What hardware are you using?

Discussion of hardware related issues
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

Unofficially, the X220 I have read can actually take 16GB ram. 16GB ram and a good SSD and that's absolutely still usable.
wove
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

The X220 is fussy about RAM, for stable operation with any OS RAM sticks need to be the same speed and same size. It accepts two different speeds but always uses the RAM at the slower speed, unless you use a modified BIOS.

The m.2 SATA connector is limited to SATA 2 speeds, while the hard drive bay will use SATA 3 speeds. I find it handy to have the daily driver OS on the m.2. I can then slip in an HD and start to something else. Or leave the bay empty and shave off that half oz of weight :)

The biggest problem with X220s is they are road warrior machines and being 10+ years old now, everything you come across is just plain wore out and are of a vintage that one does not really want to sink much money into replacing parts. This X220 came without a battery. Being the tablet model it has its own special battery. Third party batteries from China are $50 and new Lenovo batteries are $100 and it is hard to justify spending that on a machine this old.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Ive picked up a lot of older hardware thru the trash and people giving me systems. Dell batteries for my older systems are pretty cheap and parts are still available even for my Dell 4310. Most of my older hardware is running Linux but they actually run Win10 just fine.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Im using my Dell 7010 USFF with Win10 as my everyday desktop instead of using my Ryzen system. I want to use my Ryzen system for gaming only and save the wear and tear on my graphics card in particular.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Just finished putting together my Zorin OS 16 system for daily use. Dell Optiplex 7010 USFF with 8gb ram, i3 3.2ghz cou and 128gb ssd.Everything went well but still need a more compatible wifi adapter. The only one that worked only gives me 55mbps versus the normal 120mbps. I ordered a Cudy dual band ac adapter per some recommendations from their forum to see if it works. All is well and install FreeOffice and tested the printers thru the wifi connection and it all works. Installed Gnome Tweaks ti get more settings.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Installed Zorin 16 on my Dell E6440 for personal use and will see how this goes as my everyday OS.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Ive got all my personal laptops using Zorin and two of my Dell 7010 USFF, If the experiment goes well Ill probably put it on my Latitude e7470 and eventually look at maybe a HP Elitedesk 800 G3 with a 6th gen cpu as my future permanent home for Zorin.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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I bought a HP Elitedesk 800 G3 with a i5-6500T 2.5, 8gb ram and a 600gb standard HD. Will up the ram to 16gb, and add an ssd, more than likely a 256gb NVME m.2 2280 ssd. Nice design as you flip onme switch om the back and the cover comes off easily to reach all the parts. The design makes reaching the ram and hard drives extremely easy. Power supply is external and has a large number of ports. It comes with Win10 but Ill be running Zorin on it.
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wove
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

After pickuping up the X220 tablet I did have a minute of, "What were you thinking!". I am really glad I did get it though. The X220 was by far my favorite laptop and it is nice to have one up and working again. I found in my pail full of RAM another 8GB SODIMM for the X220, so I can confirm that indeed the X220 can use 16GB.

I am running the Plasma DE on top of BSD and I am exceptionally happy with how well it runs. I generally setup my systems so that the session is restored to what it was when I shut down. BSD differs most I think from Linux in how it uses recources. With 8GB installed my setup came up using 6GB, and with 16GB it comes up using twice that. Of course that is with all the applications I use open and ready to work.

The Lenovo stylus for the X220T is a plain Wacom stylus of which I have many, and it works very well, even pressure sensitivity, and palm rejection. With the screen spun around and the X220 in tablet mode, it makes for a very nice graphics tablet. The screen texture and the wacom pen work much smoother on the X220 than the Surface Pen works on the Surface Go.

I installed DigiKam for photo management. It is going to take sometime to get use to. My photo library is ~12GB with ~6000 images. DigiKam scanned the whole library looking for faces and the process took ~15minutes, which I think is pretty good preformance for the age of the machine.

BSD is probably not something a new user would be comfortable setting up. But once setup it is rock solid and needs little fiddling with. I had to restart it this morning after adding more RAM, but its up time was over a week before that. I would not hesitate to setup something along these lines and pass it on to a family member.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Ive tried BSD before but its just too frustrating to deal with, particularly with hardware support. Im at the point where I want plug and play and things working without a lot of effort. I want the OS to do its job and allow me to enjoy what Im doing seamlessly.
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