Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

Did you know that FreeBSD 14.2 runs very well on a Dell Inspiron 518 desktop PC?

Did you know that a Dell Inspiron 518 can put in 40 hours of power-on time a week for 17 years and counting?

Even running massive applications like LibreOffice and Firefox? (Firefox with NoScript and uBlock Origin, of course.)

It's bad enough that Windows 11 absolutely requires an Internet connection just to turn it on for the first time.

But now I've confirmed on two different brands (Lenovo and HP) that Windows 11 *CAN'T* connect to an ordinary Linksys router's WPA2-PSK wifi via the WPS button, even though it encourages the setup user to do precisely that. It tries, errors, and reverts to needing the key/passphrase.

The Commodore Plus/4, but it didn't reinvent peripheral interfaces, and its integrated software ROM was a dealer-swappable or user-swappable ROM instead.

Merry Beltane!

Zik-Zak
Know Future

"Ariel, don't you mean first-party retail websites?"

What, you mean HP? They have a parts store, yes, but they either discontinue or run out of the parts most likely to break, even before the laptop models those parts are used in are themselves discontinued.

Sorry about your screen breaking. Yes, we know you downloaded & read our service manual, but we're all out of replacement screens. Would you like to buy a replacement SSD instead? How about a replacement power cord for your power adapter?