Post by g***@aol.comI am playing with thin clients again and someone made me an offer I
could't refuse on a Dell/WYSE quad core 1.5 gz machine. It is still
far more than I need. I just want a TV "smarter". (basically
streaming.)
The one I bought has internet exploder and Chrome.
Should this work right out of the box?
This is either W7 or W8.
Should I expect a familiar skin on it?
What won't it do?
Plan B is to try to load W7. Drivers might be fun.I think I would try
to extract them from the embedded version and hope they work on the
retail build. I have 2 in shrink wrap.
OTOH they are probably on the Dell site if I knew what to look for.
I am anxious to see exactly what I bought for the price of a couple
Whooper meals. ;)
It may come with a rather small NVMe in it.
The board seems to have a couple SODIMM slots.
You would not particularly want that to be DDR3,
as DDR3 chip production stopped a year ago.
The finished-device adverts, refuse to show a picture
of the back panel. The motherboard (AliExpress picture),
seems to have I/O connectors on both edges of the board.
This means a picture of the back panel of the machine
would be important.
You'd want it to come with its (laptop) power supply.
It's a situation where having to kit it with accessories,
may cost more than this retired box. If the power was missing,
that could be an extra expense.
There was one SOC style CPU, where the graphics chip on
the CPU was "not a good choice". Meaning drivers would be
hell for it. Intel only made one driver available, and the driver
might have come from a third party, with no intention
of a "maintenance strategy". That being said, this J5005 entry
looks OK. Given the date of introduction, there might still be
issues with a W7 driver.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/128984/intel-pentium-silver-j5005-processor-4m-cache-up-to-2-80-ghz.html
Launch Date Q4'17
Intel UHD Graphics 605
Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 8 GB <=== two 4GB ?
Memory Types DDR4/LPDDR4 upto 2400 MT/s
Max # of Memory Channels 2
The memory cap is an artificial limit.
The BIOS may be unhelpful, which is yet another factor.
But other than that "it's a computer of some sort".
There are no SATA ports on it ("thin"), and at best, a SOC processor
like that, may have two SATA (when the device is used in
a laptop scenario). I can't see anything that looks like a SATA.
And the one NVMe, should allow an upgrade. Not stuck with eMMC.
If it's a "refurb", it could be loaded with some version of Windows.
Who knows, it may boot for you.
With the USB3 ports, you could do some USB3 storage. Once you've done
your initial inspection and kitting, there's not going to be
many reasons to open the case. It'll be interesting to see
how the cooling works. It might use a laptop blower.
To get Win7 to install, might well be a chore. USB3 XHCI ports.
Might need a driver slipstreamed into the DVD or something.
If it is a refurb, with a "Refurbisher OS" on it, record the
license key at your earliest convenience. There will be no
COA sticker. Via year of introduction, there might be a
Win8 key inside it (ACPI MSDM), plus the Win10 key which is a
Refurbisher key. But since the Win10 key is not written down,
you may want to record that. It's not likely to be the
generic "free upgrade" key, as with a Refurbisher, a new
key for the Win10 OS on it would be assigned. And since the
free upgrade is over, any Win10 keys need to be managed
to "retain value" for you.
There is unlikely to be any "Dell-ware" in the OS on the NVMe.
It's just a Microsoft image. You would prefer an OOBE experience
(have to go through setup), as refurbs that have been sitting in
someones shop, could have malware introduced by visiting customers.
Not all refurbs are untouched by human hands. The refurb I got
from a local store, had one malware entry, and it was a "display unit".
Paul