One thing about google Play and older devices

...and one reason why I prefer console (and retro) games

 Long time ago, I purchased Android port of legenadary Carmageddon game from Google Play store. The game was perfect; It ran perfectly on my low-end Gigaset tablet and controls were almost better than the original MsDos/Win95 version.

Kuva, jonka Arthur Samuel Rowan (@arsapi) julkaisi 31. 07ta 2016 klo 18.15 PDT

Some months later the game was suddenly updated, and android 4.x compatibility was somewhat butchered, and the original paid, adfree version of the game was converted to in-app-purchases supported game... And I had auto update enabled in my device, so it updated and then the game didn't work anymore... Yeah... Shit happens

 
And that is one bad thing about Google's Play store and other digital distribution platforms; App developers can just suddenly change their old feature rich and complete app to something else, instead of releasing the "new" version as different app...

That's why I prefer old game consoles and non-online-updating DRM free PC games; when it comes to ability to play games long after their release date in their original form.

Low-end Android devices

I recently got new cell phone: Sony Xperia M4 Aqua. It has enough power in processing side, but only 4gb storage out of 8gb and Sony has already bloated it with its own software so there is only 2gb for end user.

I also own this cheap Gigaset QV830 tablet with almost vanilla Android 4.2.2 . For comparison there was 4gb free for user.

Either way both of my devices are still quite low-end spectrum for Android device storage capacity. 

I have to really think what apps I can Install. 

I like to find those Android apps with low storage footprint (low RAM footprint is also good with devices with 1gb or less). But there is one problem. You can't really see the true requirements for apps in Google's own Play store. You can see if the app is compatible or not, and amount of storage the initial installation needs, but that's it.

My workaround is HP Mini 110 laptop with Android installation in HDD. It has only 1gb of RAM and single core processor, but enough storage capacity to hold multiple Android apps.
(Another solution would be running  the Android in virtual machine, if you have powerfull PC).

Now I can inspect apps before installing them to my other devices and I definitely know how much RAM and storage they consume. And if android app runs smoothly in old laptop, then it runs smoothly on my other devices too...

The Nokia Communicator

Oh... Those were the times of innovative technology. I always wanted one of those. Particulary one of those earlier Nokia Communicator models, like 9110 or 9110i.

Recently I got one. The Nokia 9210 Communicator.

Nokia 9210 is so 2000 (Edit: or 1999) -even it was actually released at 2001. A cool gadget back in the day; Cell phone meets Pocket PC -Unfortunately it has little or no use today...

But there is one thing you can still do with 9210: THE TEXT ADVENTURES!
I downloaded Z-machine interpreter for Nokia Series 80 phones. And here we go; Now I am able to play all classic Interactive fiction adventures with real keyboard; And I don't have to sit in front of computer screen.

It would be interesting to get it back to internet, but that would take much more effort than playing simple text adventures...

BTW. It also plays Nethack!

So...
Get Lamp!

Console screensaver

In Linux (Ubuntu) I'm using "phosphor" screensaver showing news feed or other interesting text... And just recently, I found similar screensaver for low-end windows machines.

http://noisybox.net/computers/text_term/

It displays any local or online plain text file as screensaver in classic terminal style.

Works in win9x and NT4.0

PS.
All credit goes to Jason from noisybox.net

Edit:
Text Terminal Screen Saver displays only plain text, so it may be tricky to find progressively updating plain txt files online...
Personally I'm using it to display data from Nexstorm detector located in our home city (Nexstorm software creates plain text report file called TRACReport.txt showing current thunderstorm data)

Browsing the mobile internet

Some web pages detect if one is using mobile or desktop hardware. This is problematic when trying to browse internet sites with low-resource machine; So you have to tell the site that you want see lighter mobile version (if aviable).

-Custom user agent string for win98 box with K-meleon
*Code:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1) Gecko/20100228 K-Meleon/1.5.4

-Browse WAP sites using wml-extension for K-meleon
Download wml-extension for k-meleon:
http://kmext.sourceforge.net/files/wmlbrowser.7z

To The WWW!

When using old windows operating system like windows 98SE or DamnSmallLinux, you need modern and light desktop web browser software cabable of showing lightweight web bages: There is Dillo for linux and K-meleon for Windows 98SE.

-There is also text-mode browsers like Lynx for linux and Links (and it's many forks) for Win, *Nix, MacOS.