Using a tiny laptop: Life at 800MHz @EverfreeArtemis
Artemis Everfree discusses choosing an older Intel Atom lightweight Netbook to help their needs:
We’ve been using a Sony Vaio VGN-P588E for the past few months as our primary personal laptop. This thing’s great; it’s got a small but not uncomfortable keyboard. It’s got a trackpoint, which we absolutely need to keep our hands healthy. Crucially, it’s only 1.5 pounds. We’re disabled in a way that means we’ve got to care about every bit of weight we add to our bag when we leave home, so that’s a big deal!
One catch: the Intel Atom inside hits a peak speed of 1.33GHz, with a normal speed of 800MHz under most thermal conditions. Oh yeah and there’s only 2GB of DDR2, GPU drivers don’t work in Linux, and it’s a 32 bit processor too did I say one catch I meant four. Let’s talk about life in the slow lane.
So this thing’s main job is to help us stay off our phone, since touch screens are the hardest on the health of our hands. To do that, it’s got to be able to handle chatting with people, email, media, and light web browsing. Does it work? Actually, yes!
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