Business Class Laptops

These laptops are built for Serious Business. They're the ThinkPad, the HP EliteBook, the Dell Precision/Latitude. It's the IT equivalent of the AK-47, or the Toyota Pickup Truck Technical; cheap, durable, easy-to-maintain.

Qualities of a Business Class Laptop

• Durability - Unlike typical consumer trash, these laptops are built-to-last. They can take any kind of abuse; coffee spills, drops, age, you name it.
• Serviceability - Technicians demand laptops that are easy to open up and repair. Each manufacturer offers complete service manuals and parts specifications on their website.
• Low Resale Prices - Thanks to the wasteful floods of corporate upgrades, used models are dirt-cheap on eBay.
• Amazing, Full Sized Keyboards - The average white collar office worker has to tap at their keyboards all day, every day; thus, they demanded only the most comfortable, full-featured keyboards.
• Trackpoint - Almost all Business-Class laptops came with a TrackPoint mouse, tucked in between the G & H keys on the keyboard. The TrackPoint saves the typist from constantly jumping to the touchpad, and holds a loyal fanbase as a result.
• High Resolution IPS Screens - The very cream of the crop of Business Class Laptops came with beautiful IPS/AFFS displays akin to modern smartphones, and held resolutions that rivaled Apple's Retina display. Although only a few lucky laptops managed to come with such screens (the rest came with the typical TN panel junk), high-res, high-quality screens are what make Business-class laptops great.
• Processing Power (for the era) - To increase their longevity, each business-class laptop came with the most powerful specs of the era, allowing even old models to remain usable to this day. For best results, replace that tired old Windows installation with fresh new Linux.

Makes

• ThinkPad
• HP EliteBook
• Dell Precision
  • Dell Latitude - A mid range series of laptops that are far lighter than the Precision, and comparable to the ThinkPad.
• Fujitsu Lifebook
• Panasonic Toughbook

PC Operating System Refurbishment

Here are three operating systems that are designed to run on older machines.

• Windows 7 - The Windows OS with the largest range of compatibility. Make sure you have at minimum 1GB of RAM.
• Linux with LXDE - LXDE is the lightest traditional desktop UI, great for old computers. Linux also works out of the box for most old computers.
• Windows XP FLP - A secret version of Windows XP that is fully compatible, significantly improved, and designed to run on Windows 95/98/2000 computers.
• Windows 98SE - The last stable MS-DOS based Windows OS. You will need this for maximum compatibility with good ol' DOS games or Win9x games.

Vintage PC

IDE to Compact flash

By far the easiest and most effective way of replacing and speeding up the hard drive is a CF to IDE adapter. These cost just $5 on eBay.

In fact, you can do some further future proofing by using a CF to SDCard adapter. Just buy one from here (the iPod ones are set up for full IDE compatibility, unlike most crappy adapters).

http://www.tarkan.info/store

PCMCIA Boot

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/CompactFlash_boot_drive

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_on_ThinkPads_without_CD-ROM_drive#Booting_from_a_PCMCIA_device

LiveUSB Windows

Note: If your BIOS doesn't have support for USB boot, you can just make a CD or floppy with PLOP Boot Manager, and use that to boot from USB.

Here are some LiveUSB Windows OS systems. These systems aren't just installers: they are full operating systems that boot right off of USB Drives.

They are basically the modern equivalent of floppy disks.

• MS-DOS
  • Logic Supply - Booting DOS from a USB drive
• FreeDOS - A free, mostly compatible alternative to MS-DOS. Should work fine for most DOS apps.
  • TuxTweaks - Create a bootable FreeDOS USB Drive with UNetBootin
• Windows 98SE
  • YouTube - Install Windows 98 SE on USB
  • Use the HP Disk Format Utility to create a DOS boot disk with these files: win98boot.zip
  • Alternatively, you can use UNetBootin with FreeDOS, it works basically the same way. Note that USB Drive files will show up under the A: drive.
• MyDigitalLife - Legal Windows 95/98 Downloads

Virtualbox

• VirtualBox - Win95/98
  • Third-party USB support Drivers

List

• 286 - Used in the first IBM PC computers, and their clones.
  • MS-DOS
• 386 - A processor that defined the IBM PS/2 and many other ISA PC Clones.
  • MS-DOS 6.1
  • Windows 3.1
  • IBM OS/2 Warp
• 486/Pentium
  • Windows 95
• Pentium II
  • Windows 95
  • Windows 98SE
• Pentium III
  • Windows XP
  • Windows 2000
  • Windows 98SE
  • Windows ME
• Pentium 4 / Core Duo
  • Windows XP
• Core 2 Duo
  • Windows 7 - Has great compatibility.
  • Windows XP - What most of them came with.
  • Windows Vista

The rest of the CPUs after C2D are modern and work with Windows 7/8/10.