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What is the NEWEST/SPEEDIEST computer that you have been given or picked up?

Picked up while dumpster diving:

Dell optiplex 2.4 Celeron that had a bad power supply. Still had Hard drive with previous owners tax returns.

HP 2.4Ghz laptop that had a broken LCD (I already had a spare from another junk HP)

Gateway P4-2.0 that had bad caps on the motherboard

Compaq Athlon 2500 that looked like it had been dropped from a 2nd floor window.

Not the fastest, but probably the most appropriate for this forum:
A working Commodore Colt system with CPU, Keyboard, and color Monitor and a box of disks
 
iMac

iMac

I was given a Rev. B G3 iMac with 288MB RAM, 20GB HD and some Print Shop and related software. Not fast by any means, it's a small package to set up for teaching myself Web programming. Not to mention getting Virtual Game Station to run for some quick Metal Gear action! :)
 
How about a 2.6Ghz Celeron D with 1Gb DDR-400, DVD-ROM drive and 80Gb hard drive?

The guy didn't want it as he really wants a laptop and he said the onboard network card wasn't working; that's because he didn't install the drivers for it...

Bargain!
 
More of 'em

More of 'em

Barebones Athlon XP 2400+ with no RAM or hard disk, 54x CD-ROM and DVD Combo drive.

Barebones Athlon XP 2000+ with 256MB RAM, no HD, 50x CD-ROM and CD-RW drive.

I had a P4 3.2ghz but the 2400 seemed faster to I kept it and got rid of the other.
 
The other day a friend gave me an Aluminum PowerBook G4 1.33Ghz. It was missing the battery, most of the key caps had been stripped from the keyboard, and someone had managed to get 2 DVDs stuck inside the DVD drive. Surprisingly enough, the laptop worked -- even the DVD, once I got the DVDs out.
 
Well, I was given a Dell Inspiron 1150 since I couldn't fix it, and could take it for parts since my friend got a new one.

Upon tearing it down, I found that I could use one of those special stations to remove the northbridge and replace it with one from another laptop that has bad USB ports. It worked, except now this laptop has no USB and needs a CardBus card, but hell, it works now.

Only sucky thing: 2.6GHz CELERON. :( I hate celerons. It can take a Pentium 4, if one can be found, but I honestly didn't know Pentium 4's were for laptops.
 
I've had better luck with Celerons than the actual Pentium over the years. My Celeron M Toshiba was the best. My Dell with the desktop P4 was nice unless you did anything taxing, then its cooling fan sounded like a jet turbine and it would eat the battery power in record time. Now I have a Core Duo (NOT the Core 2, the original one) and I hate it with a passion.

The last time my desktop was Intel based was the original Skt. 478 blast furnace P4. I did have a Mac for a while but don't get me started on those XD And just to be different I used a VIA processor based machine (This was before Everex started building machines with the C7) for a while. It wasn't too bad really, the VIA C3 is nice.

The one processor I never got a chance to mess with that still interests me were the ones by Transmeta. I still kinda wish there was a 3rd choice to the main stream processors. We need Cyrix back! (Here comes the hate mail)
 
I'm hating the cache problem. The celeron is very much the same as the Pentium or whatever era core is around, but with a smaller L2 cache.

Try running Vista Business (as required by work now), with 128KB L2 Cache. My god it's horrible.
 
I hate running Home Premium on a Core Duo. Actually ANY OS runs sluggish on that thing. It has 7 at the moment which isn't too bad but XP ran slow and so did others. I'm almost curious if it has some kind of defect, either that or the Core Duo just sucks.
 
I remember that the Core Duo was a 32-bit CPU, not a 64-bit CPU, but you're running a 32-bit OS and I don't think it should matter.

Of interest, make sure it's actually using both cores. I've noticed some Core Duo's install Windows with uniprocessor HAL..
 
Its using both cores and it is 32-bit only. I can watch the processor usage on both cores, its just slow. Kinda half temped to just blame Acer for making a crappy laptop.
 
Don't forget the memory controller used. The memory controller may not be very efficient. Speed isn't just CPU, it's memory and the memory controller. AMD64 and Intel i7 integrate it into the CPU so that's no longer a point of weakness.
 
You know, the whole impression of speed is highly subjective. One that could easily be modified with the application of appropriate pharmaceuticals.... :)
 
There are two different kinds of speed measurements. One is when people notice how fast the GUI responds to input when it is idle and when it is doing something. The other is actual number crunching and getting tasks done fast. newer GUIs seem to cache the hell out of everything (taking up alot of RAM) so they can be responsive to GUI inputs while running all the eye candy.

Go run Win95A (pre IE being manditory) on a P233MMX with 128MB RAM, it is very snappy, now go try and rip a movie with it.. slow.
 
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