SillyDog701

[James]

Should I ask... what do you do with them? How did you come by 16? How long do you keep them? I'm not sure what to say beyond: I'm amazed.

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[Antony]

16 this time, beating my old record of 15 by one.

Plus your main laptop, as a few other laptops for some specific tasks... you have at least 17 laptops.

Congratulations, you beat me (which is not the first time).
I only have 3 laptops. Also, I don't even have a huge room to put 16 or 17 laptops.

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[richard mitnick]

OMG, LOL, I am beginning to think you guys are just bats crazy. And, Antony, just how do you manage with only three laptops, I myself have five: 17" work, 17" work replacement, 14" travel, Netbook testbed and wireless speed testing around the house, 17" extra space in the room cruncher. Only the first is old, died, replaced, resuscitated to crunch for LHC.

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[Don_HH2K]

I of course have no intention of counting these laptops as "mine" in the tally, since they are for sale only - no plans whatsoever to use them.

These are decommissioned units from the College of Business here. Whereas the College of Science and College of Engineering usually only throw out ancient stuff (P2 and P3-generation at best), the COB seems to not have any other uses for their one-generation-old hardware. I'll hopefully not be holding onto them for more than a month; ideally I'd like to start pushing them to eBay and craigslist this coming weekend.

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[Antony]

And, Antony, just how do you manage with only three laptops,

I could use this opportunity to point out that I am poor which Don refuses to believe.
Well, my main computer and work computer is a desktop.
I travel with iPad 2 and MacBook Air (11-inch). The other two laptops are virtually retired (except for photo).

I of course have no intention of counting these laptops as "mine" in the tally, since they are for sale only - no plans whatsoever to use them.

Mind me asking what is the total number of “yours” tally?

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[Don_HH2K]

Mind me asking what is the total number of “yours” tally?

I have my laptop, a storage server, a mail server, and a Web server (not running at the moment). I also have a work laptop that has to get returned when I leave, so I can't really count that either. Unless you count things like my phone and Xbox, that's all.

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[Antony]

You win.
That's more laptops than I have, counting the work laptop or not.

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[Mandrake]

You win.
That's more laptops than I have, counting the work laptop or not.

The $10,000 computer still puts you at the top of the food chain.

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[Antony]

Unlike Don (who's currently in secret hiding) got a massive 16 laptops at once, during the past week, I managed to get 3 old computers. Those were obsolete technology (PowerPC), I am pretty sure Don would not even want to touch them.

A 10 years old iBook (G3, 500 MHz), late 2001 model (specs):

(Don't worry about the bad condition, I cleaned the stickers and marks off nicely with a few household chemical.)
It comes with Mac OS X 10.3 installed.

Then, an even older iMac,
iMac G3 (333 MHz), mid 1999 model (specs):

It comes with Mac OS X 10.3 and a handful of applications, sadly no original discs.

Finally, a 9 years old iBook (G3, 800 MHz), late 2002 model (specs):

It comes with Mac OS X 10.2.8 and Mac OS 9.2.2 installed, and the best part of it... all original discs!

As you can see, Antony can only afford very old extremely outdated and obsolete computers. It is therefore Antony is poor.

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[James]

Some great looking Macs, Antony. But getting back to your testing NS 9... I'm still somewhat confused. Why would you want to run this old browser/suite? I remember once talking to Jay Garcia about running older NS versions and at the time he told me he wasn't that concerned about it. My concern had been that the older suites had many unpatched security holes that could leave a user at risk but he didn't seem to share my concern. What about you?

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[Antony]

Thanks.

Personally, I am not that concerned about security resulted from using older browsers. Browsing is not the only thing I want to play around. Further, I know that I am doing, and on those outdated machine/browsers, I won't be doing anything serious.

If I remember correctly, at the time Netscape 9 was out, I've switched to Mac, and I did not really use Netscape 9 much.

As for Mac OS 9, I never ever actually used it, apart from very few apps running under Classic Environment (which was under OS X) as the first few Macs I own did not come with OS 9 or only under Classic Environment (i.e. I couldn't boot into OS 9).

Apart from browsing, there are many other things I can do with OS 9 I am sure, and many does not require internet connection. The Mac OS 9 does remind me of my undergraduate... I spent a great deal of time working on Mac OS 7.x (System 7.xx).

I know I do have latest Macs and a few other Apple gadgets. Getting those yesteryear's machines was more of fun rather than anything serious.

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[Antony]

I know I've been getting a few old machines (or “junk” as some of you might call it), but don't worry, still no where as many as Don's.

Got this just before Christmas. Sorry for taking a while to take photo.

My very first Power Mac G5, bought it on a bargain from eBay. Although not the fastest model, this is the last model of Power Mac G5.

Power Mac G5 (Late 2005 Dual-core 2GHz):


To my surprise, this Power Mac G5 is surprisingly fast, particularly after playing with some old Macs (iBook G3 and my old PowerBook G4). Also, this Power Mac G5 is much faster than the Power Mac G4 (dual 1.42GHz), and much quieter.

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[DJGM]

Are you trying to establish your own Mac museum there?


I still have a couple of ancient Macs ... but neither of them are in a working state, and would be too much trouble
to bother getting them up and running again. The only way I can run a current or recent version of Mac OS X is
to fire up a virtual machine and run one of the many "Hackintosh" builds. (Yes I know, unethical an' all that!)
Mind you, even this method falls quite a way short of the real thing, despite the ethical/legal gubbins.

There's no way I could run realistically have a genuine Mac OS X machine, even 2nd user ... too expensive!

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[Antony]

Are you trying to establish your own Mac museum there?

Nah, but I wish I could afford that.
If I remember correctly, Wellander had 26 or 27 computers back then, and Don obtained 15 or 16 computers (laptops in particular) in one go. I am still way behind those figures.

The only way I can run a current or recent version of Mac OS X is to ...

The thing is that I have no intention to run the latest version of OS on all my computers. (And you don't need to throw in those security/vulnerability scare tactics; unlike those open source extremists who demands everything the latest, I don't and I am not.)

There's no way I could run realistically have a genuine Mac OS X machine, even 2nd user ... too expensive!

If I remember correctly, Tidus' wife Kassie (or Kasumi) has a few top-end Macs as well as superfast connection, according to Tidus. I honestly don't think borrowing one could be an issue.

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[James]

If I remember correctly, Tidus' wife Kassie (or Kasumi) has a few top-end Macs as well as superfast connection, according to Tidus. I honestly don't think borrowing one could be an issue.

Indeed. But wasn't she also able to bend steel in her bare hands?

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