I gave away my last PC (i.e. non-Apple) in 2005. I recently recovered this beige-box PC from the garbage. It has a Pentum 4 2.8 GHz CPU, integrated video, 256 MB RAM (upgraded to 768 MB with a 512 MB DIMM left over from a G4 Mac Mini upgrade) and a POS Western Digital 80 GB HDD. It came pre-installed with Windows 98 and booted on the first try.

The Pentium 4 has always ranked at the bottom of my list of favored CPUs (doesn’t everyone have this list?). The high clock speeds, terrible power consumption and poor performance of the Pentium 4 should have kept these spacer heaters out of my office, but the price was right on this one.

So, what does one do with such a system? Good question. I have no use for a Windows system (let alone Windows 98), so I installed Ubuntu 8.0. Ubuntu is a popular distibution of Linux, and runs well on this hardware. Now, what will I do with an Ubuntu system? It will probably live in the shop and be used for heat in the winter and web browsing the rest of the year.