Mint P3 System? WTF?

[JD]

Well a friend's co-worker just brought this to me. When it took it out of the box, I figured it would be some dirty Celeron/P4 based upon the ever so attractive case...

To my surprise though, I fired it up (before looking inside) and it smelt like a new PSU (or was it on fire?). Figured at that point to open it up and I was rather amazed. Never have I ever see such a clean P3 600MHz. Seemingly brand new IMO.


There's no way this guy kept it clean like this. He knows nothing about computers and I doubt his house is totally spotless. I'm guessing he never really used it and judging by how out of date McAfee is, MSN is, and just everything it hasn't been used in ages.

I had a good laugh at this too:

Might as well say it's pirated I'll truly be surprised if it's not though. But whoever made it doesn't know how to spell professional.

[Arinoth]

Yep that definitely is pirated lol, and that looks like a beautifully internally kept PC as well

[JD]

And it has a blazing fast S3 Savage 4 video card along with 384MB of RAM!

Though it's actually a lot quicker than this P4 516 Gateway he brought me too, but it's full of junk. It also sounds like an airplane taking off, unlike the P3.

[miggs78]

Originally Posted by Arinoth

Yep that definitely is pirated lol, and that looks like a beautifully internally kept PC as well

If you're talking about Windows being Pirated.. That's a boot screen, you can get dozens of programs to change the boot screen to a different one..

[JD]

Originally Posted by miggs78

If you're talking about Windows being Pirated.. That's a boot screen, you can get dozens of programs to change the boot screen to a different one..

I know, but this user didn't do it himself that's for sure. Also some odd fullscreen images before the logon screen too.

However the place that built it taped their business card onto the case, so if it is pirated I could report them to MS

[silent1mezzo]

That is the cleanest insides I've ever seen (on a computer that wasn't just built.

[Sexercise]

I'd keep the case, but that's about it.

[sswilson]

Damn, that's clean..... are you sure that your friend (or somebody else in the household) isn't one of those clean freaks who'd be mortified if a tech got to see it in it's natural state??? ;)

Due to the lack of even a small bit of dust on the bottom of the case, I suspect somebody cleaned that out before you got it.

[JD]

Originally Posted by sswilson

Damn, that's clean..... are you sure that your friend (or somebody else in the household) isn't one of those clean freaks who'd be mortified if a tech got to see it in it's natural state??? ;)

Due to the lack of even a small bit of dust on the bottom of the case, I suspect somebody cleaned that out before you got it.

I don't know the guy's family or anything. Friend of a friend.

I still don't think this thing has ever been ran much since it was built. PSU still has that new smell and XP is totally out of date. The newest files I found on it were from like Jan 2008, with most being 2006-2007. XP has SP2 though. And he told me that this PC was just sitting around (in it's box too, so even less chance of dust) since he was using his son's PC instead, which is faster (P4 516).

I'll try and ask him about it when I hear from him again (since I'm just curious). He was supposed to phone Saturday to come back and tell me what files he needs transferred off this other PC. However English isn't his first language, Farsi is, so it's hard to understand him at times. It's possible he knows computers in his own language though I guess since he doesn't seem totally dumbfounded when I explain things.

At the same time though, I really don't see the point in fixing this up to make it usable. Only 3 DIMMs, so if 256MB sticks don't work, then it's SOL for adding more RAM. And it definitely needs a newer video card, since he's getting a LCD (which seems like everything is widescreen these days).

[badatcards]

I think someone had to have cleaned it or they hardly used it and turned it on when they used it and then shut it off when they were done.Or the fans are not working.Do they live in a highrise condo where the dust cant come in the windows?