My second laptop ever, and the oldest one I still have that always belonged to me! I got this laptop around September of 2007, can’t remember exactly when but I know I had it by December. It was always rather slow, and as is often the case with this model, it suffered a seized hinge problem somewhere in 2009. I fixed that, but in March of 2010, the GPU died! It wasn’t until mid-2013 before I decided to get a shop to repair it (BGA soldering job). It’s had many case parts swapped over the years, and in fact pretty much every other part than the motherboard (ironically enough) has been swapped. But thanks to that, it still works 10 years later!
Specs:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200
- RAM: 3GB DDR2
- HDD: Samsung 850 PRO 128GB SSD
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce Go 7600
- OS: Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016
Installation of older Windows 10
A friend of mine told me that he’s tried older builds of Windows 10 (2015-2016) on older systems like this one, with much better results in terms of responsiveness.
Following this, in late 2023, I decided to do some experimentation with different Windows versions on this laptop. I installed many versions from 1507 to 1709, and I found that 1607 is the best version to run on this system!
Not only do older versions run a lot better – even in just desktop usage – but a big issue is also that the Windows 10 1709 “Creators Update” actually breaks OpenGL support for older GPU drivers! Even the oldest version of Minecraft from 2009 can’t even run at all with it. That’s just nonsense! That version will run at ease on a way older system than this, I’ve done it on a 2002 Dell Dimension 8200, for goodness’ sakes!
That said, my system now very happily runs Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016, which gets security updates until 2026!
