For a few months until I found a newer machine I had to use the following laptop for everyday stuff.

-400MHz Celeron
-256MB of RAM (max allowed)
-4GB hard drive
-integrated video and sound, neo magic something or other.
-CD ROM Drive

I used it as a desktop replacement (batteries long dead), so I used a Monitor (1024x1280 LCD), mouse(optical), keyboard, gamepad, USB Hub (1.1 only). Speakers were ass so I used my headphones.

I used Windows 2000, more stable than 9x and modern enough to get stuff done. Lightweight Linux was an option, but to be honest those always felt like a novelty (hey gise look how small I got Linux!) than something I could seriously use.

Web browsers Opera 12x for big stuff(this is when it was current), Offbyone for smaller stuff if I had to multi-task.
Music was done by an app called 'billy', video was out of the question
Games were limited to chocolate doom, xDuke, and NesterJ for NES ROMS
Word Processing was handled by Atlantis
Sumatra PDF (before they went XP and up only)
7 Zip
Irfanview

I think I had a small Instant Messenger app and an E-Mail thing too.

I just put together an old SFF box as an auxiliary machine for everyday use, it is much more robust than any of the machines posted here thus far, but still fairly old (~12 years):

- Pentium 4 3.2GHz "Extreme Edition"
- 2GB DDR400
- Radeon HD 4350
- 500GB SATA hard-drive (okay this was a "cheat" - this drive is much newer, but I had a few of them sitting around, and I've put them into my older boxes that support SATA as they're faster and quieter than my old PATA drives)
- Windows Vista

Thus far it hasn't had any problems with browsing and other "day to day" kinds of tasks - it even handles HD video from YouTube just fine.

The oldest system I set up as a main machine somewhat recently was a socket 754 Athlon 64 3000+. The full specs are:

- Athlon 64 3000+ (2GHz), socket 754
- Asus K8VX-SE (VIA-based)
- 2GB DDR400
- AGP GeForce 6600 GT
- 250GB SATA drive (had to use a DOS-based utility from Samsung to limit it to SATA 1.5GB/s, as the jumpers had no effect)

It is a decent XP machine... though back when I tried to set it up as a main everyday PC I installed Windows 7 there. The 32-bit version runs well enough, but for some reason games become a LOT slower, as if the OS turned that 6600 PGT into an FX5200 speed-wise. Once i gave up on having it as a main machine for my brother (bough myself an i3 to replace my C2D as my secondary PC, and set that one up for him) and installed XP, that 6600 suddenly performed like it should. Guess the Vista+ drivers for the 6x00 series were an afterthought. Youtube is hopleless, though.

For any length of time: Pentium 2 laptop around 2008-2009
Also, a Celeron D 360 (P4 Based) for a while (2011-2012). That sucked.

For one day, I ran my 486/120 box all day while my other machine was down.

6 years ago I used my Compaq 12" N410C notebook at work for a while. It was a P3 1200 with 512 MB memory and 30GB HDD.

I have since upgraded it to 1GB PC133 memory just for fun and I have a 60GB drive to replace the 30GB one, I do also need to change the coin battery pack. A year ago I even found a brand new docking station for it with DVD-RW and a floppy drive. I bought this compuer new and it has always worked well, who knows I might find real use for it again!

ThinkPad W500.

My daily driver is a Thinkpad T601 (a T60 4:3 body with T61 motherboard). It's a penryn T8100 with 6Gb ram. I think it's mobile compute power from 2009. I could realistically probably daily drive any Core 2 Duo. Something like an E6600 would be great.

Roughly 9 years ago, this was my main laptop:

It's a ~1992 Apple PowerBook 170. Ancient even by 2006 standards, mainly used for schoolwork and old games. It wasn't much longer after that when I got my P-III IBM ThinkPad T23.

No brave ones that push their patience to lower limits? 😁

Sometimes I try to remember back in the 90's we used Autocad 12 with some generic Amd 486 120Mhz based setup and Windows 95. Or also processing with Paintshop Win3.11 version on a 386..

Using my DX4-100 i obviously feel everything slow but I often think it's really the way in which we nowdays expect things MUST be that is changed in a useless/stupid way.

zstandig wrote:

For a few months until I found a newer machine I had to use the following laptop for everyday stuff. […]
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For a few months until I found a newer machine I had to use the following laptop for everyday stuff.

-400MHz Celeron
-256MB of RAM (max allowed)
-4GB hard drive
-integrated video and sound, neo magic something or other.
-CD ROM Drive

I used it as a desktop replacement (batteries long dead), so I used a Monitor (1024x1280 LCD), mouse(optical), keyboard, gamepad, USB Hub (1.1 only). Speakers were ass so I used my headphones.

I used Windows 2000, more stable than 9x and modern enough to get stuff done. Lightweight Linux was an option, but to be honest those always felt like a novelty (hey gise look how small I got Linux!) than something I could seriously use.

Web browsers Opera 12x for big stuff(this is when it was current), Offbyone for smaller stuff if I had to multi-task.
Music was done by an app called 'billy', video was out of the question
Games were limited to chocolate doom, xDuke, and NesterJ for NES ROMS
Word Processing was handled by Atlantis
Sumatra PDF (before they went XP and up only)
7 Zip
Irfanview

I think I had a small Instant Messenger app and an E-Mail thing too.

Offbyone runs fine even with the 486. Opera 9 with very light pages could run too but the 486 here is over their limits.

But the k6-2 500Mhz I'm using even now, with Opera 9.x with java and animation disabled runs really well even running some background music 320bit.

Thinkpad T61 is my slowest PC for normal work.
Bought it in 2009 - used, one year old. Over the years I've upgraded RAM (2GB -> 3GB -> 4GB), CPU (C2D T7100 -> T8100), HDD (250GB 7k2 rpm -> 320GB 5k4 rpm-> 128GB Crucial M4), replaced battery (first two died after 3 years each... now I have 3rd) and last upgrade is wifi ABG -> AGN + unofficial BIOS removing wifi whitelist and activating sata 300 mode for SSD.

Still after all these upgrades it just can't keep up with more demanding applications and feels slower and slower every day.
I guess it is time to start looking for something better.

I still find my HP 3216 P200mmx based machine with Red Hat 7.3, Opera 8.5 still quite useful.

In 2004 I had nothing but an unstable 486;
U5S Super33, replaced with Intel 486DX-33 as I needed the FPU.
8MB FPM RAM as only one slot would work, made in USSR
500MB Quantum Maverick IDE
Sound Blaster 16 CT1740
JK-042A VLB Motherboard
Pioneer DVD-RW
ET4000W32I ISA, has the Viper chip onboard but no driver (Quickworks 24i anyone?)
DEC DE-204 10Mb/s Ethernet

Mostly paid for with cigarettes or just stolen from work or trash cans. Back then I was doing a video editing course which required I do DVD authoring at home... Sonic Foundry Video Factory worked and I passed the course. Had no internet at the time. Used it until 2005 when the Pentium D I am still using took over.

For almost a year though until a couple of weeks ago, I had to use a dual P3;
2x Intel Pentium III 1GHz
SuperMicro P6DGU
2GB SDRAM
2x 18GB Quantum Atlas - Ultra2 SCSI LVD
2x40GB Maxtor DiamondMax IDE
ATI Radeon VE AGP
AWE64 Value

Still very useable but editing 720P video with it was slow.

DVD authoring on a 486? I think that "wins" in terms of old/slow machines doing something modern... 🤣 How long did it take to actually render anything? I remember working on VCD/DVD projects around the same time on an Athlon and that feeling slow enough. 😊

For some daily office tasks, I use a Compaq Deskpro EN with a 1.4GHz Tualatin running Win2k.

@obobskivich; Time varied considerably, as most of it was taken up with short low-res animations I often rendered at VCD resolutions to save time. This would take several hours (5 or more) to complete a 3 minute video. I remember it was hard to make it work at all but don't remember much of what I did. I used to leave it rendering to an ISO overnight and then just burn the ISO to a disc the next day.

My final assignment was a 20 minute video including some special effects, menus and chroma keying, rendering began on a Monday and was finished just in time to be handed in on Friday afternoon after I ran home during my lunch, it finished rendering shortly after I got home and I burned the image to a disc. Only 1x burning was possible and Buffer Under-run was a necessity. Windows Chicago 58 was also not a good OS for this, but was all I had.

I think the worst thing about the whole time was that I couldn't turn the machine off as there wasn't a CMOS battery and I only had one CD to listen to - The Eminem Show. Didn't help that the L2 cache didn't work.

Either way, as a video editing box, I don't recommend the 486 platform, though to its credit it got me there. Back then I hated the machine, but when I dragged it out years later it quickly became my favorite, so much so that I spent more than maybe I should to repair it when more slots on the board started dying and weird problems cropped up due to the traces being eaten from the leaking battery - no matter how much I cleaned when I got it, it kept eating itself - I did remove the battery immediately, so I suspect the fluids from it had gotten inside the board as shining a light through shows all black and green smudgy looking stuff between the layers inside the board. Overall I suspect it was better than trying to author DVDs with the SlimsPort 286 laptop which I used to take into work with me and get laughed at by the chief tech guy with his flashy P4... Joke was on him, all we used them for was word processing, some database stuff and network admin/debugging via Telnet or RS-232 at which the 286 was actually faster because I wasn't behind HAL, I also had a floppy drive whereas he had to lump a USB one around. It was fun beating his 2.8GHz with 1.5GB RAM, ATI Radeon Video monster with a measly 16MHz 286 and only 1MB of RAM, also constantly reminded him I was using less electricity and often asked if he was on fire yet.

Today the 486 (Referred to a Hooker on the network) has;
UMC U5S Super40 (Sometimes I install a PODP5V83, but I am working on a system to do that permanently).
Aquarius/Vision Tech. MB-4DUVC (Same as the JK-042A, better build quality).
STB LightSpeed ET4000W32/P VLB 2MB
SB Pro 2 (CT1680)
NEC 4x IDE CD-ROM (The DVD burner started in the P3, couldn't afford to repair the P3 in 2004, since did and returned the DVD-RW)
3Com 3C509 Ethernet card
Windows Chicago 189 (Fine as it only does file management and LAN stuff now, machine spends most of it's time in DOS)
4GB CompactFlash

It's actually very fast for a single-clocked 486.

HighTreason wrote:

@obobskivich; Time varied considerably, as most of it was taken up with short low-res animations I often rendered at VCD resolutions to save time. This would take several hours (5 or more) to complete a 3 minute video. I remember it was hard to make it work at all but don't remember much of what I did. I used to leave it rendering to an ISO overnight and then just burn the ISO to a disc the next day.

My final assignment was a 20 minute video including some special effects, menus and chroma keying, rendering began on a Monday and was finished just in time to be handed in on Friday afternoon after I ran home during my lunch, it finished rendering shortly after I got home and I burned the image to a disc. Only 1x burning was possible and Buffer Under-run was a necessity. Windows Chicago 58 was also not a good OS for this, but was all I had.

I think the worst thing about the whole time was that I couldn't turn the machine off as there wasn't a CMOS battery and I only had one CD to listen to - The Eminem Show. Didn't help that the L2 cache didn't work.

That just sounds...painful. 😲

Overall I suspect it was better than trying to author DVDs with the SlimsPort 286 laptop which I used to take into work with me and get laughed at by the chief tech guy with his flashy P4... Joke was on him, all we used them for was word processing, some database stuff and network admin/debugging via Telnet or RS-232 at which the 286 was actually faster because I wasn't behind HAL, I also had a floppy drive whereas he had to lump a USB one around. It was fun beating his 2.8GHz with 1.5GB RAM, ATI Radeon Video monster with a measly 16MHz 286 and only 1MB of RAM, also constantly reminded him I was using less electricity and often asked if he was on fire yet.

I remember working on a few of those P4 laptop setups, and they could usually make decent hotplates, but were kind of scary in terms of "this is meant to sit on your lap." I'd probably take the 286, or basically any other mobile computer, over a P4 laptop too... 😵

Today the 486 (Referred to a Hooker on the network) has; UMC U5S Super40 (Sometimes I install a PODP5V83, but I am working on a […]
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Today the 486 (Referred to a Hooker on the network) has;
UMC U5S Super40 (Sometimes I install a PODP5V83, but I am working on a system to do that permanently).
Aquarius/Vision Tech. MB-4DUVC (Same as the JK-042A, better build quality).
STB LightSpeed ET4000W32/P VLB 2MB
SB Pro 2 (CT1680)
NEC 4x IDE CD-ROM (The DVD burner started in the P3, couldn't afford to repair the P3 in 2004, since did and returned the DVD-RW)
3Com 3C509 Ethernet card
Windows Chicago 189 (Fine as it only does file management and LAN stuff now, machine spends most of it's time in DOS)
4GB CompactFlash

It's actually very fast for a single-clocked 486.

Neat. I remember running 95OSR2 on a faster DX some time ago (like decades by now, probably), and it was perfectly functional as well - kind of surprising how snappy it could be, actually. Never really set that machine up as a "daily driver" though, so it didn't seem pertinent to mention here. 😊

In 2004 I spent a few months in Jakarta. The only computer I used there was a 133MHz Pentium with 64MB of RAM, Win98, and a 56K dial up connection to the Internet. Not exactly the easiest computer to work with, even back in 2004. I did have some "fun" with that machine though. I used to buy movies on VCD and would watch them on that computer late at night, whenever I had trouble sleeping. And man was it difficult to get a good night's sleep there, what with all of the allergies, mosquitoes and blistering heat.

obobskivich wrote:

DVD authoring on a 486? I think that "wins" in terms of old/slow machines doing something modern... 🤣 How long did it take to actually render anything? I remember working on VCD/DVD projects around the same time on an Athlon and that feeling slow enough. 😊

Very impressive, especially considering the machine couldn't even play DVDs. (Maybe a PCI 486 with a bus mastering PCI IDE controller and a PCI DVD decoder card could do that.)