I've had really good experiences going right to the source. I've bought
monitors and in most cases it would be hard to tell from brand new. Even on
> Soundly seconded. Speaking as a fmr. IT professional, I have two machines;
> One high-end Lenovo W520 ThinkPad running Win 7 Pro that stays home in the
> shack and another older IBM R51 ThinkPad running XP that gets batted about
> mobile. The R51 used to be my shack computer and its reliability and
> performance was responsible for my purchasing the newer ThinkPad. Honestly,
> there is very little, ham radio-wise, one can do on the newer and faster
> duo/quad core units that cannot be done on a 1.6GHz or 1.7GHz Centrino
> processor running Win XP SP3 and 2GB of DDR1 RAM. On the ThinkPad forums, it
> is often said that $400 or less will buy you a much higher quality older
> refurbished (or even sometimes a new old stock or NOS) ThinkPad rather than
> the shiny newer faster units of dubious quality. In any event, best of luck
> with whatever you choose. To all, take care es...
>
> Vy 73 de Bert
> WA2SI
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Ragle [mailto:
[hidden email]]
> Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 10:02 PM
> To: Don Wilhelm; elecraft
> Subject: [Elecraft] Re" ham shack computers...
>
> I think your recommendation of XP (Pro) on a refurbished machine with half a
> gig of core and a modest hard drive is right on target. The idea that XP is
> "dead" is no more true than the idea that the PC is also "dead."
>
> John Ragle -- W1ZI
>
Locked
