(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Ok folks, last week we had some serious rain along with big thunders. Apparently a big tree next to our home was stuck by lightening; In the morning we noticed our laptop -18.4 inch/ Toshiba Qosmio/ X505-Q886/ nVidia/ 4gb RAM/ 500gb HDD/ is not working. Also the tree top was burnt out. There is no direction connection between our power lines and the tree; however, the damage to my laptop is consistent with a lightening stroke. Processor, motherboard and graphics card - all three gone.

Please note that we always kept the machine powered ON. Reasons - the lid started to give some trouble, the movements are not smooth. We used linux to put out wi-fi hotspot and switching off would means; no wi-fi to my tenant. The machine was used almost by everyone in my family so continuous use. So our practice of leaving it powered on - actually killed the machine in a way. If we shut it down in the night; probably machine would have survived. Anyway, I took it with a pinch of salt.

Now with my limited budgets, we are now looking for a 17.3 inch laptop. We will use linux either puppy or kubuntu. We prefer integrated intel graphics as opposed to nvidia which generates too much heat.

Any suggestions?

Not by way of laptop model (I have a hard enough time with 15" laptops!) but by way of marketplace -- go eBay. If you do it well you can get some good stuff.

If you are willing and able to divulge your country of residence, and to accept a little help from me, shoot me that information and your budget and I'll see what I can do for you. That said, having found a laptop for a local friend recently, who also wanted a 17" machine -- you should be prepared to spend at least $200 if you are in the US, and even that is a little low. I may not be able to get you anything at that price... they tend to be a bit more even than that (and that's for a *used* system! if you want something really nice, it's going to be still more).

If you're not comfy working with me on the forum, shoot me a PM and we can do it that way -- or even by email if you prefer (PM me for mine ).

Hello mekalu2k4.

OMG. The computer and the Puppy both died because of lightning. My
condolences. (Sorry for taking it on the light side.)

I hope you and your people are ok?

As to suggestions:
Well, in this area, for around 100 bucks, you can get a used laptop / or
a small dual-core tower at small computer shops.

You can look around for community organizations that try to bring
computers back to life. If you are short on money, sometimes, you can
pay them through barter, or help them somehow in exchange for the repair.

Ask your extended family and friends? I'm sure someone has an old
computer in working order in a closet somewhere, that they could give
or lend you, and that you could use as a stop-gap for the time being.
You brush the dust off it and you're good to go again.

BFN.

musher0

Perhaps there should be some posts here about good power surge protection products....

I get surges all the time and probably haven't addressed such potential problems, either.

Hi all,
Thanks for the responses. I could not reply soon, as we do not have any machine to use!

I just got online, after losing my 18.4 inch Toshiba laptop. Apparently, mother board, processor and graphics card - all got fried - yes, they all are gone. Well, it is lightening stroke, a large tree was badly damaged too. A small electronic gadget like this laptop will not obviously survive.

Now purchased a Dell Inspiron 3737 model/ 17.3 inch/ i5/ 12gb RAM/ 750gb hdd. It is a used machine, does not have DVD drive; that bay is simply empty. Got it locally from an electronics shop, apparently the owner wanted to get rid of it since there was a problem with DVD drive. Shop tech guy told me that the machine will be fine if the machine is used without the DVD drive and advised me to leave it empty.

I paid USD 280 and removed win 7 from it. Installed Kubuntu 15.10 and machine is working fine thus far. Last two days, it worked without any issue. We really do not require DVD drive.

Not sure the people here like my moving to Kubuntu, the KDE is really eye candy for the kids. It has 12 GB ram, so it is quite fast. So put up oracle virtualbox, and MS-office etc. Working happily.

I am now seeing some differences between kubuntu and puppy. Kubuntu is a little bit slower in browsing; may be due to heavier and bulky OS? Internet browsing with Puppy was a lot more snappier though.