So the last couple of days I resurrected a very old laptop and I mean very old to the some of twenty plus years. It has videos my ex. husband made when we first start going out. I wanted to use it for other things, I’ll come on to that in a bit. But there was some stuff on there I would like to keep. Trying to connect it to a modern network share wasn’t happening. Trying to back up to a 128GB USB stick wasn’t happening. Eventually managed to get it to talk to an old 300GB external drive. But rather than just do a backup, instead I ‘virtualised’ it. Using VMWare converter I turned it into a bunch of files. I then transferred this to the USB stick and used VMWare tools to create a virtual machine. Works perfect, boots up into Windows XP in a window and you can use it just like the old laptop.

Now the old laptop I wanted to reuse as a Ubuntu desktop machine just for playing about. This laptop only has a 32 bit processor so had to go back quite a few versions to find one which would install. Eventually after a couple of days of pissing about and various updates I’ve got it up to 18.04. Sadly it isn’t really useable, the machine only has 512MB of ram and a very slow ‘M’ series processor. I looked and I could buy a 1GB memory upgrade and a new battery for around £60. But sadly looking around I could get a second hand laptop with much higher specs. for the same money. So I’m going to reinstall Windows XP Home on it and see how it runs, but have a feeling, with its dead CMOS battery, dead main battery, slow processor and lack of RAM it will be making its final journey to the recycling box. Shame I had many fond memories of that machine.

Still, I have found another unused laptop which has a 64 bit processor and 2GB of RAM, I think this maybe my next Ubuntu desktop target.