Doing the hermit-crab shuffle

[brin_bellway]

(If you, like Mom, have no idea what I'm referring to when I use that metaphor, you can read about the hermit-crab shuffle here.)

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I'm getting a new laptop!

What's happening to my current laptop, you ask? Why, it's becoming Mom's laptop!

What's happening to Mom's current laptop, you ask? Why, it's becoming the TV's prosthetic brain!

What's happening to the TV's current prosthetic brain, you ask? Why, it's becoming Dad's ad-mining rig!

What's happening to Dad's current ad-mining rig, you ask? Well, *that* one is going in the bag of stuff to be taken to the electronics recycling depot, as it is only very marginally functional. (It's slow enough and Windows-XP enough that nobody would want to use it as an emergency spare, and if we need a system like that for pretty much anything else, we could emulate one.)

Comments

[brin_bellway]

My current laptop has 8 GB of RAM and a 500 GB HDD (both starting to get noticeably tight, for an archiving hobbyist), and the trackpad's left mouse button is starting to get flicky. But the specs are plenty for Mom's needs, and she uses external mice almost exclusively.

Mom's current laptop runs virus-bait Windows 7 and has 3 GB of RAM, which is not enough to ad-mine *and* do much else at the same time. But with a Linux partition added (we'll probably keep the Windows 7 around just in case; it *did* come in handy for running the proctoring software), it should work fine as a dedicated video-watching machine.

The TV's current prosthetic brain runs Youtube only with ads and no Netflix at all, because both adblockers and Netflix have ceased support for 32-bit devices. But it might still run an ad-mining video or two (and Dad has nothing to lose by trying it, since his current ad-mining rig is pretty much unusable), and if not we'll keep it around in case we come up with another use for it.

Soon (estimated delivery time 9 - 19 days, plus setup time), we will all have bigger shells to call home.