I’ve got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.

After that I’d probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn’t have applications that support the file format.

What about you?

I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn’t a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It’s just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can’t just bring in a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.

Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.

  • sleepybisexualEnglish
    1•9 months ago

    Oki

    Wait, this is stupid but what are the specs of our hypothetical PC. Can I put Linux on it to kill an hour?

    • ElectricMachmanEnglish
      1•9 months ago

      If it’s an office desktop, we’re probably talking a low-end Intel Pentium with 256MB RAM. If there is a discrete graphics card, it’ll be one of those ultra-basic ones, but chances are it’ll be onboard only. There’s probably a CD-ROM drive (DVD drives were still quite expensive!) and USB 2.0.

      • sleepybisexualEnglish
        1•9 months ago

        Holy shit, no idea what to run on that. Modern Linux mint has no chance of running on that

        • ElectricMachmanEnglish
          1•9 months ago

          Could spend your 12 hours making it run! Plenty of tinkering opportunity there :D

          • sleepybisexualEnglish
            1•9 months ago

            Sounds fun, but my terminal knowledge ends at

            sudo apt get adventure

      • ares35
        1•9 months ago

        i have a couple dual core athlons (windsor and brisbane athlon 64 x2) at the office from that era. they are still used, even. have 8gb ddr2, dvdrw, and dx10-capable geforce cards.

        • ElectricMachmanEnglish
          1•9 months ago

          Must’ve been an office with money, then…

          • ares35
            1•9 months ago

            i personally bought them. no i don’t have money. didn’t then either. they were about $200 each, just prior to when vista started shipping (they were on sale). ram was upgraded from scrap, so was one of the video cards and one of the cpu (they were both originally windsors)–the other was bought new for ~$50 in late 2008 or so.

            • ElectricMachmanEnglish
              1•9 months ago

              That’s pretty impressive. I’m especially surprised about the 8GB RAM considering that was a lot even in the early 2010s.