Could this laptop be upgraded to handle SL ?

[cunomar]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124495052765?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338353466&toolid=20006%26customid%3Ds%3AGS%3Bgc%3AEAIaIQobChMIrJ6GuaP19wIVB_hRCh0hkQB-EAQYCCABEgJnn_D_BwE%3Bpt%3A1%3Bchoc%3A2&customid=s%3AGS%3Bgc%3AEAIaIQobChMIrJ6GuaP19wIVB_hRCh0hkQB-EAQYCCABEgJnn_D_BwE%3Bpt%3A1%3Bchoc%3A1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrJ6GuaP19wIVB_hRCh0hkQB-EAQYCCABEgJnn_D_BwE

I'm not thinking of buying it but i have one of the same spec and i'm wondering if its worth buying and upgraded SDD and another 4GB .

Keep it simple please I'm far more comfortable taking a laptop apart and reassembling it than i am following any win10 instructions from microsoft .

[Phil Deakins]

£300 for a Windows 7 machine? (Win7 support ended in January 2020). Surely you can find a much more up to date laptop for that sort of money.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

No.

It’s a 15 year old 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo with Intel graphics. SSD and RAM upgrades aren’t going to make that useful for SL.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Lyssa Greymoon

[Arielle Popstar]

The heading of the link pretty much says it: 

Seller notes:

““Excellent ex-business machine fully working and tested by qualified engineers.””

It does not list a separate graphic card so it is going to be challenged hardware wise no matter what you add to it.

[Sprout Evergarden]

Toughbooks while great machines are not game monsters most of all of all the Toughbook CF-52 which were almost sold exclusively for Military and Police use. I recall seeing these machines at Comdex when they were first released they demonstrated just how rouged they are by running one over with a 18 wheeled Truck. to give you an idea at the construction in these things the top and bottom panels are magnesium (the flammable kind the metal was chosen in case it had to be destroyed as part of a military operational procedure. ) the "plastic" parts are Fiberglass reinforced the interior of the laptop has a Steel Frame.  and the hard drive floats in gel filled mounts. the thing is a literal Boat anchor

the respond to both your questions No you will never get it comfortably running Second life. but Yes you will be able to upgrade the HDD and RAM in it. upgrading these things is almost trivial as the Ram, Drives, Network module are all accessible by little doors on the bottom of the case. (some of these units could even have the GPU and CPU upgraded through changing Daughter boards However given the limited market of these computers finding those boards will be an Extremely frustrating experience.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Vanessa Amethyst

[Nalates Urriah]

The specs are here. But Panasonic gives a completely different set of specs here. I would assume the Panasonic set is more accurate. In which case there is a dedicated graphics chip; AMD Radeon™ HD 6750M, 512MB. So, it can run SL with decent graphics.

The 2.5 GHz CPU is slow. The i5 is good.

My opinion it it is barely usable for SL. And I couldn't find a Max RAM value for the unit. So you may not be able to add RAM.

As to the SSD... this unit will not have a dedicated M.2 connection. This means the SSD will perform at HHD levels. It would be cheaper to put in a huge HHD and have the same performance.

For what you will spend trying to upgrade you could by a newer used unit. Unless you need a laptop get a used desktop. You can upgrade it in steps.

 

[MMB Jameson]

That computer likely won't run SL at all. I had an older computer just sitting around for a long time. My laptop broke and I wanted to see if I could get on SL with the older one. No, it wouldn't run it period, it wouldn't even let me open the viewer. I would get a popup when I tried to open the viewer that my specs were too out of date. I tried every different viewer available, tried updating drivers, etc. Nothing I did would let me open the viewer.

Edit - This is the laptop I had that wouldn't run SL https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T510-i5-520M-Multi-Language/dp/B07D98SWK8/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3M6MW5U2W78R7&keywords=Lenovo+t510&qid=1653327406&sprefix=lenovo+t510%2Caps%2C195&sr=8-4#customerReviews

Edited May 23, 2022 by MMB Jameson

[Love Zhaoying]

..at least it's not a Chromebook!

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

..at least it's not a Chromebook!

You mean there's no viewer I can use on Chromebook?  WTH?

[Qie Niangao]

The one in the ebay listing claims to already have some kind of 128GB SSD so I'm not sure how literally to take "one of the same spec." Obviously this would be a terrible machine to acquire with the intent of running SL, but if there's one just lying around collecting dust, it might work.

I'm a bit encouraged by the dedicated graphics chip, Radeon HD6750M 512MB. It's not great, but better than integrated chipset graphics, especially of that vintage.

On the plus side, a 1920x1200 screen is pretty good for a laptop back then.

I totally don't trust the Panasonic spec pdf (what's a Radeon HD7750M ??) but with that caveat, it says "4GB or 8GB SDRAM (DDR3L-1333MHz)" and claims "Memory Card 4GB DDR3" as one of the "Select Accessories" and other specs for this model claim there are 2 memory slots, so if there's a compatible 4GB card also lying around collecting dust…

[cunomar]

I won't buy it because i own one already , kid found it in a skip years ago totally wiped with no operating system and asked me if i could fix it for him . At the time i could only find a 32bit Dell win7 installation disk which was a dodgy copy but i got it working and he never returned for it .

As is it will do everything i might ever need to do on a computer and its been my unbreakable go to spare , I been using it for SL the last 3 months .

Win7 is ace because it doesn't break anything and everything that works with every update .

Thanks for all your replies anyway its a subject i can find no interest in so i asked because SL is by far and away the most complicated thing i will ever ask any laptop to do .

Edited May 23, 2022 by cunomar

[cunomar]

This is what had me wondering if the link works https://uk.crucial.com/scanview/CFA18F3531D926C3

And i know my has 4GB of ram with a spare slot to add another 4

[Lyssa Greymoon]

2 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

The specs are here. But Panasonic gives a completely different set of specs here. I would assume the Panasonic set is more accurate.

Panasonic used the CF-52 name on at least five generations of laptops. That's why there are specs all over the place for it.

3 minutes ago, cunomar said:

This is what had me wondering if the link works https://uk.crucial.com/scanview/CFA18F3531D926C3

Not if you have the Toughbook with the specs in the first post. Adding another 4GB of memory won't hurt anything, just get another module like the one that's in it.

[Coffee Pancake]

Intentionally buying vintage hardware that so far past it's service life it's fit for a thrift store is probably about the best way to waste money going. This will barely run SL. On a good day. With everything turned off.

(I have also picked up considerably better machines than this for under $40 in said thrift stores).

If you want an old junk machine for the fun / nostalgia of an old junk machine, this isn't bad .. but if you're in that market and burning this kind of money on that hobby, just buy a thinkpad.

Windows 7 is not ace. It's dead and presents major security issues. Wanna get completely owned, this is the ideal OS to experience that. 

You're one viewer update away from not being able to run SL, and LL are extremely unlikely to fix it.

[Qie Niangao]

Yeah, the five generations thing @Lyssa Greymoon mentioned became evident while sloping around the Kingston memory site which even claims it's possible to get up to 16GB in the most recent model (but the Crucial site may be already considering the specific model number).

I just wouldn't want to throw good money into a memory upgrade. If it somehow has a single 4GB card with an empty slot, maybe, but more likely it has two 2GB cards filling both slots, so an upgrade would be to replace both of them, and… honestly, not sure the result would be worth it.

The SSD seems unlikely to make much difference, to be honest, but running SL on less than 8GB RAM will be painful. But that reminds me: This is running in 64bit, right? if 32, a memory upgrade won't do any good. [*]

And I agree that there's nothing special about Windows 7. But this thing should be upgradeable to Windows 10, though, right?

________________
*EDIT: That's not quite true. Intel had a trick for mapping more than the addressable memory. This is all so ancient I can't remember how badly that worked, even though I did it on a 32-bit Linux installation for years.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Qie Niangao

[cunomar]

Crucial suggests PANASONIC CF-52 can cope with a 4TB SSD AND 8gb OF RAM which sounds impressive but means absolutely nothing to someone who's idea of precision is and inch and a smidgen and a gentle tap with a huge sledgehammer lol . For me it works or it doesn't and win10 never will .

 

[Qie Niangao]

2 minutes ago, cunomar said:

 win10 never will .

That's going to be a problem for SL, sooner than later. And for other stuff, honestly. If it were only SL, might be possible to score a separate box somewhere for very cheap and load Linux and a Linux-compatible SL viewer, and keep Win 7 on the laptop. But really, that's an OS living on borrowed time anyway.

[Bree Giffen]

You should be able to get it working by adding an external monitor, external keyboard, external mouse and external desktop computer.

[cunomar]

Guess i won't even bother making it 64bit then . £300 in parts to fix my gaming laptop is just not worth it only for SL .

What killed that didn't even scratch this rugged little thing which makes it more valuable to me than the gaming laptop which would cost circa £1000 to replace with similar .

On the bright side no updates means my printer always works which is a necessity of my livelihood that win10 refuses to accept .

[Qie Niangao]

40 minutes ago, cunomar said:

On the bright side no updates means my printer always works which is a necessity of my livelihood that win10 refuses to accept .

Yeah that part of upgrading Windows versions is ugly. My flatbed scanner aged-out of Windows several upgrades ago, but still works fine on Linux. It's not exactly convenient, with other steps in the workflow necessarily Windows 11 now, but between the cloud and Samba, it gets done.

[cunomar]

HP Envy 4502 printer works fine until win10 notices something actually works and decides to "improve" my experience .

Trial and error dictates the fastest way to fix the problem is to do an erase everything factory reset , print what i needed an hour ago and then spend the rest of the day turning off every "helpful" windows setting i can find in the hope that one day they will recognize that this is my computer and not theirs .

Edited May 24, 2022 by cunomar

[bigmoe Whitfield]

when microsoft changes build enviroment requirements again and the lab follows those, everybody whom makes a viewer will follow them.   I think most of us windows 10 users right now are just worried about the EOL for windows 10 in 2025,  unless MS fixes an screw up with windows 11 and it being locked down with a stick,  then I'm not sure what most of us will do then either.   I have a 100% working system that was built for VR when VR was becoming an item of choice for a certain segment (me), with that in mind, all I have to do is upgrade the psu and gpu at some point,  I'm currently not even hitting anything requiring an upgrade, as every major AAA game runs without hiccups, all I lack is ray tracing because the 980 does not support it.  

 

SO point being with my rambling,  at some point you need to really consider do you continue keeping the windows 7 machine on life support or do you bite the bullet, save up 1000.00 usd and then buy a system that will not choke. 

[cunomar]

£ V $

About $1300 entry fee - for SL and nothing else !!!

I wonder if one of these will last a year before the kids spill pop on it ?

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/alienware-x17/spd/alienware-x17-r2-laptop/nawx17r204?gacd=9687022-5016-5761040-271164963-0&dgc=ST&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIopH5wfP39wIVA_hRCh0nugbpEAQYASABEgJ7kfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&nclid=H3XJ6RjR_jFjWa1zyyyHlTT6KRcluw7kONTU3YCmt4Jebq0QIl4rMzQuXExYegIb

[Anaiya Ahren]

Quote

 

On the bright side no updates means my printer always works which is a necessity of my livelihood that win10 refuses to accept .

 

 

Microsoft locked me out of my computer because it "forgot" my password.  I had to get a confirmation email sent to an email account to log back into my own computer which is silly because how am I supposed to get to my emails if I'm locked out of my computer.

 

I do not like Widows 11.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by Anaiya Ahren

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, cunomar said:

£ V $

About $1300 entry fee - for SL and nothing else !!!

I wonder if one of these will last a year before the kids spill pop on it ?

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/alienware-x17/spd/alienware-x17-r2-laptop/nawx17r204?gacd=9687022-5016-5761040-271164963-0&dgc=ST&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIopH5wfP39wIVA_hRCh0nugbpEAQYASABEgJ7kfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&nclid=H3XJ6RjR_jFjWa1zyyyHlTT6KRcluw7kONTU3YCmt4Jebq0QIl4rMzQuXExYegIb

You're playing a computationally intensive rendered virtual world as a primary hobby. Like any other entertainment hobby this needs some investment in equipment. Demanding to do this on equipment well over a decade old is about the same as having a car hobby and wondering why vintage tires just don't see the get the mileage new ones do, or why this replacement well loved exhaust already comes with rusty holes.

If your primary entertain hobby was reading, you could realistically expect to burn the same amount of money on books and shelves over the course of a couple of years (or far less depending on your tastes).

If you get a desktop PC setup, the kids can only spill pop in the keyboard..

Maybe take the opportunity to replace some of your other vintage equipment and spend fewer of your remaining days reinstalling everything to get a print out. As someone with a stupid collection of vintage computer junk, I can reliably inform you there are no prizes for being a techno masochist, so unless you explicitly enjoy wasting hours upon hours poking garbage, just don't. Life is too short.