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Using vintage laptops in 2024: How do you make it work? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org

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I have an old ThinkPad T42 coming my way. I plan to use it alongside my daily driver mainly for reading, emacs, and retro gaming. I will be dual booting a lightweight flavour of Linux (TBD) and Windows 98 on it.

However, I am a bit concerned about its ability to handle today's internet, with all of its heavy websites.

I would love to hear from those of you who are still using old ThinkPads (or other vintage laptops) in 2024. How do you make it work? Do you use lightweight browsers, specific configurations, or lightweight websites to get around the limitations of older hardware?

Are there any specific tips or tricks you can share for getting the most out of an old ThinkPad on the modern web?

Looking forward to hearing about your experiences!

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[–] jmcunx@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The biggest impact would be to max out the memory. That will not help with browsers like Firefox, but will help with other items.

Plus there is a whole world out there that many people ignore or do not know about, USENET and IRC. Accessing those will work with just about any Thinkpad, no matter how old. Plus there is toot for Mastodon (I need to get that working), but not sure if there is a text utility to access lemmy

I have a Thinkpad which is a bit newer then yours (R51e) with OpenBSD on it. I get by quite well with dillo, links (need to try links2), mutt, tin (USENET) and irssi (IRC). All I did is maxed out memory to 2G. But, I never do banking on the Internet. All I do is need to do is get my pdf bank statement once a month which I use a newer Thinkpad for.

[–] AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Yes. I do plan to max out the CPU and RAM, and use an SSD.

Thank you for pointing to the software. I am already looking into getting back on IRC thanks to another comment. I will check the rest out.