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    Older Sony...worth upgrade?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by jaydoc, Aug 10, 2008.

  1. jaydoc

    jaydoc Newbie

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    A friend is giving me a working older Sony laptop with Windows 95 installed. Beyond that, I know nothing about it. I would be willing to spend some bucks to upgrade it; however, if it's too old, forget it. I don't expect anything like modern usage; I would probably play some floppy-loaded games, like to have Wi-Fi, and could install DVD-ROM. I know this is general, but I would appreciate any opinions as to what upgrading I can do and/or if it is practical. Thank you for your input.
     
    jaydoc, Aug 10, 2008
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  2. powerpack

    powerpack Notebook Prophet

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    I do not think it is worth it. You could get a better notebook at best buy for around $400 if you find a deal.

    Once you buy a new OS, upgrade RAM if it can even be upgraded enough, add wi-fi (do you have PCMCIA) you still don't have USB plugs. Not worth it.

    W95? notebook? Thinking like 266Mhz CPU at best? Oh HDD what is it? 2GB's. DVD I just don't know.

    Sorry just to old.
     
    powerpack, Aug 10, 2008
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  3. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    yeah, I wouldnt go for it. I have an old 8086 northgate clocked in at 4.77Mhz, and that thing is still pretty powerful, but not for our time. It can handle DOS an d very light software.
    It will actually be very costly to upgrade an old system, so if your friend just gives it to you, than accept, but dont invest anything into it, cause you would be wasting your money. Nothing you can buy can make 13yr old technology shine again.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Aug 10, 2008
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  4. Apollo13

    Apollo13 100% 16:10 Screens

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    Chances are it'll be slow even for modern Internet browsing, with RAM being the likely culprit. You really need at least 256 MB to surf smoothly if you want to have modern anti-virus software running actively, and the chances of that in a pre-1999 laptop are very slim. You can get a modern web browser for Windows 95 - the latest version of Opera being the only up-to-date and common browser that supports Windows 95 - but at the best you could hope for surfing without anti-virus and doing a scan every so often while it's idling. I've run Opera 9.51 on Win98 and 128 MB of RAM and it works OK without anti-virus; it should be a bit better on the slimmer Win95. But note that you won't be able to watch YouTube or anything like that - you won't have a powerful enough processor and/or video card from the pre-Win98 era.

    So... if you do not currently have a laptop, and the battery works (pretty unlikely IMO), and it has at least 64 MB of RAM minimum, maybe a cheap wi-fi PCMCIA if you can find one that supports Windows 95 (most that list OS require Win98 SE glancing at Newegg). It's pretty unlikely that it'll be worth it.
     
    Apollo13, Aug 10, 2008
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