30.04.2024

I just bought on a zeus epc off of ebay. for ten dollars plus postage. was it worth the money and is this thing. still usable in 2021. well let's find out. at the very least it was shipped in a. box there have been quite a few laptops. i've bought where they've literally just. wrapped it in a bag and sent it to me. opening it up we can see they put the. laptop in a protective pouch that you'd. probably find in a space shuttle. and inside that it's good to see that it. did include the original charger. and inside a bag from baker's delight of. all places we've got the 10. epc netbook back when this was released. in 2010 it was priced for including a. discreet nvidia ion gpu. but this was sadly paired with a pretty. weak intel atom n450 single core. processor it looks as if this particular. epc was used quite extensively.

There's quite a lot of gang around the. edges and keys i can't wait to open it. up. reviews also noted that it struggled. just running the included windows 7 some. of the time. and i'll try my best to clean it up but. there's also a lot of cosmetic wear that. cleaning won't change though. turning it on it loads right into. windows 7. the previous owner didn't. wipe off their old files here. which included seasons of the simpsons. black adder red dwarf black books and 8. gigabytes worth of music. before we take things further here's a. short word from today's sponsor. today's video was made possible thanks. to the feiyu 2 pocket gimbal. if you want a super small really. wellbuilt pocket-sized camera and. gimbal. feiyutech has you covered featuring an. ultra wide 130 degree lens and the. ability to shoot up to 4k. at 60 frames per second it's a really.

Useful device for filming on the go. the 3axis brushless gimbal ensures that. your shots are smooth and stable. it's easy to use and you can even. control it from your smartphone. check out the links in the description. if you want it at a cheaper price. and thanks to feiyutech for sending this. over now i think it's time we should. give it a clean with a healthy dose of. eucalyptus oil. as i always say be sure to clean off any. secondhand electronics you buy as. there's no way of knowing who. or what's been touching them to keep. this as original as possible i made an. effort to clean around the stickers on. the palm rest but because these are on. the palm rest there is a lot of gunk. built up from the owner's hands. yeah kind of gross right honestly i. don't think the screen has ever been. cleaned either. it probably wasn't worth them going to.

The effort considering they put the buy. now price at this laptop at only ten. dollars in the first place. the battery in here doesn't actually. work i could have got a replacement that. that means spending nearly five times. what i paid for the laptop itself. and considering how useful this device. will likely be even after a restoration. i don't think it makes financial sense. to do that. and underneath the ram cover we can see. the two gigabytes of ddr2. megahertz ram and there's only one slot. yeah this is actually the maximum amount. of ram that this processor can handle. so no i can't add more ram even if i had. a second slot. to get access to the internals the. keyboard must be removed and it's held. in place by four plastic clips. and be sure to release the tabs on this. connector as you don't want to damage.

This. then there are about 10 screws holding. the rest of the top casing on. and to take things apart further we'll. have to void the warranty which is. definitely still valid. and i can simply run a plastic spudger. around the edges to release the clips. and now we finally get a good look at. all the internal components. the first thing that really caught my. eye was the buildup of excess skin near. the edge. yeah once again that's pretty gross and. to begin removing the motherboard i must. unplug the original 320 gigabyte wd blue. hard drive. the single fan looks like it's. accumulated its fair share of dust. and with it out of the way the board can. be carefully lifted out of the casing. and surprisingly the cooling fins aren't. actually all that clogged with dust. which is. kind of disappointing it's been a while.

Since i've seen a literal carpet. clogging the air exhaust. either way i cleaned out the casing. which wasn't too dusty inside. the fan is where most of the dusty. action is and with a quick brushing the. blades are looking as good as new. holding the heat pipe in place are four. small phillips head screws. this single pipe provides cooling to. both the cpu and the discrete nvidia. graphics processor. the old thermal paste had unsurprisingly. hardened over the last 11 years. and to get the surface as clean as. possible i used some 100. isopropyl alcohol it's a pretty simple. board and i always like seeing how the. different manufacturers lay them out. now the new thermal paste can be applied. and to potentially make the system run a. bit faster i took the brackets off the. original drive and put in an inexpensive.

Solidstate drive. even though you've got to go through. quite a few steps just to remove the. hard drive. it's pretty easy to take apart i went. ahead and installed windows 7 as a test. and it did indeed work but i wanted to. run something a little more modern and a. bit more secure. so i installed a flavour of linux so now. that it's clean let's try using this. cheap 10. laptop from ebay. linux gives you access to a heap of free. games and applications. the first one i'm running is super tux. cart a mario kart clone yes. but it is a lot of fun and works very. well on this laptop. there are even some first person arena. shooters in the app repository. the graphics look pretty good and it. runs very smoothly even on this weak. hardware. while i simply couldn't get any version. of minecraft to work there is a. minecraft clone on linux called minetest.

I couldn't seem to get it to run very. well but hey why not join my minecraft. server that's on screen now. if you wanted to use a laptop like this. for typing up documents it's actually. got. a very usable keyboard even though the. laptop itself is quite small. although the raised bumps on the. trackpad surface are somewhat. offputting. i'd recommend using an external mouse. while basic web browsing is totally. doable. if not a little slow youtube playback at. 720p or higher is. basically just a slideshow there are. definitely better versions of linux for. an atompowered netbook. but it ran alright all things considered. in azusa's words this netbook enables. you to go. anywhere in style as long as you bring. the charger. or pay for a new battery so there we. have it an old epc. computer this came from a time when. there was high demand and least interest.