Converting your old PC into something useful again!

What are you talking about? I hear you ask.

 

My personal example is a Dell Inspiron N5050-5436 from about 2012. It happens to have belonged to my mother-in-law.

 

She told me, do something with the Dell, “before I kill it, or someone!” and being the kind and considerate gentleman that I am, I sat down and thought, hmm, what can I do to get this ole Dell productive again?

 

I thought:

• I can go retro and install XP on it, but, hmm, viruses; spyware, malware etc., nope; very, very bad plan, ole boy.
• I can go with a linux distro! But then again, I know very little about linux, and I cannot be bothered to go and do the research, so again, nope.
• My last idea was to install Chromium on it, and I thought, how would you do such a thing?

 

So, how do you install Chromium on a laptop, and what do you have?

 

So after I decided to install Chromium on the Dell, I was wondering how to go about this thing. I decided to employ my best friend Google and search for “How to install chromium on pc”.

 

Unsurprisingly, results were plentiful! I looked at quite a few, and in many of them the name Cloudready popped up, over, and over again.

 

Thus, I decided to go take a look at the Cloudready website and thought, hmm, let’s give this a go.

 

Instructions on the website is about as clear as you can get, and also very easy to follow. Thus, the Dell Inspiron Chromebook was born.

 

As a blind individual you will find very limited info on Chrome OS, and this is for a very simple reason. It is the simplest usable system I’ve ever worked with. I would go so far as to say it is beautiful in its simplicity.

 

In years passed, Chrome OS was basically a glorified, bootable web browser, but those days are gone. There are very few things I haven’t found a way to do, the most notable, playing audio games, but that is not really my interest anyway, so I can’t really give a damn.

 

So, what is the old PC good fore now?

 

I think the most important thing to the blind community is communication, and one of the most important tools for this is Skype.

 

There is actually an extension which would launch the Skype Web App, and, yes, this is fully accessible. It does not quite work in the way you may be used to, but if you have used the new Windows 10 version, you would be okay.

 

Google Docs, Googles word processor reminds me in form very much of Word 2003, no ribbon menus!!! It is easy to use. In Chrome OS you use it like you would’ve done Word 2003, Alt to get to the menus and all.

 

I would expect Sheets and Slides to be similar in function to their Office counterparts.

 

Chromevox as a screen reader in Chrome, the browser comes up short, but in Chrome OS where it is the only option, it shines. It does exactly what you need it to do, exactly when you need it.

 

My conclusions?

 

I will not do this, but if I have to, I could quite happily do everything I need to in Chrome OS.

 

It is something I would recommend you give a shot if you are tired of antiVirus software, Windows updating your computer when you don’t want it to, overly expensive screen readers not doing the job any more, or even if you just have a bloody old Computer, and, yes, this will work on a Mac to.

My rather interesting boot camp experience

This is what I would consider to be something not to be dumb on a regular basis, (consider this a friendly warning.)

 

Not so very long ago, I decided that there are some things that was available in windows that I just cannot live without. Now I can hear you Mac lovers scream indignantly, what the hell does windows have that you cannot get on a Mac! Quite a few things, is my answer. Yes, I am also a big fan of Apple computers, but I also think that I am mature enough to know where to draw the line.

 

For one thing, even though this is despicable, Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided not to make MS office accessible for the Mac. I know, some people would say that you do not need office, but you are wrong. Unfortunately over the last decade or so Microsoft office became the industry-standard for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. I know that Apple has iWorks, but unfortunately the currently available Version of iWork's software, does not play nice with the newer versions of office. We are currently waiting for updates from Apple for the iWorks suite, but I have not seen anything regarding this as of yet. This is not the only reason why I installed windows on my Mac, yeah I know, blasphemous is it not? I am also fond of playing computer games. In my case, obviously audio games or other accessible games. Unfortunately for us gamer freaks, the available accessible games for the Mac are very few and even more difficult to get a hold off if you are not in the US. For some reason, very few of the good applications is available in the South African App Store.

 

One of my favourite Windows applications, is a program called Winboard. For those of you who do not know, it is a chess program. Now I can hear some Mac fan scream, but the Mac has the chess app. True, but it is very limited. It does not allow for keyboard input of algebraic notation, nor does it allow you to play on some of the more popular servers. It also  features only one chess engine, and does not allow you to add your own. I will not go in to detail here, but suffice it to say, apple failed on this one.

 

As you probably assumed from my rant regarding office, productivity is important to me. To this end, I got an app called Q-Read for windows which will read PDF and other e-book formats. I know that Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks has iBooks built in, but to my horror, Apple completely failed when he came to Accessibility on that. In other words, I had to resort to Windows to solve this problem.

 

This is not something I am glad for, but unfortunately it was necessary. It is not as though I have completely gotten rid of my Mac, I doubt that will ever happen, but until certain things happen, the Windows partition will stay on my computer.

 

I just hope windows does not break on me! I had to pay someone to do the installation, and it is not as if Windows is cheep to begin with. I am not paying for Windows ever again, that is for damn sure.

 

I haven't found any way to do a boot Camp installation with out sited  help as of yet, but believe me, I am looking. If anybody knows, let me know.

 

You can contact me by referring back to my first blog post, "introducing myself".

 

This is it for today, I hope this post leaves you with something to think about.

 

Cheers!!