Found an LAPTOP in the DUMPSTER!

3Bit said:

you can buy any needed charger for just about any brand in the aftermarket. Most laptops anyway are needing 19VDC input

You also have to know the power requirements. You have to find a charger that is at least puts out as much power as the original adapter. Even then laptops have a large number of different connectors. You need to have the right one.

For example here are the specs for four adapters I have:



There are universal chargers that put out 19 or 20 volts and come with adapters for a number of laptops. I would only pick one of these if the exact replacement wasn't available.

RingTailCoon said:

What a lucky find! Was searching for some boxes for my big move to another town, one was a bit heavy. Found inside a laptop.

Packard-Bell EasyNote, Windows Vista 32 bit, Athlon 64X inside, 1,75 GHZ, 2 GB internal mem, 120 GB HDD....
What to do, keep Vista on it (has code on the back, sticker on the bottom of lappie) orrrrrrr............ Linux?
Filled to the brim with crapware like Google Toolbar/desktop, Norton 2007, ect ect ect....... Really OLD stuff from the dark VISTA ages.

But what now? :)

I came across a few older laptops over the years.
If it has SATA HDD you can replace that with a SSD. The performance increase is quite astonishing. also check of how much the max RAM you can upgrade to.

A remarkable personal experience encountered:
Years ago when my father passed, one of the things left behind was an in mint condition Acer 5742 (x64) with Windows 7 x32 home edition factory installed. it had a SATA HDD ~320GB and 2 GB RAM.
Checking the Acer support website, drivers up to and including Windows 8 x64 were available.

Enter deception and lies: Acer also stated that Windows 10 is not compatible with this model and subsequently no drivers or made available.
As the industry tries always to sell you something and if planned obsolescence doesn't work, it simply lies to you "to get at your wallet".
So I made an experiment:
I installed a 2 TB SSD, upgraded the RAM to the possible maximum of 8 GB and made an attempt to install Windows 10 22H2 x64, the latest version.

SURPRISE SURPRISE! It booted up!
So much for the Acer officially declared statement of "incompatibility".

Since Windows 10 is a minor version upgrade to Windows 8, I experimented to see if it would accept the dedicated "Windows 8" x64 drivers I needed for video, touchpad, audio chipset etc.


MORE SURPRISE SURPRISE!
All "dedicated Windows 8 x64 only drivers" installed and worked perfectly!
The Acer 5742 runs the latest edition of Windows with a 2 TB SSD and 8 GB RAM swift and fast as just about any equal contemporary system!
The performance difference respectively increase running of an SSD is very impressive.
Office 2019 apps start within a couple of seconds and even Photoshop start up in a few seconds.

In summary:
I have an "old" declared "obsolete" and "incompatible" Acer 5742 laptop running the latest edition of Windows 10 22H2 just perfectly and performing beyond my expectations!

Lesson learned:
For any future equipment I'll purchase I will start a "reverse" research first looking at their support philosophy, services and driver availability/compatibility and make some tests as possible.
Certain is, this was the last Acer for me. I do not want to purchase any products from a company that lies to me!

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MisterEd said:

You also have to know the power requirements. You have to find a charger that is at least puts out as much power as the original adapter. Even then laptops have a large number of different connectors. You need to have the right one.

There are universal chargers that put out 19 or 20 volts and come with adapters for a number of laptops. I would only pick one of these if the exact replacement wasn't available.

I found any charger I ever needed with the fitting connector either on Amazon or on AliExpress

just bought a samsung rv510 lappy from a guy on the street for , in you currency, $5
don't know if its working or what's inside lol ,but once i find a charger for it , guess i'll see ...
looks spotless though , hope i can upgrade the thing a bit

I’ve been using a circa 2010 Asus K53 with AMD processor for years. When Win 10 came out I added some RAM and a 256 GB SATA SSD and frankly it runs Win10 pretty well. It has a cheap plastic case and recently one of the hinge mounts broke so I bought a new Pavilion Core i7. I decided to install Linux EndeavorOS on the old ASuS and it installed fine but was terribly slow. Next I installed Win11 using Rufus and it installed fine but was slower than my old Win10 install so now I’m gonna go back to Win10.

3nd said:

just bought a samsung rv510 lappy from a guy on the street for , in you currency, $5
don't know if its working or what's inside lol ,but once i find a charger for it , guess i'll see ...
looks spotless though , hope i can upgrade the thing a bit

Not sure whether they'll let you take it with you to your cell .....

Aside from that I cannot think of any use for a laptop that's over fifteen years old.

my desktop is probably 20yrs old , and yet here i am ...

I bought my oldest laptop in 2004 which makes it 18 years old. It ran fine with Windows XP and then Windows 7 until it failed about 6 months ago. What failed was the video which became scrambled. When it worked it worked fine with the Edge browser on the Internet.

I built a desktop in 2002 but had to replace the motherboard with a used one from 2003. It can run Windows 7 but it runs Windows XP better. The ironic thing is with Windows XP is you wouldn't have to worry about getting a CAPTCHA because 99% of websites wouldn't load anyways.