you'll be receiving.

Another thing about XP if that is your OS: Windows Updates have become problematic. On startup I disable Windows Update and Windows Defender to improve performance. It's a big help.

Now don't expect to stream video or anything like that, but if you just want something to run your GOG library, it's a great choice.

[isiolia]

Trying to keep an annoying story short here. Yes. Originally I looked to the laptop as it has 6MB in it but shares with the Intel HD3000. For Photoshop CC 2016 and 2017 it blocks the older Intel HD and pre-HD level chips entirely. She has a subscription to it, so we couldn't just go find an old copy of CS6 to get the job done so that option was void.

What I meant was that at least some Creative Cloud subscriptions (if not all) you can, in the Creative Cloud applet, go to Find Additional Apps, expand Previous Versions, and elect to install older versions. Looking at mine (via work) I can, for example, choose to install any version of Photoshop from CS6 to CC 2017. No discs, all part of the subscription.


Regarding upgrading the Latitude 2100, the chipset that those old Atoms used maxed at 2GB.
Again though, if expectations are kept in check, that's really not that terrible. My Pentium 4 had 512MB of RAM. My Pentium III's chipset couldn't even manage that much (I want to say it maxed at 384MB)...plenty of machines had 1GB or less in XP's heyday.

Tanooki and I have been talking and he's right for my case money is tighter than me winning the big one on a two dollar ticket. So I can't do anything till like mid January. Maybe I'll look at the cl ads for free and ask around from family for a free computer they don't use anymore.

The main reason I was asking if you really didn't have anything is that I'd be willing to send you one of my laptops, if it'd suit what you wanted one for. The one I have in mind is a Dell Latitude E6430, which I've upgraded a bit (16GB of RAM, SSD, etc) - still a solid machine, albeit one that's not suited for playing newer games (though some do run decently well at lower resolutions/detail). Older stuff should largely run quite well though.

More or less, not a machine I'm actually trying to get rid of, but one that still has a good bit of life in it that you'd almost certainly get better use out of than me (99% of the time, I just use it to watch Youtube in bed ). Let me know if it's something you'd like.