[ale] linking MS to E-waste

[Brian Pitts]

On Sat, 2009-01-17 at 13:40 -0500, Atlanta Geek wrote:
> You're right. 1990's error machines are not very useful these days.
> But I only recently got rid of a 2001 900Mhz beast and only because My
> neighbor who does small business windows stuff was throwing away a
> pentium 4 machine that was super quiet.
> 
> Youre right. Standards are solidifying . There was a huge difference
> between that 386 that came out in 1988 and the 800 Mhz machines in
> 1998. But really is there such a big difference between the 98 and the
> 2008 machines. What features do we have today that we really need that
> were not out on top of the line 98 machines.

USB 2.0 and DVD-RW. Both of these can be added to a 1998-era machine,
but I wouldn't want to use it myself. A machine from 2000 with a
second-generation Pentium III or Athlon, on the other hand, would be
tolerable. This is the vintage we most often see donated at Free IT
Athens, and they're usable with Ubuntu if you add at least 256MB of RAM.
The more RAM the merrier.

-Brian