Linux time. I ditched windows almost 2 years ago. I'm just done with Microsoft and their BS. I do work on my machines IT work. It's not always simple but I make it work. I wouldn't say it's for everyone.
Now is also a good time to explore alternatives to Windows. These older systems run like a dream on Unraid for home server purposes. And there are desktop oriented distros like Linux Mint, Pop_OS, Fedora, OpenSUSE, even Debian Bookworm. I've migrated my Plex to an 800 G5 Mini with 9500T and Win11. My ProDesk 600 G2 with 6500T is going to be a Debian box.
@@handmedowntechspeaking of the 9500T, what is the idle CPU temps you typically see for that? I'm probably going to have to redo the thermal paste. I just got it off eBay and and it idles around 45-50 deg Celsius, which seems alarmingly high compared to the 30 deg idle on my 6400T and Haswell 4570
I ran a heavy load at 100% CPU for 2 min on an EliteDesk 800 G5 mini, 9509t and hit a max of 78 but it looked to be around 70 on average. After 4 mins or so it went back down to 44 but when I first checked the temps they were around 33.
I used Zorin Linux because of how similar everything is to windows, it installs all kinds of Linux packages and even easily runs windows apps if possible or tells you the alternative to install instead.
@@handmedowntech It looks and feels like Windows, has the Documents, Pictures, etc., runs Windows apps as easily as possible and is based on Ubuntu. It also installs all forms of packages.
Love affair with Microsoft's 10 ends in early 2025 when I'm having Linux Mink installed. Older CPU works great with upgrades like 1 Tera Byte of solid state memory. Not trashing it for Windows 11. Also bought an Apple Mini Mac 2 that I plan to set up. Windows RIP.
Something to watch for is MS new requirement for sse4.2/popcnt with 24h2. It's awful, and seems unlikely that a workaround like tpm/secure boot bypasses will be possible. It's taking a dozen old dell clients in my business to the landfill, why I'm digging into switching to the 800 g4's. I'm going to pass on the G3's and before, they really are only a few bucks less.
Based on what I've read the sse4.2 was introduced quite a ways back so even the G1 supports it. I'm probably more concerned about recent developments in which TPM 2.0 will be required but that will most likely affect G1 units. It sure seems like Microsoft is using the stock instead of the carrot to get folks to move up to Windows 11. I personally love it and find it to work well on even older hardware.
@@handmedowntech Thanks so much for all your work, these videos are a blessing, answering my questions before I know what I don't know! I found your w11 install install on the g1,2,3. Have you tried 24H2, that's what is doing me in. The idea that they change the requirements in the middle of a cycle with no warning sucks, makes you wonder what's next. 24H2, is eol in 2026, and we have no roadmap, the best we can hope for is that the platform is stable, there is little changing, standards are stable, backwards compatible, unlike my stable of 2008 dell 755 clients, I must have 20 of them with spares and parts, shoot I even have one with my 88 year old Dad! They work great for browser apps, business software, quickbooks, even light graphics video editing. I guess I can string along w10 for a few more years, but I'm getting kind of excited about a clean slate with tidy low power clients. Lord knows 15 years of suffering, patching together window 7 boxes, hard drives and what not, I've banked a small fortune. Shoot, I'm seeing those old dell desktops selling with windows xp as "retro" gaming boxes for 160 dollars, what are they thinking! I never spent more than 100 bux on one!
We had our family hp desktop for 15 years, those Dell and hp keep working and working. You might check out my video on how I virtualized that HP. I'll have to see if Microsoft has updated their ISOs to have the newer win 11 24h2 to see how it performs with the older units. My G5 has yet to be presented the 24H2. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@handmedowntech All the thanks is to you for your content, it's excellent. I'm more interested how the earlier machines handle 24H2, I think G4 and G5 will be fine. Yeah those big 3 workgroup computers are more or less bullet proof, a hard drive here, a fan there. A mouse got in a pissed on a motherboard. I have a samba active directory server that administers users and group policy for the domain, and a few spares on the shelf. Grab a fresh on off the shelf, plug it in, give it a name, add it to the domain, log in as usual, back in business. I have other ideas for them. The first "server" computer for my company was a 486 HP NT server (we called it the boat anchor) I got for free from a friend who worked from a VAR, came out of a some office or something, he got like 5 of them, and we put windows 3.11 for workgroups on it, and made a peer network with 10baseT crossover to a 386 computer. We were using a dbase clone to replace user applications made in excel macros with something slightly more stable. Later, started a different company, put window 95 on it, finally a "real" windows. Office 97, started to develop a Access database application for inventory control. Around 2000 Got a switch, added a few new dell desktops. Around 2008 we were growing like mad, XP then Win7, and by then we had ebay, and the vars were selling the machines coming out of the office as refurbs, and bought a bunch of the 755's, a big used nortel 1000bT switch, and a new dual xeon 2nd gen 1u supermicro server that sounded like a cross between a learjet and vacuum cleaner, like 300 watts idle, what a mistake. looking back it was somewhat comparable in power and storage to my phone. Hosted a "HUGE" 500 G raid file share, with Centos 3 or 4 or something and KVM hypervisor, and somehow got an early version of samba and a functional active directory domain going. That superserver cost like 6 grand, the enclosed rack and the battery back up was probably another 2 grand. You know, so I could run free software. Anyway, 7 or 8 years ago I finally turned that boat anchor off in favor of another free retired HP server (another boat anchor), hoping to regain some hearing and save a thousand bucks a year on my electric bill. I had envisioned small low powered servers clustered up to fail-over with freepbx, mysql, sambaAD and pfSense. But then it was before ssds were quite proven in the data center, and I would have needed a whole bunch of small laptop drives and everything else, would have cost maybe 6 grand, so I passed. Now I'm thinking of getting a couple of those little 125 dollar hp minis, mirrored 4tb nvme drives, and they will only cost maybe 1500 bucks total. Interesting time to be a computer nerd, huh?
I love the fact that you used Windows 3.11 - the "workgroups" that Microsoft still have hidden in their system menu. Crazy how having a 486 used to mean you "made it" - you had the super computer at your home :).
Do all of these digitally activate with windows 11? How about when you assemble from barebones? Is there a windows key sticker on these? I understood that the digital activation registered some MB/CPU data,
@@handmedowntech Thats good news, sounds like they are continuing the w10 model, if it's used, register it, and make some money selling the office 365 subscriptions and new oem licenses and upgrades, and they can have an income stream from extending w10 support year by year. I read recently that w11 still only has a fraction of the market w10 has. It doesn't seem that they are getting much 3rd party income, they haven't tried pushing candy crush or other such nonsense for a while. So they are using specs to drop old hardware. To be fair they, do still have a crap-ton of old code and driver support they are carrying along, they are building the future of computing now, and are using these parts of the hardware and microcode already, and don't want, or feel that they can't slow down for old hardware and legacy driver support.
That's always a concern. How can I keep my old software intact. An upgrade is supposed to keep your stuff. You're even asked if you want to wipe everything or keep your stuff. If you watch my video on virtualizing an old win 10 machine I was able to keep a copy of a runnable machine in case I needed to get to it. TurboTax is a perfect example. You like to keep old versions in case you need to check on what the return looked like from a couple years back. The virtualizing allows you then to do a fresh install AND you have a backup. You could do both. Just use the virtualizing to backup your machine and then upgrade with everything in tact. That way if the old software doesn't like win 11 you could run it on the VM.
That's nice, but it doesn't help if you support productivity apps including quickbooks, adobe, windows business database apps, pro tools, autocad, solidworks and lots of other things, like gaming. I use linux, it's awesome for all sorts of services, routers, switches, ip telephones, security cameras, samba active directory windows domain control, file sharing, backup. I've suffered through all of this going back to mainframes and punch cards since the earliest days, and a good gui helps a lot, you can find things visually. Microsoft and Apple have the best interfaces, now add all the cloud applications from google and everywhere else, it's way better. Windows is awesome, essentially free. Apple is awesome, quite a bit more expensive, more locked down. All work great, are super annoying to configure, but WAY WAY better than in the past. Someone here said "except for my gaming machine, I'm going linux desktop." Thats super funny to me. If you have a powerful windows gaming machine sitting idle and want a linux desktop, just fire up WSL and install whatever distro you want, even proxmox or something, and from there virtualize as many distros as you can imagine.
Linux time. I ditched windows almost 2 years ago. I'm just done with Microsoft and their BS. I do work on my machines IT work. It's not always simple but I make it work. I wouldn't say it's for everyone.
Which distro do you normally use?
Now is also a good time to explore alternatives to Windows. These older systems run like a dream on Unraid for home server purposes. And there are desktop oriented distros like Linux Mint, Pop_OS, Fedora, OpenSUSE, even Debian Bookworm.
I've migrated my Plex to an 800 G5 Mini with 9500T and Win11. My ProDesk 600 G2 with 6500T is going to be a Debian box.
Definitely a great option. Amazing what can run on even small amounts of memory and CPU
@@handmedowntechspeaking of the 9500T, what is the idle CPU temps you typically see for that? I'm probably going to have to redo the thermal paste. I just got it off eBay and and it idles around 45-50 deg Celsius, which seems alarmingly high compared to the 30 deg idle on my 6400T and Haswell 4570
I ran a heavy load at 100% CPU for 2 min on an EliteDesk 800 G5 mini, 9509t and hit a max of 78 but it looked to be around 70 on average. After 4 mins or so it went back down to 44 but when I first checked the temps they were around 33.
I used Zorin Linux because of how similar everything is to windows, it installs all kinds of Linux packages and even easily runs windows apps if possible or tells you the alternative to install instead.
Because of distrust of Recall, i just installed Zorin Linux and it's great. I'm going to switch all but my gaming machine.
Zorin is a distro I have not tried. What drew you to it?
@@handmedowntech It looks and feels like Windows, has the Documents, Pictures, etc., runs Windows apps as easily as possible and is based on Ubuntu. It also installs all forms of packages.
I will have to check that distro out - thanks.
Love affair with Microsoft's 10 ends in early 2025 when I'm having Linux
Mink installed. Older CPU works great with upgrades like 1 Tera Byte
of solid state memory. Not trashing it for Windows 11.
Also bought an Apple Mini Mac 2 that I plan to set up. Windows RIP.
Many folks are likely following the same path. I do like Mint.
Something to watch for is MS new requirement for sse4.2/popcnt with 24h2. It's awful, and seems unlikely that a workaround like tpm/secure boot bypasses will be possible. It's taking a dozen old dell clients in my business to the landfill, why I'm digging into switching to the 800 g4's. I'm going to pass on the G3's and before, they really are only a few bucks less.
Based on what I've read the sse4.2 was introduced quite a ways back so even the G1 supports it. I'm probably more concerned about recent developments in which TPM 2.0 will be required but that will most likely affect G1 units. It sure seems like Microsoft is using the stock instead of the carrot to get folks to move up to Windows 11. I personally love it and find it to work well on even older hardware.
@@handmedowntech Thanks so much for all your work, these videos are a blessing, answering my questions before I know what I don't know! I found your w11 install install on the g1,2,3. Have you tried 24H2, that's what is doing me in. The idea that they change the requirements in the middle of a cycle with no warning sucks, makes you wonder what's next. 24H2, is eol in 2026, and we have no roadmap, the best we can hope for is that the platform is stable, there is little changing, standards are stable, backwards compatible, unlike my stable of 2008 dell 755 clients, I must have 20 of them with spares and parts, shoot I even have one with my 88 year old Dad! They work great for browser apps, business software, quickbooks, even light graphics video editing. I guess I can string along w10 for a few more years, but I'm getting kind of excited about a clean slate with tidy low power clients. Lord knows 15 years of suffering, patching together window 7 boxes, hard drives and what not, I've banked a small fortune. Shoot, I'm seeing those old dell desktops selling with windows xp as "retro" gaming boxes for 160 dollars, what are they thinking! I never spent more than 100 bux on one!
We had our family hp desktop for 15 years, those Dell and hp keep working and working. You might check out my video on how I virtualized that HP. I'll have to see if Microsoft has updated their ISOs to have the newer win 11 24h2 to see how it performs with the older units. My G5 has yet to be presented the 24H2. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@handmedowntech All the thanks is to you for your content, it's excellent. I'm more interested how the earlier machines handle 24H2, I think G4 and G5 will be fine. Yeah those big 3 workgroup computers are more or less bullet proof, a hard drive here, a fan there. A mouse got in a pissed on a motherboard. I have a samba active directory server that administers users and group policy for the domain, and a few spares on the shelf. Grab a fresh on off the shelf, plug it in, give it a name, add it to the domain, log in as usual, back in business.
I have other ideas for them. The first "server" computer for my company was a 486 HP NT server (we called it the boat anchor) I got for free from a friend who worked from a VAR, came out of a some office or something, he got like 5 of them, and we put windows 3.11 for workgroups on it, and made a peer network with 10baseT crossover to a 386 computer. We were using a dbase clone to replace user applications made in excel macros with something slightly more stable. Later, started a different company, put window 95 on it, finally a "real" windows. Office 97, started to develop a Access database application for inventory control. Around 2000 Got a switch, added a few new dell desktops. Around 2008 we were growing like mad, XP then Win7, and by then we had ebay, and the vars were selling the machines coming out of the office as refurbs, and bought a bunch of the 755's, a big used nortel 1000bT switch, and a new dual xeon 2nd gen 1u supermicro server that sounded like a cross between a learjet and vacuum cleaner, like 300 watts idle, what a mistake. looking back it was somewhat comparable in power and storage to my phone. Hosted a "HUGE" 500 G raid file share, with Centos 3 or 4 or something and KVM hypervisor, and somehow got an early version of samba and a functional active directory domain going. That superserver cost like 6 grand, the enclosed rack and the battery back up was probably another 2 grand. You know, so I could run free software. Anyway, 7 or 8 years ago I finally turned that boat anchor off in favor of another free retired HP server (another boat anchor), hoping to regain some hearing and save a thousand bucks a year on my electric bill. I had envisioned small low powered servers clustered up to fail-over with freepbx, mysql, sambaAD and pfSense. But then it was before ssds were quite proven in the data center, and I would have needed a whole bunch of small laptop drives and everything else, would have cost maybe 6 grand, so I passed. Now I'm thinking of getting a couple of those little 125 dollar hp minis, mirrored 4tb nvme drives, and they will only cost maybe 1500 bucks total. Interesting time to be a computer nerd, huh?
I love the fact that you used Windows 3.11 - the "workgroups" that Microsoft still have hidden in their system menu. Crazy how having a 486 used to mean you "made it" - you had the super computer at your home :).
Do all of these digitally activate with windows 11? How about when you assemble from barebones? Is there a windows key sticker on these? I understood that the digital activation registered some MB/CPU data,
I've used G1 units and windows 11 installed and saw the license. The license key should be embedded in the motherboard.
@@handmedowntech Thats good news, sounds like they are continuing the w10 model, if it's used, register it, and make some money selling the office 365 subscriptions and new oem licenses and upgrades, and they can have an income stream from extending w10 support year by year. I read recently that w11 still only has a fraction of the market w10 has. It doesn't seem that they are getting much 3rd party income, they haven't tried pushing candy crush or other such nonsense for a while. So they are using specs to drop old hardware. To be fair they, do still have a crap-ton of old code and driver support they are carrying along, they are building the future of computing now, and are using these parts of the hardware and microcode already, and don't want, or feel that they can't slow down for old hardware and legacy driver support.
does an upgrade keep all your software in tact? got some things on my laptop where the installs/CDs are long gone
That's always a concern. How can I keep my old software intact. An upgrade is supposed to keep your stuff. You're even asked if you want to wipe everything or keep your stuff. If you watch my video on virtualizing an old win 10 machine I was able to keep a copy of a runnable machine in case I needed to get to it. TurboTax is a perfect example. You like to keep old versions in case you need to check on what the return looked like from a couple years back. The virtualizing allows you then to do a fresh install AND you have a backup. You could do both. Just use the virtualizing to backup your machine and then upgrade with everything in tact. That way if the old software doesn't like win 11 you could run it on the VM.
Don't worry about Windows 10 EOL... Run Linux on these things, they work great on Linux!
Server versions especially.
That's nice, but it doesn't help if you support productivity apps including quickbooks, adobe, windows business database apps, pro tools, autocad, solidworks and lots of other things, like gaming. I use linux, it's awesome for all sorts of services, routers, switches, ip telephones, security cameras, samba active directory windows domain control, file sharing, backup. I've suffered through all of this going back to mainframes and punch cards since the earliest days, and a good gui helps a lot, you can find things visually. Microsoft and Apple have the best interfaces, now add all the cloud applications from google and everywhere else, it's way better. Windows is awesome, essentially free. Apple is awesome, quite a bit more expensive, more locked down. All work great, are super annoying to configure, but WAY WAY better than in the past. Someone here said "except for my gaming machine, I'm going linux desktop." Thats super funny to me. If you have a powerful windows gaming machine sitting idle and want a linux desktop, just fire up WSL and install whatever distro you want, even proxmox or something, and from there virtualize as many distros as you can imagine.