HardlyNormal comes through

Late last year, someone told me that they wanted a “normal” PC, so I grabbed a good cheapie Acer from HardlyNormal West Perth. It turns out that the asker had lied, again, which left me with a spare PC which had no particular purpose.

It’s sat around for the intervening half-year or so, not doing much (some children have played games on it, it’s been idly used for browsing) but it ran Ubuntu fairly well after I’d brain-washed it into being useful (adios, XP Home).

To my surprise, HardlyNormal rang me last week, chasing the lying asker, but actually seeking the PC sitting across the room from me. Apparently, the ads had mentioned a different spec to what shipped, so they were giving out free replacements — with 8x the RAM, 8x the hard disk, 2x the CPUs (& those running 3.6x faster) — tough decision: not!

So yesterday, I dragged el anciento Acero PCo in to West Perth & swapped it for an hp Pavilion a6430a — which runs a newer version of Ubuntu much faster than the old (adios, Vista Home), plus has enough storage to be worth using as a server.

I’ve also dropped a card with instructions to tell me about any spares, which will become a games machine(s) for two excitable young lads who are currently in conflict over their sole laptop, which leads them to commandeer Mum’s laptop at opportune times.

If anyone in Perth knows where I can get cheap flat-screens (under $100 a throw, any size), please drop me a line so I can take advantage of those as well.

Comments

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Plantagenet Penguinista

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