 Let's play a little make believe game, shall we? Let's say that I'm your grandmother. And here I am on my computer that you put together for me, oh, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago. And the hardware was pretty good then, but these days it's running a tick slow. So, you know, I'm just doing grandmotherly things like firing up the internets to browse the web. Oof. Catching up on my tech news. Maybe I open up a couple of tabs. Gotta get that news from all the sources. Oh boy, are these still loading? Is this tab still loading? Maybe I'll watch a video in the meantime with the VLC. Look at that right click delay. Isn't that a thing of beauty? There it is. While I'm waiting for that, maybe I'll enjoy a nice little game of pinball in 3D. Okay, I think you see where we're going with this. It's time for Gran to finally give into your incessant nagging and upgrade the old machine. But then just as she's about to do it, she's browsing the Facebook and she finds an ad for, oh, thank you. The extra PC, which claims to breathe new life into old computers for anywhere from $49.99 to $79.99. But could it be the magic bullet that it claims to be? Or is it just another predatory product designed to take money from the elderly and tech illiterate? There's only one way for us to find out. Oh, after this message from GlassWire. With GlassWire, you can instantly see your current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on Windows and Android. Use offer code Linus to get 25% off GlassWire at the link below. All right, so my understanding is there's a few different, oh, Anthony's in the video. Hi. My understanding is there's a few different versions of the extra PC. So I'm holding the extra PC Pro 64 gigabyte, and this is the one we spent 80 US dollars on. Right. And then you've got. I've got the Turbo 32, which is much smaller. And I spent, I think, $49.99 on it. Okay, not too bad. Now, something that's immediately noticeable about these things is that these are just, I'm not sure if you can see this, but they're just, I mean, this one, they didn't even cover up the branding. This is just a SanDisk. Cruiser Blade. Cruiser Blade 32 gigs. So that's a USB 2, and this would cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of, it can't be more than like 10 bucks. Yeah, roughly. Whew. And then this, I mean, they did, they put a sticker on this one, at least. I'm just gonna, okay. Oh, there we go. And this one's a Cruiser Glide 3.0 64 gigs. So that's USB 3. But for our particular old computer, we're not gonna get any benefit out of that anyway. Yeah, we only have 2.0. Okay, but I mean, they're probably, I mean, I'm sure they sort of tell people that. No. Really? Nope, they just say that it gives you speed, large storage capacity, and file res software. What is file res software? I'm guessing it's some kind of recovery software. Also, check out these was prices. Anywhere from 50 to $160. Yep. That's gonna be amazing. All right. So should we just crack it open? Let's fire this thing up. Sure. Let's do it. Uh-oh. Oh. Yeah, you know what? And you're done, bud. Okay, so do you wanna do the turbo one anyway, just cause then we get- We can see what that file res software's all about. I think it's identical otherwise. Okay, cool. What is this? Like a Core 2 quad or something? No, it's a Pentium D. Oof. Well, let's see. If it can make this feel snappy, then maybe there's something to it. All right, extra PC. They've got their own boot logo. They did an FS check on the actual hard drive. Please choose a password for your administrator account. Well, I'm gonna go with password cause I need something I can remember. In order to begin using all the great features, we need to set up a few additional applications. These applications require that you're connected to the internet so they can be downloaded and installed. And it looks like, oh, I assumed that was network, but it, oh, it is. Wired connection one. It looks like it picked up both our wired and wifi NICs. Yep. Okay. Both real tech. All right, let's go ahead and do this. Do you accept the EULA for VLC media player, Rhythmbox media player, Lubuntu restricted add-ons, Adobe Flash. Okay, this is all stuff that I would probably install. Yep. Okay. Okay, so everything gets installed to the extra PC USB stick and it does not use your hard drive. Fascinating. Well, based on how long it's taking to install fonts, we might be asking for a lot. So you would probably recognize this. What is this based on? Probably Lubuntu, which is a lightweight distro of Ubuntu. Is it just me or does giving your grandma Linux seem like a bad idea? Based on that giving Linus Linux is already looking like a bad idea. Yes, we'll talk more about that a little bit later. Thank you, David. Okay, we're tired of waiting for the TrueType fonts to install. Yeah, we want to cancel. We're done. Okay, it looks like it's not gonna prompt us to do that again. So why don't we poke around in here? It's totally grand oriented. So we've got Thunderbird email client. Is that even still updated? It is, it got discontinued and I think I picked up again. It's got a dedicated link to Facebook, which presumably will open in Firefox web browser here. And that is an old Firefox logo. Yeah. So there is not a whole heck of a lot to this, is there? Yeah, there's LibreOffice, there's Firefox. And for grandma anyway, there is no obvious way to add more applications. Not really, usually in a user friendly operating system, like Ubuntu or Manjaro or what have you, there'll be like an add or remove software. Yeah. But in this case, I mean, I know what it is, but. Now let's try FileRes. Ready to find and save your files with one click. I'm gonna try this one click approach. Go. I hear the hard drive ticking. Yeah, you can see that it's mounted the drive and program files. Oh, it's just finding everything. Now, did it actually grab the pictures that you put on specifically to test it? Looks like that's all program files. Here we go. Here it is. Oh, okay. What we don't know is how it handles if you have more data than will fit on a USB stick. But that's a little bit beyond the scope of this investigation, I think. So I guess the point we're getting at here is that if Gran has got the wherewithal to learn Linux, which you know what? If all she's ever gonna look at is Facebook and email and Kindle and Pinterest, maybe isn't even that hard. Yeah, no, probably not. But if you're gonna put the effort in to learn how to use Linux, maybe you should put the effort into learning how to create your own bootable Linux USB, which Anthony has created for us, complete with high-end graphics. How long did it take you to create this thing, Anthony? About an hour. About an hour, okay. Okay, so what am I looking at here? This is Manjaro Linux. It's a relatively lightweight modern Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. Got it. That's our hard drive. So getting into our documents and settings and any pictures we left behind is basically as simple as just navigating for them. Did you pre-configure it with Firefox or does that just come out of the box? It comes with Firefox out of the box. Great, well, let's have a look at our YouTube experience then, since that was the last thing we looked at on Extra PC. Again, Firefox is not going to be hardware accelerated, so a couple drop frames here and there and yeah. Oh wait. Wait. Yes. Oh yeah, yeah, it's still a hot mess. What else did we try? Do we just want like some general responsiveness, fire up some open office, you know? Yeah, I think fire up some open office. I mean, it's all going to be USB 2, so it's going to be comparable as far as load times go, but. Sure. So let's create a writer document. Where do you put what you want to call it? Oh, here. Okay, sure. Beautiful. Did you have to install any drivers or anything or? No, the auto detection is pretty good. Okay, cool. Oh, look at this. It's got Chromium and everything. Is this all pre-installed stuff? I didn't, I pre-installed Chromium. You did? Yeah. Okay. Everything else is pre-installed, including Steam. Including Steam? Huh, how about that? Normally Steam's only available in Ubuntu. In terms of overall responsiveness, no, maybe it isn't actually much worse. Let's just open up our news. No, it's probably about as slow. Yeah, you can only ask so much of a Pentium D. Okay, why don't we try and do one more thing? Let's play some grand friendly games on Steam. Okay. Okay. Ah! That frame rate though. Yeah, well it's running at full HD. But it's running. I realized now that I've never actually played Peggle. What? Yeah. Oh, Peggle rocks. It's Pachinko. Oh yeah. Yeah, oh no! God of Tetris. There it is, yeah! Ah! Extreme fever! Yeah, extreme fever, you're dead. Okay, all right, Anthony, let's go head to head. How do we head to head with one mouse? Take turns. Oh, okay. All right. What? Oh, that was the tutorial level. Oh no, you have to beat all the 10, no, forget it. And we're done. Extra PC, your closing thoughts. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. That file record, whatever it was called, program, Fares. Yeah. Actually worked pretty well. I wasn't expecting it to, but it did. It pulled off all the files that would be considered important to most people. Aside from the fact that it's really old and it wouldn't install the fonts, which would have given Grant a little bit of trouble. Yeah, I mean, it's just straight Zubuntu with some extra fluff on it. And it's not too bad, but for the price. Now I'm actually gonna take up a contrary position here because I think the price is really reasonable. The extra time it would take them to faff about creating a bootable Linux USB, 40 to $80 is perfectly reasonable. The one thing I do take issue with here is that it's advertised as a resurrector of old machines. When as we've clearly demonstrated, it's not a magic bullet. You don't go from not being able to play YouTube videos and open documents to suddenly being able to do that. You are still very much limited by the hardware that you have. And there is going to be a learning curve for Grant. And that's something that I feel like they could be a lot more transparent about in their advertising. So my issue here is not with the product, but rather just with the claims. The product itself, I actually don't mind it. Yeah, I thought I would hate it. I was expecting this video to just be crapping all over extra PC, but you can I think probably see the tone shift as we make our way through it. Yeah. A lot happens at your front door without you ever even realizing it. And Ring is on a mission to reduce crime in communities. The Video Doorbell 2 can help you get that done thanks to its 1080p HD resolution with 160 degree vision, including night vision. It's got motion sensing so that it'll alert you if anything is happening in the field of view of the camera. By the way, that's adjustable if you live on a busy street. And it features two way audio so you can talk to whoever's at the front door. It's wifi capable so you can check what's going on wherever you are. And it's powered by eight to 24 volt doorbell wiring or the battery bank. So you've got lots of choices in terms of power. It connects via an app that can work on your smartphone, whether it's iOS or Android, and has compatibility with Mac and Windows 10. And today they have a special offer at the link in the video description for their doorbell camera kit that includes the Video Doorbell 2, a spotlight cam and a solar security sign. So check it out at ring.com slash LTT. So thanks for watching guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. I really didn't think that was gonna happen. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should totally join. Also speaking of shirts, your tag's been sticking up the whole time. Oh, dang it. Why would you tell me now? It's a good segue. Into what?