What hardware are you using?

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

Post by crosscourt »

To each his own.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Picked up a Dell Latitude 3460 from the trash area in really good condition, Cleaned it up, added more ram and a 256gb ssd and gave it a run. Works great and Ive got Win10 installed on it for now. Appears to have a 5th gen 2ghz i3 cpu and the battery surprisingly was in excellent condition. Display isnt gorgeous but is still a good display for general use.
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wove
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

I picked up a Firewire 800 external drive. I seems pretty fast to me. I moved ~150GB off the drive over to my Kinoite install on the 2008 MBP. It took ~30 minutes for the move, which I thought was pretty good. I do not really have anything with USB 3, and I have no idea how Firewire 800 compares to USB3, but it was faster than transfers I make over USB 2.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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USB 2.0 480mbps versus Firewire 800 800mbps, nearly twice as fast. USB 3.0 is nearly twice as fast as Firewire 800.
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

Firewire was always an odd bird. Until USB 3.0 and it's 5000Mbps theoretical transfers, Firewire had been the leader for bandwidth, it was simply a superior connection (and a better physical connector IMO). Yet it never really gained ANY traction outside apple even though there were a few companies that made options for pc. Firewire was such a better standard that Firewire 400 in the real world was generally faster than USB 2.0, despite USB technically having the higher theoretical bandwidth (480 vs. 400)
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

I am most familiar with Firewire from Macs, but I have had several Thinkpads that included Firewire, and for those that did not have it on machine it is on the docking station. In practical use Firewire 400 always seemed much faster than USB2 and Firewire 800 really seems to be speed demon. In Apple's implementation anyway, Firewire had networking aspects, connect 2 Macs via Firewire and each could see and use the others harddrive.

It does have a very nice connector, and all the firewire cables I have seen are thick robust mostly shielded cables. It did just go away. I have not seen any new firewire devices in a long time. I bought a Western Digital MyBook, which has USB 2 and Firewire 400 and 800. It came with a 320GB 3.5" SATA drive. I opened it up and the drive is replaceable, so I will most likely upgrade it at some point.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Ive only used Firewire thru cards in some of my pcs over the years but the added cost never seemed worth it.
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wove
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

Several years ago I picked up an HP Slate 21 Pro. I kept passing it on to people, and it kept bouncing back to me. It is an Android device, essentially a 21" tablet. It was some brain fart from from HP development staff. It runs Android 4, which is old and long pretty dead. But it is also made to be a docking station. It has an HDMI in and a USB hub built in. When hooked up to another computer that computer can access the Slate's keyboard, mouse, webcam, card reader and use the touch screen.

There is a button on the front that allows you to change from the built in Android, to whatever system you have docked to it. I gather from HP it was designed so that a person who worked out of office could use it as a docking station, and when out of office, it could be used as a android kiosk device. Yeah weird for sure, and it never took off. Selling for ~600 new, it was quickly discounted, and well they showed up used very cheap.

However it does make a decent external monitor in a situation where you like to change OSes. I can use it as a second monitor with the IdeaCentre and with the change of a couple cables, I can directly assess the Pi NextCloud server, as well as using its docking station capabilities to quickly access anything. Generally I keep a variety of media plugged into USB or card reader and use it to listen to music or watch a movie, by just switching over to its built in Android mode. A totally odd device, but it hangs on a wall mount and is rather handy to have around.
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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I had the HP Slatebook 14 laptop. Was useless again due to the outdated version of Android installed on it, but MAN, what a pretty laptop. They, like the Slate tablet, were released at entirely too expensive prices, then after they sold nothing were discounted and eventually showed up used dirt cheap (which led to me picking one up because it was pretty).
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

That was a real time of experimentation in form factors and playing around with Android. Asus made that line of Transformer tablets, where you could stick the tablet into a keyboard and have an Android laptop. In the end Android just never panned out as being that useful as a desktop replacement. Spin ahead a few years though and the Slate might have had more success as Chrome OS device.

HP did make a very well made device. They seemed to reach a point where they just stopped pouring money into development. The Slate 21 has a foot that allows it to lie down like a studio device. It has a hardened glass anti-glare covering. It shipped with a calibrated color profile, so it could have been an excellent studio device for drawing or drafting. Yet it did not come with stylus support, so they stopped just inches short of a very useful piece of gear for an artist. While it worked quite well as a docking station, it shipped with an Android specific keyboard (only one I have ever seen), so if you docked something you would invariably want to switch to a different keyboard.

It did ship with a decent video and audio player and it came with WPS Office and a fine RDP client, all of which still work just fine, even though it no longer works with any Google services and I suppose some would consider that an advantage. It was just a weird attempt to turn a sow's ear into a purse and in hind sight it is easy to see why it failed.
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