Can This Laptop From 2006 Still Do ANYTHING in 2024?

Hello there and welcome to my video. In today's video, I'm going to be testing out this old Dell Latitude D620 ATG from 2006! I'm going to be seeing whether or not it is capable of completing basic day to day tasks in 2024, and I'll also be daily driving it for a week to get a real good feel for how it does.
Music, in order:
Beyond - Patrick Patrikios
Sunny Days - Anno Domini Beats
Papov - Yung Logos
Nine Lives - Unicorn Heads
Komorebi - Futuremono

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Hey there! If you're stopping by down here to drop a comment regarding the screen on this laptop - let me answer that question here instead. I didn't address it in the video, but it seems like this screen was damaged and then someone tried to fix it with some glue of some sort. I have no clue about what's gone on with it, as it's not my laptop and the person I'm borrowing it from doesn't know what happened either. Sorry I don't know the story to it, I'd love to know what happened to it as well! Also - I have no clue what DaVinci did to the audio during the live audio portion/the final portion of the video. The raw audio and the audio in the timeline were great sounding, but the renders really messed it up. Sorry about that if you're someone who noticed. Not sure what happened there, it almost sounds like there's aggressive noise reduction on the audio but there isn't.

[@johnruschmeyer5769]

The screen issue (i.e., glue) is from the fact that you have an ATG version of the D620. The ATG version is intended to be used in harsh conditions. There is an extra cover on the LCD which tends to become separated over time.

[@onometre]

wow I never thought this knowledge would be useful! the other commenter is correct. this model laptop uses a liquid adhesive to adhere the LCD to a secondary protective layer. With time, this goo seeps out and coats everything else. a pretty severe design flaw IMO.

[@dylanlindsay1993]

i think somone tried to cover scratches on the screen with glue if the panel itself was damaged it just wouldnt work right at all

[@Pulverrostmannen]

The screen could also have what they call "Vinegar Syndrome" where the layer in the screen start to decay and you can also get the smell of vinegar from some monitors too. BTW just recently Microsoft completely blocked all upgrades from Win 8 and older to be possible anymore. Unless your computer have been activated with win10 once you cannot use an older license to activate it anymore. I tried it. and the end of next year most older computers will not run win11 anyway especially if your computer don´t have the newly added demand for certain CPU instructions it won´t even work with any bypass methods. it even seems like MS is probably gonna block bigger updates on non natively compatible computers. we all gonna have to pay the price of modern capitalism some way

[@user-r4v9fyq6u7]

at 8:10 you are NOT playing the real geometry dash, you can focus on the steam game or the cracked versions. The browser versions is only to get easy money, which means the geometry lite is a cash grab. Even worse, they are NOT well optimized, and does not work properly with old CPUs. Whatever you do, DO NOT INSTALL THE BLUESTACKS ONE.

[@Wolly9102]

4:59 Ahhh love the state of 2024 KZbin where scam ads are on the blank home page

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Yep, gotta love those ads... missed blurring that one, woops ;D

[@RetroPlus]

That particular ad has been a thing since at least 2022, I must have seen it hundreds of times now. KZbin doesn't care.

[@vogonp4287]

​@@RetroPlus I've reported it at least ten times.

[@nmac101]

@@vogonp4287 i also did... then i just gave up and installed revanced

[@sagunchitrakar4694]

I am writing this from my 2007 Dell Inspiron (1520) Core 2 Duo. I upgraded it with125 GB SSD, 4 Gb Ram, Windows 10, etc. My experience so far has been fine. This computer is ON 24 hours and no heating problem. For simple office work such as spreadsheets, Word documents, watching KZbin videos, etc., it is adequate. I even installed Windows 11 on it once. It worked fine for a while but suddenly it started to act strange. I could not access the Start button. I think it has to do with a corrupt registry or something. I reinstalled Windows 10 and it is working fine. But once in a while it crashes, and I think the problem is with new DDR2 ram. It was a cheap ram. The best thing about this computer is swapping the hard drive. 4 screws and caddy comes out. No need to take the whole laptop apart. I have the original hard drive with XP installed and new SSD with Windows 10. Whenever I need it, I can swap the drive with ease. It has micro card reader and I have 64 Gb card installed and it's working fine. In future I will definitely try Linux but not sure about the drivers...

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Glad to hear that computer's doing good for you! The easily swappable drives are really nice on these systems, I wish we had them in modern ones but of course the industry went towards "how thin can we possibly make it" and we lost that.

[@sagunchitrakar4694]

So true. After I bought the new SSD I kept it in the box for few months thinking I will have to open the top part, takeout the keyboard, etc. to swap it. I had to do that when I upgraded ram. Then one day I decided to do the swap. I looked around the back and saw four screws with some kind of symbol... I was thinking to myself that cannot be hard drive... but took out the screws anyway. And lord be hold, the hard drive caddy with hard drive inside just came out. I put the SSD, screw it back and bios recognized the SSD with no problem....I couldnot believe it!!!! I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 and drivers... and it workd like a charm. It is my daily driver and very reliable. Of course I don't play games on it since the onboard graphics is minimal to say it nicely. You are right on the money when you said these computer could be very useful to students on tight budget. The upgrade can be done on cheap yet the computer is very reliable.

[@dylanlindsay1993]

better off just finding an old computer that has 4g of ram thats old and just taking that ram and putting it in it!

[@adriangorgonio2072]

Have you tried installing Tiny11 instead?

[@megatronskneecap]

Tiny 11 isn't an official Microsoft product nor is it OpenSource so could contain any old thing in it like hidden key loggers. @@adriangorgonio2072

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

For those old machines, a better solution would be Windows 10 LTSC instead of regular 10, since it doesn't have the Windows Store bloat that comes with standard, no Cortana and only receives security updates.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

I'll have to look into that, thanks!

[@iplyrunescape305]

Uhh Linux?

[@dumbfloppa]

Linux sucks on hardware that has a core 2 duo or older@@iplyrunescape305

[@nana-chan4550]

I use LTSC 2019 on my main workstation and I can confirm that it runs around 20% faster than normal Win10 with all the bloatware. Sadly LTSC is not available to private customers and buying it from an online reseller likely violates Microsoft licensing terms. It's not illegal for personal use but still something to be aware of IMO. If the license gets blocked for whatever reason you're on your own.

[@NoobDerric]

I'm literally using LTSC 2018 on my 2013 Dell Inspiron 15R-5521 on a hard drive and its so responsive and fast that I can play heavy games like GTA 5 and COD WW2 definitely recommend if you don't have an SSD

[@maynnemillares]

KZbin defaults to VP8 Video and Opus audio decoding. Those are heavy tasks for a Core 2 duo system, due to lack of hardware acceleration. Installing h264ify extension will switch KZbin to use the H264 video and mp3 audio decoding, which both can be hardware rendered by a Core 2 duo system.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

I'll keep that in mind for next time I mess with this system, thanks!

[@canespastico]

I'll try it since my c2duo based laptop struggles in YT, thx a lot

[@partirbukadera]

This and using uBlock Origin, who the hell uses the web with ads, let alone on such an old computer?

[@canespastico]

IT WORKS! THANKS!

[@Denis7947.]

Ah nice

[@lukedavis436]

My friend actually used a D620 for college work... this was just after Windows 7 had lost support but was still used. And he loved it! It's actually what made us friends in the end!

[@flotowncomputerguy6243]

I used one of those for 7 years. Durable, easy to work on, and the swappable extended batteries were cheap. They were workhorses!

[@SkyQuest2K8]

@@flotowncomputerguy6243It is a nice machine actually. I used one for awhile.

[@guaiqueritech]

This video is relevant, specially considering these kind of laptops might still be around in third world countries where budgets are much more limited. As someone who flips the occasional laptop in this context, something that might help: *If you need to stick with official Windows* 1. Do check the thermal solution: having clean heat sinks, fans and fresh thermal paste helps the struggling cpu a bit. 2. Enter Appearance and Performance in Settings and set everything to performance; not having to render unnecessary animations will reduce the load on the CPU 3. Blocks applications from running in background, as this places, again, unnecessary load on your CPU and RAM. 4. If the laptop and budget allows, do upgrade the RAM, even if only to 3GB. It will be a less painful experience. *If you don’t need official windows but don’t want to dabble with Linux* 1. Install Tiny10 2. Perform all the steps given above It will be a much smoother experience

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Great tips, thank you!

[@MrSamadolfo]

yes i recommend trying out one of the modded win isos, Tiny 11 and Sceptre 11 works all the way back to Core 2 Duo at the moment

[@TheHyperGamer1]

If you are going to use an old PC like this, the first thing you should do is open it to clean the fan and heatsink, replace thermal paste and install a new bios battery. You will get a much better experience even with these older laptops with just a little bit of time invested. I rebuild these older computers on the regular for classic gaming it does make a huge difference.

[@arashrezaee1464]

What about updating the bios? I got an old laptop from 2016 from a friend but it has a password lock on the bios so I can't update it without physically soldering out the chip and reprogramming it in a $12 dongle. I asked my friend for the password and who the hell even puts a password on the bios in the first place? And he said it was a company computer. He upgraded the ram to 32gb so im just thinking maybe a more up to date bios would read that kind of ram faster since that wasn't really a thing back in 2016. Who knows tho the bios could be completely up to date and I could very well go through all that trouble for nothing.

[@Kartoffelliebhaber]

Isnt there a jumper somewhere? Or cant you remove the battery and reset the BIOS? Usually there is way to reset the password without buying dongles. Atleast in my experience....@@arashrezaee1464

[@Dogappel]

@@arashrezaee1464 You can just reset the bios by taking the laptop battery and CMOS battery out or using a pin jumper. Password will be gone. And then you can update it.

[@arashrezaee1464]

@@Dogappel that works for desktops but not certain laptop. Monr doesn't even have a bios battery. Trust me I've looked this up. You used to be able to contact hp and give them your specific model number and they'd send you a specific file to flash your drive with. Now because of security concerns they refuse to do that and it's absolutely maddening that someone would even do this

[@Dogappel]

@@arashrezaee1464 Oh yeah it depends on the laptop. My lenovo ideapad does have a BIOS battery.

[@flashmusicarchive9584]

in 2006, much of the internet didn't use modern plugins like HTML5 and previously the biggest novelty was flash, depending on the website, game, youtube and other things flash was using around the time. however with the introduction of HTML5 and modern devices that can support it we often take that for granted while older devices prior 2008 will often struggle and have a hard time adjusting to the use of the plugin or will outright refuse to run it citing an error. i myself use a 2014 Panasonic Toughbook and 2012 dell optiplex for hard work and they get the job done for my tasks, i honestly suggest anything older than 2010 just isn't worth keeping during the time of this writing due to the reasons above.

[@DoltonI]

Educational. Thanks for sharing

[@memesandgasoline]

I have almost the same laptop. Running windows 10 enterprise and it works well ebough for what i need. Glad to see others using it too!

[@FennecTECH]

Man those screens were amazing back in the day. That ATG model had a display that worked in direct sunlight but they leaked goo **EVERYWHERE**

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Yeah the screen itself seemed really nice, minus the goo

[@user-nd7rg5er5g]

I had no idea that screens could leak goo, but new mental image unlocked.

[@FennecTECH]

@@user-nd7rg5er5g its. Less go and more like crystallized honey. It’s horrifyingly sticky and has this weird smell to it. It’s the adhesive between the anti reflective panel and the display that gave it a usable in direct sunlight on the beach screen.

[@FennecTECH]

@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials it really shines when you try to use it on a right sunny day. It’s perfectly clear and readable. It turns it into a transflective that works out in the sun.

[@lzbulgaria1]

Nice vid buddy! I think it would be an interesting idea to max out this laptop & revisit it again. If it has 2 ram slots, it can likely take a total of 8gb (despite the manufacturer stating "max is 4gb"... since 4gb DDR2 sticks came out at the end of DDR2's lifespan - thus the manufacturers had discontinued production of this laptop/not had the knowledge of such sticks coming into existence). You can also stick a Core2Duo T9500 or if you wanna absolutely max it out the more exotic Intel X9000 which uses the same PGA478 socket as the T5600. Keep up the vids!

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Thanks for the kind words! Definitely thinking to come back to this system with some upgrades like the CPU upgrade you mentioned!

[@preludetodemise]

This is giving me crazy nostalgia my dad had the same laptop and ended up giving it to me and my sister we used to play the sims2 and oblivion on it some of my earliesr gaming memories is trying to get games to run on it

[@andrewmarshall1142]

I have the non-ATG version of the D630 with 4GB of memory, running on an SSD, and it’s downright fast with Windows 7. 10 is pretty usable but 7 is the sweet spot for these early Core 2 Duo machines. Also, as others have mentioned, cleaning gunk out of the CPU fan and reapplying thermal paste to the heatsink will give you a much better experience regardless of specs. Keep up the great content man. Frankly I love these machines, they’re so quintessentially early 2000’s in design with the two-tone plastics 😂

[@RachaelVir]

I have an old Dell Inspiron 1720 that I have piece mill upgraded over the years with a T9500, 6GB of RAM, and a pair of Samsung SATA SSDs. It could easily be a daily driver in a pinch aside from being a brick, as it runs Windows 10 flawlessly. It even ran Windows 11 briefly, also fine, though it seems 24H2 is the end of the line for that. These old C2D systems are getting long in the tooth, but if you already have one laying around, they can be decent little systems if you shop around for use upgrade parts.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Nice system! Yeah, they're absolutely still capable of being a daily driver in a pinch, and can still run modern OS's relatively well.

[@MrJaylensaur]

If you ever want to install Linux on the laptop I'd recommend using antiX as it's a very lightweight Debian based distro and is perfect for laptops of this age. I have a Acer Aspire 5630 from around the same time that is still running it's standard IDE HDD and 2GB RAM and it runs amazingly.

[@Lauterec]

I used a D620 with a Centrino duo from 2015-2019 in high school. I used Lubuntu on it, and it was more than useable for everything I needed it too. The keyboard was AMAZING! It's the best keyboard I've used to date, and I could crank out an essay on it like no other. Everybody made fun of me for using such a thick boy. I was also the weird kid using a click wheel iPod.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

That's awesome! I can imagine that Lubuntu helped it out a lot, I'm excited to pick it back up with some Linux and see how much better it is. Also, totally agree on the keyboard!

[@Dogappel]

Great video! I'm actually watching this video on a dell studio 1737 laptop motherboard from 2008. I made a wooden case and put that motherboard in it. It's not that bad actually when using windows 10, it has it's dedicated GPU (Radeon HD 3650). And a pentium dual core T4500 (Originally had T4200, but I had a T4500 laying around to make it a little bit faster.) But it's kinda bottle necked, since when I play a very basic 2D game, the CPU maxes out and the GPU can't go higher. This probably happens because i'm using the wrong power adaper and the CPU doesn't get enough power (BIOS says that). Video playback is smooth when the pc is idle, but when you load comments for example, the video starts to stutter. I did upgrade it a little bit by putting an SSD inside and 4GB of ram.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

That sounds like a pretty interesting machine! I bet that HD 3650 is helping the performance of the system out tremendously; my laptop only had the integrated graphics on its chipset, which aren't very good.

[@BALtimore2001]

I've had a Sony Vaio laptop from late 2006/early 2007 that still works to this day.

[@lucasrem]

Japan only machines, they never made it to Europe or the US. Please but some less then $200 2019 HP refurbished model, why invest in old crab ? I always get 3 year old Pro models, stopped buying them new. Trust me this works !

[@rubiigen]

Your speaker issues are due to degradation. Basically the seal breaks over time making tne speaker kinda wobble in place. Got the same issue on my 2006 mbp

[@LatitudeSky]

Sitting here next to my D630, which is virtually identical to your D620. My machine can run Windows 10 just fine and had a registered license, but I actually run Xubuntu on it. It's a great laptop, built like a tank, batteries are cheap and easy to get, etc. I use this D630 more than my far more powerful I7 laptop, because the D630 is more handy to have just sitting around.

[@c.c.a.s5005]

I have duct taped an 80ish mm fan to the bare motherboard of a Packard Bell from 2007. Without it it gets to 103°C for 720p KZbin.Dual Core Sempron CPU at 1.8Ghz . The fan is also tied to a 12v 2A DC adapter and it is all beautiful. I can finally play Terraria in 50fps,800x600.

[@midwestgamer1120]

Great work. My only suggestion with regard to your initial perspective, a basic user could also attempt a debloat script from a reputable site like Chris Titus Tech and it could help the older hardware handle windows 10 a bit better. Otherwise love your approach and great video!

[@franzbeckenbauer242]

I used that a lot, windows 10 debloated works completely different. Comparison is like night vs day.

[@Baldis_basics_plus]

I am writing this from my 2008 compaq cq70 presario. 3 GB ddr2 ram 500gb hdd (from an old dell it's original drive with vista died) and Intel Centrino 2 and an Nvidia Geforce 9200M GE with Windows 7 Professional fully updated. I can say, it is amazing. The Dvd drive works perfectly with my dvd movies. It plays games with no problems, it burns DVDs without problems. Comparing it to my 3600 Euros gaming pc i would say, it is amazing 😍 I hope everyone agreed 😊

[@Butterscotchcs]

man this is a trip, this was the laptop my mom had when she was finishing college, I was in middle school and I would play half life 2 on it

[@BenKlassen1]

I don't have time for old, slow computers. That PC so for the bin or for email only. The slowness on KZbin is due to lack of hardware decoding capability for modern KZbin codecs like VP9 and AV1.

[@SirAzur3]

I recently upgraded a 2007 dell E520 desktop to Windows 10 and upgraded it to a core 2 quad q6600, SSD, and 8GB ram. It runs extremely well and can handle virtually any web task including youtube at 1080p. It only takes a few seconds to start up as well.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

That's awesome!

[@dusthillresident]

You could install Linux mint, and then this laptop could do a lot of potentially nice stuff like writing music in lmms or OpenMPT or Audacity, drawing pics in tux paint or kolourpaint or Gimp, and it could most certainly run old emulated games in SNES9x and kega fusion so light/retro gaming should be possible too. This is a laptop that could make a good toy for a kid when set up with the appropriate software.

[@laurencejohnson4106]

In my opinion and experience, it's best to dismantle older computers and then give everything a good clean and renew the thermal paste and the cmos battery and then install a lightweight Linux OS., perhaps that process could be the subject of another video. PS., I have a Dell Latitude D530 laptop which has 2.20 GHz., core 2 duo processor and 4 gig of ddr2 ram., and a 120 gig ssd., and Linux Mint Mate is the OS., the computer works well.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Planning to come back to this computer with Linux and I'll definitely clean it out at that point. Glad to hear that laptop works well with Linux Mint!

[@johnhpalmer6098]

One thing to keep in mind is some lower end laptops of this era (2006), will still run IDE. I had a similar Inspiron B120 laptop, who's battery was not good, and yes, I could find batteries for it, running $30-90 online, depending on source used. It had IDE so just to switch out to SATA with an interpoler, would have run me $130 or so, I ended up buying an 8th gen i5 Dell Latitude for $220, running Windows 11 (refurbished) with 16GB of RAM. BTW, if your Latitude ATG is like the Inspiron, the second slot is also where the WiFi/BT card resides. At least it was on the Inspiron. On modern systems like my Latitude 3390 2n1, the bottom cover comes off, exposing the RAM and HD, which in this case is SATA, and had a used Crucial MX500 of 512GB capacity in it. Sometimes, it's best to move up to an early Core processor, than Pentium, Celeron, or 2Core Duo's of this era.

[@kyyuhl]

My dad bought a ton of these back in 2008-2010 off of eBay for cheap. He had them everywhere in the house and beyond. He even had one mounted in his work truck just like a police car setup. Had a toolbox with 4 marine deep cycle batteries to keep it, a external monitor, printer, modem/router all running 24/7. Overkill but still cool. It was also my first ever foray into PC gaming- managed to run the original GTA 3D era trilogy and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 fairly well. I tried Minecraft (early alpha build iirc) and it would crash on launch. Though that may have been due to the specific one I was using being loaded with junk. I think I had IE loaded with 20 something toolbars. The whole of Windows looked like a Vinesauce Joel Destruction video.(I was 7 don't judge!) Thanks for the throwback to an awesome childhood memory of mine!

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

That's cool! Happy to hear you enjoyed :)

[@JessicaFEREM]

There's a few things that I want to bring attention to. 1) use chris titus debloater to remove all the background processed as much as possible, also use it to disable or differ updates as long as possible. (maybe even make a minimal windows with the tool too) 2) linux might be a good fit, though you might need to buy an intel wifi card if it has broadcom otherwise you'll be without internet. 3) a $30 HP stream running lubuntu or linux mint would probably smoke this laptop. also you're more likely to get a usable battery, mine is 11 years old and it gets 6 hours battery life.

[@PonkaPoule]

Still using my 2006 Thinkpad T60 everyday, those old pc's are still totally usable as typewriters and can run old source games pretty well. I swapped the motherboard for a t61 one, so i can even watch youtube videos and play some esport titles when i connect an egpu (I also played some AAA titles with it just to see my friends reactions, but it ran way too hot)

[@FrigoCoder]

Icy Box sells these spacers that allow you to plug a 7mm SSD drive into a 9.5mm bay. I have bought one for my old Dell D820 when I replaced the HDD with an SSD many many years ago. (I have actually completely forgot about it until I disassembled the laptop recently.)

[@StringerNews1]

For being XP vintage, it's a pretty advanced laptop, with a 64-bit CPU and SATA drive interface. I recently worked on a laptop with a Windows Vista sticker on it (it had been upgraded to Windows 10 some years ago), but it had a 32-bit CPU and PATA HDD. I could have upgraded the RAM to 4 GiB from 2, but the problem was the CPU being pinned at 100% all the time. Also, the backlight was fluorescent, not LED. Not even worth giving to a kid. And the battery is dead.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

and Having Microsoft's full hatred as they do not want it running windows 11 or 12 so when windows 10 looses support and linux will have to run on it due to a lack of support in the future

[@MrSamadolfo]

yup i know the feeling, its similar story with Intel Atom Laptops

[@Gooduttp229]

@@MrSamadolfoyou mean netbooks? Yeah 32 bit intel atom i have one of these

[@MrSamadolfo]

@@Gooduttp229 😊 yup i have a Dell Netbook, my buddy gifted it to me, shes slow but shes kinda cute

[@benitoabreu4785]

Dude; the damn thing's 18 years old! What did you REALLY expect??? Be glad it still posts and boots in to it's operating system. All the best!

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Lol yeah, the expectations were low but I had to give a objective opinion on it haha

[@LloydLynx]

I daily drove and maintained a D620 for many years until this year. I have a few thoughts: +The SSD just needs some sort of spacer on the top during insertion, but otherwise will fit perfectly fine with the stock caddy. +Probably the reason Windows installation went so slow is because this laptops BIOS defaults to USB 1.1 with the option to switch to 2.0 in the BIOS. +Yeah that speaker is cooked. A good D620 speaker gets surprisingly loud. And it's just a single mono speaker. +I would usually get just short of 2 hours from the 6 cell battery, my personal record being 2 hours 45 minutes. (yes I was using the laptop) There's a 9 cell option as well as a 2nd battery that slots into the expansion bay. +This laptop is perfectly compatible with Linux and will give you a great experience *IF* you know what you're doing. I highly doubt many other people on this earth could (or knew how to) enjoy using this as their primary device for as long as I did.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Thanks for sharing that, I appreciate it! That USB 1.1 thing would absolutely explain why the install would have been slow, it makes a lot of sense. I'm glad to hear you got as much milage out of your laptop as you did, 18-ish years is impressive! I'm working on a video with this laptop and Linux right now, but as you said, you really have to know what you're doing for it to work as well as it can. I'm no master when it comes to desktop Linux, so maybe you'll have some beneficial thoughts to share when that video comes out!

[@crazy-es8tr]

i was able to find a 2011 dell latitude e6410 of ebay for 20 dollars with 8 gb ddr3 ram and a i5-m520 came with an SSD runs windows 10 just fine i use it as my travel computer. its honestly one of my favorite computers to use

[@unimatrix82]

Im still rocking an old HP Elite book from 2010, its a tank. I maxed out the CPU to a quad core i7, added an SSD and 16gb ram. Its still very usable.

[@canespastico]

I use a similarly specced laptop for my daily usage, it's and Acer Travelmate 5320 from 2007 which I got for free, it has a higher tier c2duo cpu and 3gb of ddr2 (tried to go for 4gb but it crashes all the time so 3gb it is), runs Lubuntu like a champ and it manages to do everything, from YT to donwloading music to watching series. These laptops are unkillable and with the right OS they can still go.

[@Montgomerygolfgator]

I'm guessing the thermal paste is bad. My 2019 Dell gaming PC ended up needing new paste within 6 months (I'm not sure we're they got such bad paste, but debauer's thermal pads kept it speedy and cooler than the mud it came with) so I assume something this old would need to be repasted. Also, my speakers blew out like others have suggested could be the case. I'm guessing it's going to be better quality than modern systems, but thermal paste is just wear and tear.

[@davidmartin8211]

I tried this experiment with a HP laptop from 2006 with a 64-bit AMD processor and 512 meg memory. (Weighing in at 5 lbs) I opted for Linux due to low mem. Works fine except for very slow browser updates due to memory constraints. My observation, I think I'll stick with my 2020 laptop.

[@Gouzation]

You should try atlas os. Its a windows install but without all the bloatware. Got my 2013 laptop running as well as a new one

[@bodhi1271]

You could also install Chrome OS Flex which is free from Google and turn it into a Chromebook. For a kid, that's probably the best option, considering most schools use Chromebooks now and they would already be familiar with it, plus it's extremely lightweight and runs on just about anything.

[@FormulaFanboy]

Lol, big fan of old laptops here. My main laptops are a Panasonic Toughbook CF30 from 2008 which is the most bricky laptop you’ll ever see, and a Samsung N130 which is a tiny netbook I got for like 20$ I have running XP. I nicknamed them “The Brick” and “The Feather” respectively.

[@CamdenBloke]

I do remember *in* 2006, battery life on those monster laptops being pretty abysmal by modern standards. My ex had one that her IT dad picked out for her, but she hated it and preferred an Eee PC running linux for most day to day work. One problem today is that a lot of universities now have students submit their papers electronically in .docx format with the current version of MS-Word. I graduated in 2009, and one of my last classes before graduating had us do that - so I had to write that paper from a library computer because I had gone through university using a linux box and LibreOffice (and printed them out on my personal inkjet). They gave us some careful instructions for how to save the files as we worked on them to a network drive - so they could be annotated by the teacher or whatever. So sadly you can't just run an older system.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Yeah, even though I didn't set up a license and test it, Microsoft Office was definitely a partial reason that I tested with Windows because several schools/workplaces use it.

[@someonespecial1525]

THERE'S A LOT OF MISSING KNOWLEDGE IN THIS VIDEO!!!!! +The youtube playback, you have to force H264 because old devices can't play VP9 +The sound distortion might be the driver? (you helped me discover this). I have a Dell that sounds exactly the same in an updated Windows 10, but was totally fine in Windows 7... hmmmm, I'm going to see if the headphones are any better. +and 4GB?... I have an older system nearly identical, an Inspiron that tops out at 3gb... You're lucky :) Kinda wish you put the specs in the video description.

[@RetroPC]

I still use a ThinkPad T440s with 12 GB of RAM and a SSD running Windows 11. It's the perfect everyday laptop still, and I bet it will be for quite a few years to come.

[@iskandartaib]

When I saw the title of this video my first thought was "the batteries are probably dead". That's my second reason for my never having owned a laptop .. I see people around me constantly having to have them plugged in because the batteries have died after 2-3 years. But the main reason I hate laptops is I can't stand the keyboard and pointing devices. On the other hand I see a bunch of used Chromebooks on sale for about $30 on Shopee, so I might buy one just to do email when traveling. If my bags weigh too much when I am about to go home I could even just give it away. And Linux? Yeah I can see it might be fun to play with, and they make great Apache/MySQL web serving platforms, but my friends who used it would always hop onto the Windows PC in the next cubicle when they needed to print a letter.

[@arctic_angel7408]

speakers is crazy because i have an IBM thinkpad 380 that is actually so godly and the speakers are NICE

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

I was really hoping the speakers on this thing would be awesome, cuz man, it's got the room for some good ones!

[@SonicHawk90]

My son has desktop with a core2quad, 4GB Ram and 128GB SSD and runs like a charm with Linux Mint XFCE. The learning curve for basic things like word processing and web browsing is super low and he got the hang of it quite fast.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

That's great to hear!

[@Jurtaani]

Just FYI! the free update to newer Windows versions started only when Windows 10 got released and applied to Windows 7 and 8 to 10 but you could not do updates from 7 to 8 even after that. Nowadays to my understanding Windows 7 and 8 licenses no longer work for Windows 11 activation, even though they used to. So there is no way to freely update from Windows XP to newer versions same is true for Windows Vista as well.

[@DezsikeDevil1]

I got a single core AMD64 overclocked by 10% with 2 GBs of RAM. It has Windows XP and a mechanical hard drive but the big desktop one. It works like a charm, can play 720p videos without issues and most games of its age. Office 2003 works too so it can be used to write your thesis. But as soon as I open a browser it dies. Google barely opens, most others websites refuse to load at all. The best part is the browser itself takes almost a minute to open. That's the only piece of software (old versions, as Windows XP is not even capable of running the latest ones) I'm having issues with. Pull the plug and it's perfect.

[@therobb5738]

I have a D630 I consider to be an invincible workhorse, but mine runs with 6 gigs of RAM and loves it. I haven't maxed out the CPU, nor installed an SSD yet, but when I need to reluy on a machine to do something besides gaming, It does it. Mine is x64, and has no troubles with 6 gigs of ram, but with yours being a D620, is yours an x86/32-bit limited to 4 gigs? Just thought that was an odd but large difference between two nearly identical laptops. Great looking machine on the outside, but exactly identical to the back, sides, and insides to mine. There is also an extended batter you can get for this laptop to replace the standard one, and it looks like almost a keyboards palm rest when installed, since it sticks out of the front of the laptop instead of the back, like a 5500/6500's would.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

I'm pretty sure the chipset in this laptop is a limiting factor, meaning that 4GB of RAM is the max for this laptop. I might have to look into that battery when I revisit this laptop with some upgrades, as that would probably make the battery issues I had much better!

[@JoeTiger44]

Wow my mother owns a dell latitude with windows xp on it as well in the 2000s and the laptop still works but i havent got to fully test it though but its still a cool piece of technology that i got to boot it up and experience the windows xp days

[@onthedre]

It's cozy looking. My cousin had this and it's nice to use.

[@racinggameschannel]

Hmm, ATG Dell Latitude D620, legimately a rare variant, in decent shape too!

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

I had no clue that this was a relatively rare variant, that's cool! And yeah, it's in overall good shape except for the screen (still don't know what happened there)

[@racinggameschannel]

@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials the Bubbly screen is a common defect that happens with a slew of ATG variants, unfortunately, its the rugged bits that ruins the laptop, shame, becuase the ATG is a gorgous latitude model Edit: Models range from the older D620 Latitude to a far newer E6420 ATG, released in 2014, went on ebay and found almost all ATG models have a bubble in the display, how wasnt this a recall!?

[@mindinversions4487]

I used to have one of those PoS things as a work asset. Nice to see all the screens delaminate or melt or w/e the separation is....Thing was an absolute tank tho

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Built like a tank minus that screen, wish Dell had recalled and fixed them

[@CopperyVase6760]

I'm typing and watching this on my old 2006 Toshiba running Windows 7

[@misterthegeoff9767]

For people looking to spend as little as possible at least in my location (the UK) you can get a Lenovo T440 or T450 even cheaper than a t430 as the T430 has a cult following that drives the prices up due to its keyboard and upgradeability.

[@CovenantAgentLazarus]

It has a 945GM graphics chip on board. Its not just the CPU being slow on youtube.

[@mwolf7780]

Same Using 2009 acer travelmate 4330 to windows 10, still runs smooth original specs: Acer travelmate 4330 Celeron 900 2.2ghz intel GMA 4500m 1gb ddr2 RAM 667mhz 160GB HDD Modified specs: Core 2 Duo T6400 2.00Ghz 4GB RAM DDR2 800Mhz 120GBSSD + 120GB SSD on DVD caddy Still runs fine with Windows 10 with Bloated Version. Boots before 15 secs And Some times, When I connect Wifi , system starts to overload and temperature starts to spike. Just one thing you had at 5:46. "Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry". This shit starts to blow my fan at full speed and slows the system. Just click "end task" for that. So your system will not overheat ANd TRy to upgrade your system to 4GB or more, If the Northbridge Chipset supports up to 4GB RAM

[@Puppet60e]

You should try installing ChromeOS flex or Linux on it. Although in all seriousness I would recommend getting a Chromebook’s if you are really desperate for a cheap laptop and you can even get it new or refurbished for $80 or used for $30 - $80. I got a Chromebook for myself for $80 refurbished. It has an Intel Celeron N4020, 4GB of DDR4L ram, 32GB of EMMc storage, 1366 / 768 touch screen (fully rotatable). I jail broke it and installed Windows 11 and it was wonderful… Until the sensor that detects if the lid is closed broke and will randomly go to sleep endless you disable the Intel driver, it will not got to sleep if you close the lid and if the Intel driver is not enabled it will refuse to go to sleep entirely and will only turn off the screen, so that happened.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Have a video with Linux on the laptop coming soon. Also, I definitely agree on buying a used Chromebook. I've seen them go for incredibly cheap too, and they're going to be a much better experience than something like this - especially in battery life!

[@marksmith9566]

Bought a 6th gen I5 for about $100. Much happier with purchase, Had SSD installed.

[@DavidOlivarez08]

I have a old hp dv6000 running windows 11 lite it works just fine surprisingly! I also installed a version of chrome book on it too that worked great but couldn’t plug and kind of drives to it or usb so tried windows 11 and it’s what my nephew uses when his over to play around with it lol

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

That's awesome man! I'm probably going to try some light version of Win 10/11 on this soon, as a lot of people seem to really like it

[@Ophidicus]

I did this exact test with an old laptop I have, Mine was a 2008/2009 HP DV4 with Turion X2 ZM-80 CPU running at 2.2ghz and surprisingly was upgradeable to 8GB DDR2 ram and was upgradeable to a ZM-82 CPU so I maxed it out. I also put a 128gb DDR sata drive. was super slow like yours but maybe a hair faster. once the process gets below 99% it's actually decent. I even wiped it and added Windows 10 LTSC which is a stripped down version and it ran better.

[@Isabel369]

I have a similar Dell laptop in storage. The laptop itself performs well with windows XP and Windows 7 as for Linux and Windows 10 the laptop runs like crap with those operating systems. The Linux operating system isn’t that much better than windows 10. I used Ubuntu Linux for my testing. I currently have Windows XP installed on the laptop, which is the best operating system for it anyway.

[@Isabel369]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 I will try that weird antiX Linux os latest version is 2023 for it I will see

[@MrSamadolfo]

🙂 Peppermint OS is one of the lightest, it idles at around 900mb, it works fine on my Core 2 Quad but I haven't tried it on my Core 2 Duo Laptop yet.

[@Isabel369]

@@MrSamadolfo interesting I will check out that peppermint OS this will be a good experiment on that old core2duo dell that I have 👀

[@MrSamadolfo]

🙂on most older computers it seems to install just fine automatically, I use RUFUS to make the jump drive on a 16gb 2.0 flash drive, the pepperminto iso is pretty small too, PepperMint Debian is 1.5gb to download@@Isabel369

[@digi_056]

@@terrydaktyllus1320I use MyPal on my Windows XP D620. I was even able to use Discord chat through it for a while but I believe updates had been paused the last time I checked.

[@christianbergener]

Ich nutze einen Dell Vostro 1510, und weil es geschmeidig laufen soll, habe ich Chrome OS Flex darauf installiert. Läuft super!

[@pigeondriver8992]

Use raspbian, it works insanely well with thoses, ran on 700mb of ram and an 40gb hitachi travelstar. Finally made the nx 6125 usable...

[@jozsiolah1435]

Xp is very good for KZbin using a 1.86 ghz processor, the video is perfect at full screen at 480p. The xp is activated. Sound is bad, because a single core cpu is not good enough. 1 gb ram at 533 mhz. If you use a better windows, it takes 6 months to achieve its best performance. Intelligence updates are needed, you have to watch the cpu meter during install. A 50 kb install may take 15 minutes. My laptop with 1 ghz, 50% cpu, 333 mhz ram speed, energy saving mode, 720p video runs smoothly with Edge browser with open wifi, using a 2.1 ghz Athlon cpu.

[@megatronskneecap]

May I ask what is going on with the display? Did someone try and superglue it closed because it's so bad lol...

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Apparently, these displays have a design flaw where a protective layer on the front leaks all its goo out and comes off over time. Either the screen's condition is just because of this design flaw, or someone did try to glue it back on when it came off. Either way, yeah, it's really bad lol

[@mattbosley3531]

That system is capable of having 4GB of memory. Should be pretty cheap to upgrade and would speed up Windows a bit. You can also pick up a Core 2 Quad replacement processor. I have a 2006 Dell Inspiron 9400 with a Core Duo 32 bit processor and 2GB of memory with a 256GB SATA SSD and it will run Windows 10 32 bit but it's fairly sluggish, so I usually run Linux Mint Debian Edition 32 bit on it which works much better. It's good for email, web browsing, and office apps (LibreOffice).

[@edwardbelcher8612]

Older CCFL displays incorporate an inverter and that will use way more energy than a modern LED display. Also older CPU's are nowhere as energy efficient as their modern counterparts. Those issues along with most likely the CPU being at or near 100% utilization most of the time is going to eat up a used battery and a new one will most likely not fair much better. Interesting video and, I can't imagine having to run W10 in that machine on a mechanical drive lol.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Yeah, the CPU was hanging near 100% most of the time, and with its 34W TDP, most certainly contributed to the poor battery life. That, along with the inverter/CCFL backlight, is absolutely why the battery life was so bad.

[@MotorolaGuest-fb9hd]

its all about perception, and past devices

[@proletariennenaturiste]

An elementary age child should have the joy of using XP and 7 in my opinion. I had the joys of using those when growing up in the late 2000s and 2010s.

[@umbertohaterhd722]

Used an R61e for school and it really got the shit done. Couldn't even distract me due to not being able of running anything more than minesweeper..

[@adinnugroho6544]

Maybe this Laptop, could run just fine using Lite version of Windows 10. Forget the fancy features, just to make it run just smooth with less sluggish

[@samcoates7519]

A dell precision m4300 is probably a much more usable choice for the proposed use case

[@Agoz8375]

Still use old hardware here and I love it.

[@frylock428]

Tip: If you have one but don't want to buy an SSD and keep the old hard drive, install Windows 7. It's almost as fast as running 11 from Sata SSD

[@raimundodeoliveirasantiago8540]

i got an lg r410 from 2009, it´s runs win 7 and some games very well with the origial configuration, and i can do cpu upgrade and add another ram module

[@centigrams]

nice! For this old laptop I think using Windows 7 or very debloated 10 (if Linux is not an option) is the better way to go. I have a machine similar to that and youtube works pretty well still. Also an upgrade to 4GB of DDR2 would make a massive change.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Hoping to revisit the laptop with some very debloated Win 10 in the near future, and I actually did upgrade to 4GB of RAM later in the vid, definitely made a massive difference!

[@centigrams]

@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials nice! Also my bad for not noticing the ram upgrade. Lowest I got windows 10 was 1.8/16GB and a friend got it at 900MB/8GB.

[@dezhocob]

I was in a postion last year when I took a Python programming class and therefore needed a basic laptop to get the job done. Take tests, do homework, watch YT videos listen to music and of course do Python all on the go. I got for free a Dell Inspiron 1545 (I actually featured it on my channel). It has been fine for what I needed to do. I could have upgraded it from 4 GB to 8GB RAM, upgraded the processor by a couple hundred megahertz, and threw an SSD in there all on a budget but I did not have a lot of money to spare and I figured that at that point I could have just bought a better used laptop. These older laptops can definitely still get the job done even today despite the age. One just has to be patient! But my Dell still has some nice qualities, like relatively low power consumption, excellent thermals (the positive side of only having a 2-core CPU at 2.4 GHz) and the fan is usually off. It only comes on when it is time to purge some heat. That is unless I am gaming... Yes it can even game as long as it a simple game that will not crush its poor Intel GMA 4500! Luckily for me when I got it, it had gotten a new aftermarket battery so it has like 4 hours on a charge, very nice! In terms of basic tasks the most annoying part honestly was the trackpad, it is tiny and does not support muli-touch gestures like two-finger scroll! Anyways, thank you for the video and for coming to my TED Talk. P.S. although this old brick does not have fancy stuff like good battery life, trackpad, RAM, CPU, graphics, etc. at least it has serial and a dial-up modem so instantly more classy than the newest kids on the block!

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Yeah, for those kinds of applications, these older systems are still more than capable if you need something simple! Glad you enjoyed!

[@adinnugroho6544]

When Laptop from that era like Framework today. I mean modular and painless

[@CFWhitman]

You might be able to get better KZbin performance with the h264ify extension, even in Windows. Oddly, I have found that kids have an easier time adjusting to Linux than adults do (it's not really that odd because kids are more flexible), though there may still be some advantage to having Windows regarding expectations from the teacher when they are trying to use it for schoolwork. I see you did eventually up the RAM to 4GB. The battery life might improve with a new battery, if you can find a replacement. This can be an issue, though, because replacements for old battery models vary in quality quite a bit. If it worked it would probably increase the battery life to 2.5 to 3.5 hours, though that is just a guess.

[@fiskrond9212]

even on something this old/spec there's a fair chance that the browser in Puppy Linux would get a reasonable audio/vid result from KZbin..

[@marcusgurley9495]

your initial premise was to give to a school age child. i would be interested to see how well it performed from that POV. great video

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

I used it for a lot of Google Docs/Slides when I daily drove it for a week, which is a lot of what school kids would do on a laptop such as this these days. Overall, disregarding battery life and unwieldiness, it performed pretty impressively in those tasks! More than responsive enough to get by, on par and at times ahead of cheap Chromebooks but only in those two applications.

[@Mirra2003-f9s]

For it's age it's still ok-ish to use if you really don't have anything else. Back when this laptop was new,no computer that had the age of this laptop now was usable. Still,the extreme bottleneck for KZbin playback is actually the integrated Intel graphics. Those who got a dedicated gpu still do ok if the cpu is at least a dual core

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

wait wait wait it cannot even run candy crush OMG.🤣🤣🤣

[@MrSamadolfo]

🙂 correct, my Gateway Core 2 Duo Laptop came with an Invidia GPU so it makes a huge difference in video games, it runs something like a tiny GT 710 card but its something better than integrated 😊

[@Mirra2003-f9s]

@@MrSamadolfo Dedicated graphics made a huge difference even when they were new. Anything under a GMA 4500 will struggle to run KZbin

[@MrSamadolfo]

😊 yup makes sense, i haven't heard anybody talk about GMA in a very long time, keep it old school LOL @@Mirra2003-f9s

[@салфеткибумажные-р3щ]

7:15 it got that school presentation speaker sound

[@wantikjasonchiu4711]

I think you could just be thinking that it could not run faster, but did you even thought about maxing out the ram so that to make it run faster. Because you can put more RAM sticks or to replace the old ones with new.

[@nicolaskeroack7860]

that'd be nice to make a comparison with linux windows 7 and windows xp trying to run the same range of software to see how much bloat they add/how good the drivers supports are

[@starlingmelody4284]

lol 2006 was probably about the time i got my first laptop as a kid, i remember having issues with usability from it being so slow and one of the first things my dad did was put ubuntu on it, and told me that now it'd be impossible for me to break it anymore i was interested in computers but i was also like ~8 years old so i wasn't doing much more advanced than playing club penguin on it. maybe you would struggle to throw something like that at a kid these days with the way desktops have become more peripheral than smartphones. but with everything being online nowadays, in principle i should think there's hardly a difference between ubuntu and windows for most people. for productivity purposes it seems like everything just happens in the browser which is a pretty consistent experience across operating systems really though i think a lot of it is how fast kids are at learning. everything's new to them and they don't stop themselves from using a thing as easily just because they don't know how. they don't have preconceptions about how a given thing works, so there's no frame of reference for finding new stuff unintuitive which is not to say that 2024 is the year of the linux desktop and i wouldn't do something similar installing windows 10 on a machine like this. but an elementary schooler is probably actually the #1 demographic i'd have some confidence handing an old laptop with ubuntu on it, or at least something a little newer and more beefed up than this with dual boot

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

That's honestly a really good point about how fast kids can learn, and that they'd be pretty likely to adapt to Linux easily/quickly. I don't have kids, and I don't really work with them all that much (at least not elementary/real young ones), so I just didn't have that viewpoint. I appreciate you sharing yours, it adds to the discussion!

[@vogonp4287]

It may be an interesting idea to try a lightweight Linux version, just to see how it compares.

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

I've got a Linux video on the laptop now! Not the lightest-weight version of Linux, but Linux nonetheless!

[@3ofSpades]

You could try an older version of windows debloated, like Windows 10 Ameliorated 1903 or Ghost Spectre. You could also try a lighter browser like Slimjet or Waterfox. If Windows 10 acts up too much, try Windows 8 with a custom start menu.

[@josephsaucedo8691]

id say a ThinkPad would be the best bet if wanting to using a old laptop there almost as good as most new laptops sold to day and there not that expensive any more T series or w would work good. cant beat for the price.

[@Dtr146]

i remember when laptops had one stick accessible and one stick where you had to take the whole top plate off because why does a keyboard need to be modular right?

[@CompHwTipsAndTutorials]

Sure do wish that more keyboards these days were modular!

[@madalinbetea9871]

In general laptop from 2008 don't have IGP with DXVA suport for hd video playback . And youtube videos rest on CPU only video decode.

[@joshsepticpie6253]

I have one like the same except the lid top is different (but it has windows XP as well). I tried putting chrome on it and it worked but it kept saying it wouldn’t work because my clock is off and it wouldn’t let me update date and time.

[@chevycaprice87]

Just watched this video in 720p from my Dell Latitude D630, it runs Windows XP with 3 Gb of ram from HDD

[@user-r4v9fyq6u7]

I've had a Lenovo IdeaPad 2 (around 2009) I got it from a store back in 2010 which runs Windows 7 already, I've had that laptop until 2016 because the hard drive failed because I was really poor to buy a hard drive, after 1 year I was able to buy an ASUS X441U, after 6 years, the hard drive failed, I am getting a laptop soon. Which is a Lenovo ThinkPad X240.