Laptop Question....

[Jimlad]

Been looking at some cheap laptops on eBay.

Really all I'm after is something to send emails and go online with etc. Not really wanting to play games... that's what me Xbox is for.

I've seen some pretty cheap P3 1Ghz Laptops with 512mb ram etc. Am I right in thinking that these things will be more than fine for what I'm looking for??

In the past I've owned some pretty low spec PC's and they were upto the task. So I'm sure these would be... true?

Also... HD's are say 20gig etc... is it possible to easily upgrade these on laptops? Also can you simply pull out the cd/rw drive and plop in a dvdr/w drive instead?

Cheers for any help on this!

[mikeb]

Hard drives can be replaced fairly easily. It's usually possible to replace cd/dvd roms with writers (but they are fairly expensive compared to desktop size ones).

Be very wary of buying a s/h laptop from eBay. There are lots of stolen ones, and badly mistreated ones on there. Try and buy from someone local so you can collect it and give it a look over before handing over all your money.

Don't expect the Battery to be any good on a laptop over 3 years old.

[Jamesb4uk]

Whats your Budget?

J

[Jimlad]

dunno.... was just looking just now to be honest.

[Jamesb4uk]

Cant believe i'm gonna post this..... but

if you can afford it mate go for one of these i wouldnt buy a 2nd hand laptop - trouble is you don't know what your getting.

My dad - a few years ago bought a 2nd hand jobbie from a paper & within a week it had broken so much so i binned it & built him a new one.

J

[T600]

I'd second the advice above - buy a new one if you can.

Prices have tumbled, but people who paid say £1000 for a laptop a year ago think they're giving you a great deal if they sell it for say £600. But you can now get new machines for that price that are better than those that cost over £1000 last year.

If you're just browsing and using email you don't need a very powerful machine.

On some machines the upgrade to DVD/RW is very simple, and on others it's nowhere near as easy. If the drive is dockable then upgrade will be easier.

With regard to the HDD I'd get as big a device as you can from the off; if you upgrade later you'll have the problem of transferring your data over, and on most laptops you'll have to remove the old drive to fit the new one, it's not like a desktop where you can just chuck another drive in.

I would check out prices for Dell; we almost always use them as they're great value for money and a 3 year warranty is very cheap. You don't get much free software with them though, so if that's important to you then you can find better deals. (Having said that, my laptop's a Sony because that happend to have all the features I wanted when I was buying it).

[Avensis wagon]

One GHz isn't enough to keep away from totally unacceptable sluggishness due to the proportionally high drain by the OS, virus scanner and other basic things that run all the time before you even start doing anything else. Programs made today (e.g. the new virus scanner update you'll be forced to take next year, the new Acrobat reader) don't seem toallow for that kind of performance and cripple older machines.

I'd consider 2 GHz the minimum just to keep it running acceptably (or an AMD processor that's 1.7 GHz but offers "2100+" as they put it).

For something that does the basics of e-mail, MS Office programs, maybe the odd game, will open a pdf, browse the internet etc. and is also reliable, well built, reputable and offers fantastic value for money in light of all this, I'd look at an AMD-based Acer (maybe Acer Aspire). You can't beat 'em on value IMO. Good internet support for drivers etc. too. You can get 3 GHz for around £500, so slower must be a lot cheaper.

Got to say I'd recommend new too, unless you're totally strapped. It could cost when the hard disk goes and the software refuses to reinstall. My experience over the years is that bad industry regulation has meant that computers and the software that they run might as well be considered disposable.

[jay dh]

if you want cheap cheap, get an intel celeron processor, eg

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quick...1012&PageMode=1

if you want cheap quality, get a cheap intel pentium processor, eg

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quick...1012&PageMode=1

[sotal]

I've had my Sony Vaio for years now and it still does the job - I use it more than my main pc now at home.

I've upgraded the Ram and HD over it's life (HD died) but that's it and it's still up to the job.

It's a Celeron 600Mhz, with 192MB Ram, and a 20gig HD. I'm running Windows XP, firefox, internet explorer Microsoft Office and Remote Desktop. Nothing else installed.

It boots up quick and runs fine, although I only go on the web with it 99% of the time, anything else is done on the main pc upstairs through remote desktop wirelessly. It runs office fine though aswell.

The suprising thing was that it runs Win XP better than 2K or ME. I'm sure it will do me fine for another couple of years.

Only gripe as said above is that the Battery is knackered. It lasts between 3 and 4 minutes which is normally just enough to take it from downstairs to upstairs and plug it in. If I take the wireless card out it will last about 10 mins.

20gig HD was £20 brand new from eBay

I can buy a DVD Player/ CD Writer for £45

[Carrera_C]

Not to argue with Avensis wagon, but 1Ghz, and 512 RAM would do you fine for what you want. He is correct that you may experience some sluggishness, but this will really only be when the virus scanners actually running a scan or something. For standard browsing and office apps you should be ok.

I really wouldn't go for less than 512 of RAM tho.

[DaveSR]

Not to argue with Avensis wagon, but 1Ghz, and 512 RAM would do you fine for what you want. He is correct that you may experience some sluggishness, but this will really only be when the virus scanners actually running a scan or something. For standard browsing and office apps you should be ok.

I really wouldn't go for less than 512 of RAM tho.

←

Im on a 3 year old lappy here ....... im on pritty much on a similar spec (Celeron 1.2) but have upgraded mine to a gig of RAM and brought a bigger and faster HDD and it's still as slow as s**t!

Again I don't play any games but you still need to run spyware, AV, msn etc programs in the background.

Sometime's msn get painfully slow even though I have enough of everything apart from Processing Power!

Save yourself a bit more cash and get something better!

Unless you want to buy mine ;) !

[sotal]

Dave what are you running to make it so slow?? For the stuff he said he wanted I'm sure that would be fast enough.

I have Microsoft Antispyware and AVG running at the bottom and it's fine all the time except it's set to run a full AVG scan at 8.00am and that really slows it down when it starts! Other than that though my 600mhz Celeron is well up to the task

[PaulT]

Get any laptop above about 600MHz, 128MB ram, and install linux.

No AV software, Firefox is great. Job done!

Paul.