Request for simplified instructions for downloading and installing .tar.gz applications - Ventoy

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2022 at 23:41, Bret Busby <bret at busby.net> wrote:
>
> It is an ASUS F550C.

Ah, OK.

I see a lot of mixed reports out there for its specs. There were i3,
i5 and i7 models, by the look.

Seems it has only 1 SO-DIMM slot and 4GB soldered in place, meaning it
maxes out at just 12GB:

https://www.kingston.com/en/memory/search/model/86561/asus-f550-notebook-f550c

I had a turn-of-the-century cheap clone Thinkpad made under licence by
Acer, with a single DIMM slot. Officially it took only 64MB, but I
took it to a shop and tested a bunch and in fact it took a 128MB DIMM
just fine, giving a useful in 2001 192MB total.

So it may be worth taking it to a friendly computer-repair place and
seeing if it will take a 16GB DIMM, giving you 20GB which is quite  a
handy amount even now. *If* you are willing to spend money on it.

The machine I'm typing on came with just 8GB DDR and an empty slot. A
generous friend gave me a spare 4GB  DIMM for free so now it has 12GB
which actually is enough for my daily use.

> I had thought about the prospect of seeking a replacement battery, after
> I found an old receipt for a replacement battery that I had bought some
> years ago, online.. But, I did not follow up on the thought; I thought
> that I should try to get the computer working, with an OS, to check that
> I could, first.

Deffo check it works before spending $ on it!

But if it does, yeah, sounds a still-useful machine. With 12GB of RAM
it'd be serviceable. Mine is.

The screen looks poor: if the various conflicting specs pages I found
are right, it's only 1366*768, which is rubbish.

1 site also said it only has 1 USB which is also rubbish. A hub would
help, though.

I looked up battery prices here in Central Europe and they seem to be
under €18. Say AU$25. So I would not pay more than that, myself.


> It is one of those laptops designed by  people whose talents make me
> wonder. It has an i7 CPU, and only 4GB RAM, and, has capacity for only
> about 12 or 16GB RAM

Looking at that LCD, if the specs pages are correct, this was a cheapo
laptop aimed at not-very-discerning buyers. They saw a big screen and
what sounds like a fast chip. It's actually a very low-end budget
machine.

I upgraded a friend's laptop for him in 2020, during the break between
lockdowns. Budget Sony. Only a Core i3, but a big low-res screen like
yours. Came with 4GB RAM and a spinning disk.

I put in 8GB of RAM and a ½ gig SSD. Transformed the machine into
something much quicker and more responsive, fast to boot and fast to
run. Total cost, under AU$ 300. He was happy.

>  I believe that anything more powerful than a
> Celeron, should come with at least 8 GB RAM

[...]

It came with Win8. So, it's from 2013 (or it'd have come with 8.1).

For that time, more RAM would have made it a lot more expensive, and
from what I read this was a budget box. I am not disagreeing -- it was
underspecced -- but that was to keep the price down.

> I am not ungrateful for the gift of the PC; I just think that
> manufacturers have a long way to go, before they start making practical
> PC's available.

I take your point, but you have to consider the time.

When I worked on a print PC mag in the mid '90s -- do you know PC
@uthority? That was the Aussie imprint -- I reviewed a *lot* of PCs.
Many were identikit boxes. There was a time, then, when if you made a
Pentium 133 with 8MB of RAM, a 1.2GB Quantum Fireball, a Diamond
Stealth64 Video VRAM graphics card, it would ace most mags' benchmarks
and sell well.

I marked down PCs with SIS chipsets because the performance was
_markedly_ worse. But the point is, if you knew the sweet kit, you
could assemble a very competitive box for £NOTALOT. But change one
component and it'd be _much_ worse.

But a few years later and any old OEM junk made a perfectly
serviceable desktop and there was no point in criticising one
particular model for one bad components. Win95 and then Win98 evened
up the stakes. Stuff just worked. Kinda.

Well, a decade ago, there was a big difference between a lowend laptop
and a good one, as you're discovering.

TBH, now, for most people, about $100 worth of kit provides a
perfectly usable PC for ordinary web surfing. It really doesn't matter
much any more.

Example:
https://www.laptopmag.com/news/lenovo-chromebook-3-with-amd-a6-cpu-falls-to-a-measly-dollar89

Small differences in spec don't make much difference any more. The
absolute entry level is usable.

But in 2013 it was very different.




-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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