an This USB Stick Resurrect Your Old PC? #Helpful Post

an This USB Stick Resurrect Your Old PC? #Helpful Post

et's play a little make-believe game

shall we let's say that I'm your

grandmother and here I am on my computer

that you put together for me oh I don't

know 10 12 years ago and the hardware

was pretty good then but these days it's

run in a tick slow so you know I'm just

doing grandmotherly things like firing

up the Internet's to browse the web

oof catching up on my tech tech news

maybe I open up a couple of tabs gotta

get that news from all the sources oh

boy he's still loading is this tab still

loading maybe I'll watch a video in the

meantime with the VLC look at that

right-click delay didn't add a thing of

beauty fairness and while I'm waiting

for that maybe I'll enjoy a nice little

game of pinball in 3d okay I think you

see where we're going with this it's

time for grant to finally give in to

your incessant nagging and upgrade the

old machine but then just as she's about

to do it

she's browsing the Facebook and she

finds an ad for oh thank you

the extra PC which claims to breathe new

life into old computers for anywhere

from 49.99 to $79.99 but could it be the

magic bullet that it claims to be or is

it just another predatory product

designed to take money from the elderly

and tech illiterate there's only one way

for us to find out Oh

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all right so my understanding is there's

a few different Oh Anthony's in the

video alright my understanding is

there's a few different versions of the

extra PC so I'm holding the extra PC pro

64 gigabyte and this is the one we spent

80 US dollars on right and then you've

got I've got the turbo 32 which is much

smaller and I spent I think $49.99 on it

okay not too bad now something that's

immediately noticeable about these

things is that these are just I mean

this one they didn't even cover up the

branding this is just a SanDisk

Cruiser blade Cruiser blade 32 gigs so

that's a USB 2 and this would cost you

somewhere in the neighborhood and I

can't be more than like 10 bags yeah

roughly and then this I mean they did

they put a sticker on this one at least

I'm just gonna okay oh there we go

and this one's a cruiser glide 3.0 64

gigs so that's USB 3 but for our

particular old computer we're not gonna

get any any benefit out of that anyway

yeah we only have 2.0 okay but I mean

they're probably I mean I'm sure they

sort of tell people that no really nope

they just say that it gives you speed

large storage capacity and file res what

is file res software I'm guessing it's

some kind of recovery software also

check out these was prices anywhere from

fifty to a hundred and sixty dollars you

know this thing better be amazing

alright

so should we just should we just crack

it open let's fire this thing up sure

let's do it uh-oh oh yeah you know what

and you're done bud okay so do you want

to do the turbo one anyway just cuz then

we get we can see what that file red

soccer is all about I think it's

identical otherwise okay cool

well what what is this like a Core 2

quad or something uh no it's a pentium d

well let's let's see if it can make this

feel snappy then maybe there's something

to it all right extra PC they've got

their own boot logo they did an FS check

on the actual hard drive please choose a

password for your administrator account

Wow I'm gonna go with password I need

something I can remember in order to

begin using all the great features we

need to set up a few additional

applications these applications require

that you are connected to the internet

something can be downloaded and

installed and it looks like oh I assumed

that that was Network but it oh it is

wired connection one it looks like it

picked up both our wired and Wi-Fi NICs

yep

ok both real dick alright let's go ahead

and do this to accept the EULA for VLC

media player rhythm Vox media player

move on to restricted add-ons

it'll be flash ok this is all stuff that

I would probably install yep ok ok so

everything gets installed to the extra

PC USB stick and it does not use your

hard drive fascinating well based on how

long it's taking to install fonts we

might be asking for a lot so you would

probably recognize this what is this

based on probably

Lubuntu which is a lightweight distro of

Ubuntu based on that giving linus linux

is already looking like a bad idea yes

we'll talk more about that a little bit

later thank you David ok we're tired of

waiting for the TrueType fonts to

install yeah we want to cancel we're

done ok it looks like it's not gonna

prompt us to do that again so why don't

we poke around in here

it's totally grande oriented so we've

got Thunderbird email client is that

even still up

it it is it got discontinued not picked

up again it's got a dedicated link to

Facebook which presumably will open in

Firefox web-browser here and that is an

old Firefox logo yeah so there is not a

whole heck of a lot to this is there no

there's lebra --this there's Firefox and

for Grandma

anyway there is no obvious way to add

more applications not really usually in

a user friendly operating system like

Ubuntu or Manjaro or what-have-you

there'll be like an add or remove

software yeah but in this case I mean I

know what it is but now let's try file

res ready to find and save your files

with one click I'm gonna try this with

one click approach go I hear the hard

drive ticking yeah it's you can see that

it's it's mounted the drive and Program

Files oh it's just finding everything

now did it actually grab the pictures

that you put on specifically to test it

um look sleep it's all Program Files

here we go here it is oh ok what we

don't know is how it handles if you have

more data than will fit on a USB stick

hmm but that's a little bit beyond the

scope of this investigation I think so I

guess the point we're getting at here is

that if gran is God has got the

wherewithal to learn Linux which you

know what if all she's ever gonna look

at is Facebook and email and Kindle and

Pinterest maybe isn't even that hard

mm-hmm no probably not but if you're

gonna put the effort in to learn how to

use Linux maybe you should put the

effort into learning how to create your

own bootable Linux USB which Anthony has

created for us complete with high end

graphics how long did it take you to

create this thing Anthony about an hour

about an hour okay okay so what am I

looking at here

this is Manjaro Linux it's a relatively

lightweight modern Linux distribution

based on Arch Linux got it

that's our hard drive hmm so getting

into our documents and settings and any

pictures we left behind is basically as

simple as just navigating for them yep

did you pre configure it with Firefox or

does that just come it comes with

Firefox out of the box great well let's

have a look at our YouTube experience

then since that was the last thing we

looked at on extra PC again Firefox is

not going to be hardware accelerated so

a couple drop frames here and there and

yeah

oh wait wait yes oh yeah yeah it's a hot

mess

what else did we try do we just want

like some general responsiveness fire up

some OpenOffice you know yeah we fire up

some OpenOffice I mean it's still it's

all gonna be USB - so it's gonna be

comparable as far as load times go but

sure so let's create a writer document

where do you put what you want to call

it here okay sure beautiful did you have

to install any drivers or anything or no

the auto detection is pretty good okay

cool

oh look at this it's got chromium and

everything is this all pre-installed

stuff I didn't i pre-installed chromium

you did yeah okay everything else is

pre-installed including steam heating

steam yeah how about that

normally steam is only available in

Ubuntu in terms of overall

responsiveness no maybe it isn't

actually much worse let's just open up

our news

no it's probably about a slow yeah you

can only ask so much of a pentium d okay

why don't we try and why don't we try

and do one more thing let's play some

grand friendly games on Steam okay that

framerate though yeah

well it's running at full HD but it's

running I realized now that I've never

actually played peggle what yeah Oh Ted

rocks its pachinko oh yeah extreme fever

you're dead okay all right Anthony let's

go head-to-head how do we head-to-head

with one mouse take turns oh okay all

right

what oh that was the tutorial level no

forget it and we're done extra PC your

closing thoughts it's not as bad as I

thought it would be that file a record

whatever it was called programs far res

yeah actually worked pretty well I

wasn't expecting it to but it did it

pulled off all the files that would be

considered important to most people

aside from the fact that it's really old

and the it wouldn't install the fonts

which would have given grant a little

bit of trouble yeah I mean it's it's

just straight Xubuntu with some extra

fluff on it and it's not too bad but for

the price now I'm actually going to take

up a contrary position here because I

think the price is really reasonable the

extra time it would take them to faff

about creating a bootable Linux USB 42

$80 is perfectly reasonable the one

thing I do take issue with here is that

it's advertised as a resurrector of old

machines when as we've clearly

demonstrated it's not a magic bullet you

don't go from not being able to play

youtube videos and open documents to

suddenly being able to do that you are

still very much limited by the hardware

that you have

and there is going to be a learning

curve for grande and that's something

that I feel like they could be a lot

more transparent about in their

advertising so my issue here is not with

the product but rather just with the

claims the product itself I actually

don't mind it yeah I thought I would

hate it I was I was expecting this video

to just be crapping all over extra PC

but you can I think probably see the

tone shift as we make our way through it

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